Feb­ru­ary 17th, 2010

We recently received infor­ma­tion after the Gen­eral Meet­ing today that the Ver­tis Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tour has been can­celled due to their man­agers being ill and pre­vi­ous com­mit­ments. We are very sorry for the incon­ve­nience, we will attempt to resched­ule for the 24th or 31st of March 2010.

–Travel Com­mit­tee

The spring trip deposit of $20 is due next week (Feb. 16). If you’d like, you can pay via Paypal:

To pay your deposit for the Spring trip, use the Pay­Pal but­ton below. You can also see Bhumin if you would like to pay in person.

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Print ’09 was a blast! Our group had a great time, and can’t wait to go to Graph Expo next year. Here are some things our mem­bers had to say:

“Kodak’s booth was very fun, I spent a ton of time play­ing with the inter­ac­tive dis­plays.” — Tom Walker

“You could tell that the econ­omy had an affect on the turn out of com­pa­nies at the show, it was not as big as my pro­fes­sors had described, [but] par­tic­i­pat­ing in the myPrint ’09 was a great expe­ri­ence; I was able to become more famil­iar with what will even­tu­ally turn into my career!” — Tina Yahr

“The Print 09 Expo was the best one so far! There were a few new com­pa­nies there that really showed excel­lent demon­stra­tions of their prod­ucts. I’m look­ing for­ward to next year’s expo!” — Melissa DiVietri

Pho­tos from our trip:

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Hello Every­one!

I am still in Cal­gary and com­pe­ti­tion hasn’t started yet. Today we went to visit two ele­men­tary schools to intro­duce our­selves and what we do. At one of the schools we were each assigned four lit­tle kids to be our “tour guides.” We went to dif­fer­ent class­rooms and each stu­dent took turns to intro­duce me. It was very nice. I had explained to them what print­ing was and when the other stu­dents had ques­tions about what print­ing is my tour guides would proudly explain.

We have the open­ing cer­e­mony tonight. Tomor­row is my first day of com­pe­ti­tion and I am going to be doing an exer­cise on the SHOTS sim­u­la­tor. I am also doing some cut­ting! The SHOTS sim­u­la­tor exer­cise is only worth 2 points and they are judg­ing us on just our abil­ity to solve the prob­lem. The cut­ting is only worth half of a point because it isn’t an every day task that a press oper­a­tor has to do cut­ting. For cut­ting, all I have to do is tell them what first cut I would make.

The fol­low­ing day I have some ink mix­ing to do, a dig­i­tal print job, and a SHOTS sim­u­la­tor exer­cise. The ink mix­ing will be done in Grams, not Pounds. The dig­i­tal job is worth only half a point and all we have to do is make sure we get there on time to get the half of a point.

On the third day, I have to do my final SHOTS exer­cise in the morn­ing and then in the after­noon I will have my press run. I named the press “Jerry” after my trainer at Gilson Graph­ics. The SHOTS exer­cise is going to be hard, accord­ing to the judges. I hope I can fig­ure out the prob­lems quickly. I hope the printer gods are with me dur­ing my press run. There are a lot of tal­ented press oper­a­tors at the com­pe­ti­tion. Some have had years of expe­ri­ence run­ning a Hei­del­berg SM-52. I hope the press runs like it has been run­ning at Gilson.

The fourth and final day is the day that I mea­sure my spot color with a spec­tropho­tome­ter. After the com­pe­ti­tion we have our clos­ing cer­e­mony and that is when they announce the win­ners. I hope I can go on stage and rep­re­sent all of the print­ers at Fer­ris State University!

–Amela Muj­kic

P.S. Pic­tured above is Royce Richards from New Zealand. You can see me in the pic­ture there behind him. Royce is one of the few com­peti­tors in Off­set Print­ing that will talk to me. The rest pre­tend they don’t speak english.

Hello every­one!

Update: I MADE IT TO CALGARY! I have only been in Cal­gary for about 3 hours now and I have already met some peo­ple from other coun­tries. It has been hard hunt­ing down the print­ers from other coun­tries… Hope­fully I will meet them at din­ner tonight.

When I got off of the bus in front of the com­peti­tors vil­lage, I saw a crowd of peo­ple sit­ting out­side smok­ing cig­a­rettes. I decided to go and say hi. It turns out that they are from the Nether­lands (or Hol­land, whichever one you want to call it). When I told them I was com­pet­ing in “Off­set Print­ing” they imme­di­ately told me that I prob­a­bly won’t win because their com­peti­tor is a 2 time Nether­lands cham­pion in print­ing and is also #1 in Europe. They also pro­ceeded to tell me that he has been train­ing for 3 months with Heidelberg.

