Attendees Eye Conferences at Seybold San Francisco

Key3Media Events, Inc.'s Seybold San Francisco 2002 publishing, design, and content technology conference and exposition was held September 9-12 at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

According to show organizers, registration for conferences increased more than 10% over last year's attendance figures. Meanwhile, the number of exhibitors and exposition attendees appeared to decrease significantly enough from previous years' events that rumors of a much-scaled-down version of the Seybold Seminars New York counterpart floated through the corridors of the convention center, hinting that future Manhattan-based events may forego expositions and comprise conferences only.

Among the announcements made at the San Francisco show were the results of a PDF usage survey conducted by Seybold Publications. The survey, which polled 2,221 printers and designers, indicates that 47% of PDF generators reuse PDF files for other print jobs (61% for the Web and 39% for CD-ROM), while 52% use PDF for soft proofing. A corresponding "PDF Shootout" gauged how 20 different prepress workflow systems could create viable, press-ready PDFs from problematic application files.

Also of note on the expo floor were the Seybold editors' Hot Picks, selected as the most interesting, innovative, and potentially useful products shown at the event. A total of 16 products were chosen this year:

Documentum Digital Asset Manager, FileNet Process Analyzer, Agari Media-ware Media Star 2.2, Context Media Interchange Platform, AC&C HSH Group PuzzleFlow, Artwork Systems "Odyssey" (codename), Workhorse Group StudioWorkhorse, Xinet FullPress 11, Adobe InCopy 2.0, Markzware HawkEye, Design Science MathPlayer, Founder Electronics FounderFIT, Canon CLC 3900, Objective Advantage JDF Development Platform, Formac Gallery 2010, Sony Electronics Artisan.