Tedium!

Yesterday, I ventured down to NYC for the annual OnDemand Show, which used to be a showcase for the latest in digital printing and its associated technologies and paraphernalia. In recent years, a glut of shows and a declining printing industry, has shrunk the once-mighty OnDemand--and yesterday it was easy to walk the floor in less than an hour. In fact, it seems to have morphed into one of its co-located shows, Info360, with a focus on document imaging, document management, and cloud storage.

The heart-pounding excitement of document imaging always reminds me of a faux news story I wrote for Micro Publishing News a very long time ago. In September 1999, MPN was celebrating its 10-year-anniversary, and at the time I wrote--among many many other things--a monthly humor column. So for that issue, I did an Onion-like roundup of silly news stories from around the industry, which included:

Tedium Magazine Changes Name, Design
Ames, IA-based Tedium magazine, in an attempt to recover from three financially poor quarters, has decided to rename itself Document Imaging Today. The company will retain its editorial focus on hardware, software, and workflows in the document imaging field. 

“We’re very excited by the new developments,” says publisher Rupert T. Snoreman, speaking in a low, droning monotone. “We felt that the name of our publication was not effective enough at conveying the excitement of the subject matter we cover. And to that end we have also decided to completely redesign the magazine. For example, we will, for the first time in our history, add color. And images.” 

Sandor Queep, the new art director, is excited to be part of the team. “I felt that the page after page of dense, unbroken, imageless text was probably not going to capture the imaginations of readers, or advertisers,” he says. (1994)