I am NOT dis­cour­aged. I think I have a good chance of win­ning, just like the guy from the Nether­lands does. I give him a lot of respect for get­ting to World­Skills and I’m sure the com­pe­ti­tion won’t be easy. My secret weapon is time. We are allot­ted 4 hours to do the com­pe­ti­tion and I can do it in 2 and a half if I am focused. You get bonus points for fin­ish­ing early. I also don’t know if he has had any train­ing on the SHOTS sim­u­la­tor. Did any­one notice the com­puter from the press­room missing?

I am going to go to din­ner soon. All of the com­peti­tors eat din­ner in the same place so I am hop­ing to meet all of the print­ers. I want to make lots of friends while I am here. Maybe exchange ideas on how print­ing is done in Europe. Should I try and talk to them about going to Fer­ris State University?

As for tomor­row, we are going to Banff! It is this super awe­some place in the Cana­dian Rock­ies. It is a national park. They have hot springs and spas that I want to dip into. Lots of beau­ti­ful scenery. I for­got to bring my cam­era so you all will have to wait for pic­tures until James gets here. He is going to be here tomorrow!

I hope every­ones first week of classes goes well. Keep me posted on GAA activ­i­ties and such.

I am sit­ting at the air­port in Grand Rapids get­ting ready to take off to Wash­ing­ton DC for a team build­ing exer­cise. We are going to tour DC as a team and meet Sen­a­tor Mike Enzi. On Sat­ur­day we will be leav­ing DC to head to Cal­gary, Alberta. That is where the com­pe­ti­tion is being held this year. I will be going up against 14 other com­peti­tors from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. These guys are the best of the best and the com­pe­ti­tion is NOT going to be easy. Just last night I had a dream that when I got to the com­pe­ti­tion, the press was a man­roland, the other com­peti­tors all beat me at the print sim­u­la­tor, and I came in last. Oh well… At the end of the day, my friends are still my friends and they will accept me if I win or lose.

I am a lit­tle ner­vous about run­ning 100# text through the feeder since that is the ONLY kind of paper I haven’t run on the Hei­del­berg SM-52. I guess I’ll just put all of the set­tings in the mid­dle and see what hap­pens. I really wish I could have brought my own ink. Grand Rapids Print­ing Inks was going to send me off with 5 lbs cans of CMYK inks but we weren’t sure how we were going to get it across the bor­der and through air­port secu­rity. We also weren’t sure if I was allowed to bring my own ink; it might give me a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. I think it would be cool if the stu­dents in the paper and ink class come down to GRPI’s facil­ity to mix some ink. Or maybe do a GAA tour/ink mix­ing ses­sion? What are your thoughts on this idea?

I think I blabbed enough about the com­pe­ti­tion for today. Off to Wash­ing­ton DC!

I am super excited that this air­port has FREE WiFi

Keep check­ing the web­site for updates on my trip to World­Skills 2009!

–Amela Muj­kic

The GAA is Going to Graph Expo Print ’09

Join us for the largest print expo in the West­ern Hemisphere!

PRINT ’09 is MyPrint

PRINT 09 became the graphic com­mu­ni­ca­tions industry’s top inter­na­tional trade exhi­bi­tion by pro­duc­ing exhibitor leads, sales and prof­its. It has remained num­ber one by strate­gi­cally dri­ving in new direc­tions. Dig­i­tal print­ing. Cre­ative ser­vices. Mail­ing and ful­fill­ment. Wide for­mat out­put. In these and other areas, PRINT 09 has under­stood the busi­ness model, iden­ti­fied the oppor­tu­ni­ties for exhibitors and cus­tomers alike, and deliv­ered cre­ative new solutions.

Always a pow­er­house “sell­ing” show, PRINT 09 today is also so much more. It’s a com­mu­nity, a place where pro­duc­tive part­ner­ships are formed. Atten­dees won’t be at PRINT 09 just to buy, and you won’t be there just to sell. But every­one WILL be there work­ing together to build some­thing new – forg­ing a cre­ative new path into the future of the graphic com­mu­ni­ca­tions industry.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit the Offi­cial Print ’09 Web Site.

The expense bud­get is listed below and includes the essen­tials to get to the expo. Please also bring money for food and any addi­tional activities.

You will have to buy a ticket at the door if you want to attend the Expo (tick­ets will be approx­i­mately $55). You can pay for the rest of the trip online (below), or con­tact any of the E-board and pay by check. If you have any ques­tions, feel free to con­tact us.

For orders placed online, there will be a $3.00 non-refundable pro­cess­ing fee.