中文Artificial intelligence in printing has spent the last two years mostly as a slide deck. Lots of hype, a few demos, plenty of nervous laughter in the back of the room. That phase may be ending.
Agentic Print — an independent community backed by Taktiful — just announced something more useful than another webinar: four one-day “Agentic Print Camps” in 2027, each hosted at a printing equipment manufacturer’s demo center. The first lands in Chicago on January 29 at swissQprint, with Sharp, HEIDELBERG, and Konica Minolta also lined up to host.
What is “agentic print,” anyway?
If the phrase makes your eyes glaze over, you’re not alone. Strip away the jargon and it’s simple: autonomous software agents that can handle parts of the print production workflow on their own — quoting, routing, preflighting, reordering, the kind of repetitive coordination that eats a shop’s day. The community publishes a weekly newsletter, Agentic Print Weekly, and an AI Scorecard at score.agenticprint.org. The project is led by Eric Vessels, Chief Experience Officer at Taktiful, alongside Taktiful co-founder Kevin Abergel, with Adam Dewitz (CTO at WhatTheyThink) as an advisor.
Why unconferences, not conferences
Here’s the smart part. These camps are unconferences. There’s no fixed speaker lineup handed down from on high. Attendees show up, grab coffee at 8 a.m., and at 9 a.m. they make the agenda together. They share tools, ask the questions they’re actually struggling with, and work through real-world challenges with peers. The day runs until 5 p.m.
That format matters because agentic print is too new for anyone to claim they have all the answers. The printers who are already running agents and the ones who barely know where to start are in the same room, learning out loud. For an emerging practice, that peer-to-peer honesty beats a polished keynote every time.
Who should show up
The camps are open to print service providers, equipment manufacturers, software companies, and other print professionals. You don’t need to be an AI wizard. If you’re already working with agents, great. If you’re just beginning to wonder whether a bot could handle your repeat-order emails, you’re welcome too.
Vessels framed the motivation simply: the group has been following agentic print and publishing weekly since first discovering Bernd Zipper’s white paper, and they’re “excited to take this on the road” so people can collaborate and build together. Abergel put the strategic point bluntly: “Agentic print is where our industry is going, and Taktiful wants to help printers get there.”
Why this is a real signal
Trade shows tell you what vendors want to sell. Unconferences tell you what practitioners actually need. The fact that four equipment manufacturers — including names as established as HEIDELBERG and Konica Minolta — are opening their demo centers for this says the big players see agentic print as more than a buzzword.
For shop owners drowning in quoting chaos and admin overhead, that’s encouraging. The conversation is shifting from “will AI replace printers?” to “how do I point these tools at my worst bottlenecks?” That’s the mature question, and it’s the one these camps exist to answer.
The takeaway
Registration isn’t open yet. You can join the waitlist at agenticprint.org/camp and pick the sessions you care about. Media and association partnership opportunities are also on the table.
If your 2027 plan doesn’t include at least experimenting with autonomous workflow tools, these camps are a low-risk, high-signal place to start. The AI revolution in print was never going to arrive with a bang. It’s going to show up in a demo center in Chicago on a January morning, with coffee and a blank agenda — and the people who show up early will be the ones who figure it out first.
Source: WhatTheyThink / Agentic Print
