Dalim Software has announced that it recently successfully concluded its annual 2014 US Duo Conference, held at the Westin Georgetown in Washington, DC. The conference attracted graphic arts professionals, brands, retailers, institutions and their respective marketing and communication supply chains from April 23-25, 2014. The event marked the appointment of Marcus Spiegler, Preflight Operations Manager, AAAS, as president of Duo, and Chad Gray, Senior Developer and Workflow Specialist at Carey Color Inc. as vice president of US Duo. Outgoing president, Robert Fenikowski, Director of Publishing Technologies at American Media, Inc., was honored as outgoing president.

“I thought that the Dalim Software presentations were great, especially ES and what people are doing with it. I was particularly interested in the presentation about asset management systems for photos. We have a new photo editor, who is in charge of finding photos for our stories, delivering them for review, and receiving approvals. It will be interesting to see where ES can be utilized in our photo workflow,” says Marcus Spiegler. “For future meetings, I can foresee more ‘audience interaction’ which is always assisted by ‘point-counterpoint’ sessions; for example, talking about the merits of print versus Web, or the iPad versus smartphones.”

US Duo is the premier opportunity for Dalim Software users, industry influencers and pioneers alike to learn about new technologies as they are being applied in a global context, and to understand how emerging work practices impact media and communication businesses, organizers say. In addition, US Duo gives attendees the opportunity to learn about industry trends, the company’s most recent developments, and business opportunities. It also offers attendees the chance to meet with key players from around the world, plus the opportunity to discuss with the Dalim Software technical and international sales staff.

“It was nice to see everyone at US Duo. I see Dalim Software making great strides in asset management within ES, and am very happy with that. The presentations about metadata and asset management were very important to me. It is interesting that ES covers a lot of file formats, including video–and even Flash. It was helpful to see the direction the software is going,” says Chad Gray. “Everyone struggles with color management, and it was helpful to dive into various aspects of it, including the pros and cons of inkjet vs. soft proofing, along with industry standards. I also always enjoy the tips and tricks.”

Guest presentations were given by Dan Nigloschy of Media Entities, ‘Opportunities in XM Publishing’, and John Sweeney of John P. Sweeney, Inc., ‘Advances in Color Accurate Soft Proofing’. Mickael Jordan, CMO, Augment, offered a roadmap for users on ‘Going Three-Dimensional’. In addition, David Steinhardt, CEO of IDEAlliance, offered an overview of IDEAlliance association initiatives and participated as moderator of industry and technology trends with Dalim Software customers.

A number of customers offered their perspectives of how they used Dalim Software applications. They included:

• Ben Treuhaft – Nucleus Imaging: Content Lifecycle in the Media Production Workflow – A Creative Studio/Agency’s Story
• Robert Fenikowski – American Media: Content Lifecycle in the Media Production Workflow?- A Publisher’s Story
• Chris Evans – Creel Printing: Content Lifecycle in the Media Production Workflow – A Printers Story

A US Duo meeting would not be complete without Tips & Tricks and Dalim Software product managers offering a review of new ES 4, Twist 7 and Dialogue Engine 4 feature enhancements available since their launch last December. This included:

• A look at ES as a digital asset management system
• New Dashboard views for better interaction with collaboration activities such as approvals and file uploads
• New HTML5 version features within DIALOGUE Engine to match the Java version, including single separation view, densitometer, text extraction, and a compare feature
• Introducing Dialogue Engine HTML5 as a standalone SDK for integration within web portals

Attendees were reminded that this year’s US Duo commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the launch of Dalim Twist. Dalim Software’s award-winning production automation workflow software was introduced in 1994 at Seybold Seminars in San Francisco. Enjoying extraordinary product longevity in its software category, TWIST was the industry’s first Enterprise-level automated premedia workflow engine–and continues to evolve to serve customers in various media in the future. It utilizes a unique a scalable system to interconnect different tasks with a visual GUI system. For years, some of the industry’s most recognizable companies–IKEA, Airbus, Burda Druck, Hearst, Pierre Fabre, the Council of Europe–have placed their trust in TWIST to provide high throughput, reliability and flexibility in demanding content production environments. They gain significant performance with features such as the ability to build an almost infinite variety of output file formats along variable processing paths; a very extensive modular feature set; and automation of repetitive tasks such as preflighting, file optimization and conversion, color management, and trapping, to name a few.

“The US Duo agenda–and our list of attendees–is always interesting, because it reminds us how versatile and diverse our Dalim Software applications are,” comments Carol Werlé, Dalim Software CEO. “We are very humbled that our users have been able to do so many different things with our applications–from commercial print and packaging, to advertising workflows, and design and marketing service agencies. We are now seeing them expand the influence of Dalim ES from pure print workflows to Web and mobile content delivery, and even video. We can’t wait until next year’s event to see how far they have pushed their systems.”