A trade journal is a product, as much as a consumer magazine is, or a book. This product needs to generate an income. That is exactly the same as it is with the products produced by your own company. For a trade journal the main source of income is advertisement, placed by companies who have an interest to communicate with you, the reader of the journal. The amount of advertisement continuously decreases since the beginning of this year and subsequently the income of trade journals abates. Now, one could argue splendidly if it is wise and well to save on market communication especially in economical difficult times, or if it were not even more important now to show a high visibility. On the other hand, one may not be mistaken that for many a company it is no longer a choice where to save.

As a consequence, cost saving has to be done by the publisher of trade journals as well. The first publishing houses announce significant economical imbalance and fight for survival. Others meet the market situation with magazines that rather remind you of a student´s notebook in size and haptics.

Not only in light of this comparison, the 54 pages of the September INSPECT are really good.

Is there no need to save costs for INSPECT as well, you might ask yourself now.

Yes of course there is, but we are lucky to have a very sound basis in more than one aspect: The companies that place their ads in the INSPECT know that in doing so they reach their customers of today and of tomorrow in an optimal way and our readers confirm for them that this choice is the right choice.

Take a close look at the advertisements on the 54 pages of INSPECT 8-9: for those companies it is a priority to be noticed by our readers and to communicate with them. This also shows economical strength, strategic sustainability and faith in their own future. Suddenly these ads have a whole new meaning in addition to featuring a product.

For us they provide the possibility to present with each issue a versatile, comprehensive and independent information package. In German and in English language. In each issue. This is complemented with our online presentation at www.inspect-online.com, taking up the topics from the printed issues and enriching them with up-to-date news on a daily basis, again in German and English language. During the summer our portal was given a facelift, that is – as with cars – a technical and optical makeover. Especially the interactive and the multimedia aspects, naturally rather out of reach for a print product, are offered by the website: search engines, webcasts, Buyers Guide database, job search, online polls, to mention but a few. But not only that: also the printed edition features some new components with which we hope to generate value and deliver delight.

Gabriele Jansen
Publishing Director INSPECT

Before either one of both sides can leverage these advantages, however, much time, effort and a good measure of enthusiasm has to be invested. A successful industry standard naturally requires that the technical details are worked out by the industry itself and that the result is accepted and put into action by at least the major part of this industry. For Machine Vision, this work is executed today in standardization working groups surpassing the barriers of companies, countries and languages, supported by the three major Machine Vision associations: EMVA; AIA and JIIA. The current status of the standards has been presented during the Vision trade show with lectures as part of the Industrial Vision Days but also at the special exhibition „Vision Standards“. Organized by the EMVA and the trade show all three associations presented here the standards they host: GigE Vision, CameraLink, GenICam, EMVA 1288 and Lens Mount. This exhibition has been highly informative, well presented – one could even say sexy.