中文The print event that finally feels like a movement
Conferences come and go. Most are excuses to collect a tote bag and a lukewarm coffee. But something different is happening with thINK Ahead, the community event for Canon production inkjet customers — and the 2026 edition just blew past every record the organizers have ever set.
Held in Boca Raton, Florida, thINK Ahead 2026 welcomed more than 500 production inkjet customers, partners, and industry leaders from across the Americas. That is the largest attendance in the event’s 12-year history. When an inkjet user group pulls 500 serious buyers and operators into one room, you are no longer looking at a user conference. You are looking at a movement.
The star of the show: a press nobody in the US had seen
The week’s headline moment was the US debut — and live demonstration — of Canon’s next-generation varioPRESS iV7, a B2+ sheetfed inkjet press. Attendees watched it run, got an early look at technology built to push quality, productivity, and application versatility for commercial printers making the jump to inkjet production.
This was the first US installation of the iV7 following its European debut in Venlo, the Netherlands. Canon is positioning US availability for the first half of 2027, and the buzz in the room suggested the waitlist could get long. For printers weighing the switch from toner or offset to high-speed inkjet, seeing the machine actually print is worth more than a year of spec sheets.
More than just hardware
What makes thINK Ahead stick is that it is not a sales theater. It is a peer community. Dean Hart, president and owner of MWI Direct, captured the feeling: “One of the greatest values of thINK Ahead is the opportunity to learn directly from peers who are tackling many of the same challenges we face every day. I left with practical ideas I can implement immediately.”
That is the quiet superpower of a good user event. The real content is not on the stage. It is in the hallway, where a printer from Ohio tells a printer from Texas exactly how they fixed the same finishing bottleneck you have been fighting for a year.
AI, cybersecurity, and the business of printing
This year’s programming expanded well beyond the press. Sessions tackled artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, workforce development, operational resilience, workflow automation, and long-term business growth. The message is clear: modern print is no longer just a hardware game. It is a connected, data-driven business, and the people running it need to think like technologists and strategists, not just press operators.
Chris Wells, thINK Board President, noted that attendees left “with practical strategies they can put into action immediately — from strengthening cybersecurity and leveraging AI to discovering new technologies.” Jon Taffer, the Bar Rescue host, even delivered a keynote, bringing an outsider’s energy to an insider crowd.
The partner pavilion got bigger too
The Partner Pavilion featured the largest group of solution providers in thINK Ahead history. Software, workflow, finishing, and business services all showed up to help printers improve efficiency and expand capabilities. When the partner ecosystem grows this fast, it signals a healthy, expanding market — not a shrinking one.
What comes next
Planning is already underway for thINK Ahead 2027, scheduled for 26–28 July 2027. Peter Kowalczuk of Canon summed up the mood: “This community isn’t simply responding to change, it’s helping define the future of production print.”
The takeaway
If you run a production print operation and you skipped thINK Ahead 2026, you missed the room where the industry’s future was being negotiated. Five hundred people showed up because the stakes are real. Inkjet is no longer the risky bet — standing still is.
Why attendance records matter more than applause
A sold-out user event is not just good PR. It is a leading indicator of where print is investing. Five hundred inkjet customers showing up in person tells manufacturers that production inkjet has crossed from experimental to essential. It also tells competitors that Canon’s community strategy is working — building a loyal user base that learns from each other is harder to copy than any single machine spec.
For printers still on the fence about inkjet, the crowd size is itself a signal. You are not early anymore. The risk of waiting is starting to outweigh the risk of moving, especially as the varioPRESS iV7 edges toward US availability in 2027. Seeing it demonstrated live removed a lot of the mystery that keeps cautious owners hesitant.
The expanded programming — AI, cybersecurity, workforce, resilience — also reveals where the anxiety lives. Printers are no longer afraid of the press. They are afraid of the business around the press: how to price it, secure it, staff it, and grow it. thINK Ahead’s shift toward those topics shows the industry maturing from a machine-buying culture to a business-building one.
Source: WhatTheyThink
