Message from The President: Q4 2023

Our Top Accomplishments for You This Year

Even though Halloween was a few weeks ago, I’m re-reading one of my favorite books titled White House Ghosts. It’s not actually a ghost story, but a non-fiction work about presidential speechwriters in the second half of the 20th century. These professional wordsmiths translated complicated policies and decisions into compelling presentations for all Americans. I first read White House Ghosts early in my career when I was writing speeches myself. Today, I relate to it slightly differently as a leader concerned with not only serving our members well, but ensuring that you’re fully aware of the positive impact PIAG is having on the Georgia print market.

Speechwriters use a time-honored tactic called The Rule of Three based on the belief that ideas presented in threes are more memorable (i.e., “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness” and “of the people, for the people, by the people”).

Accordingly, here are PIAG's top three accomplishments for you this year:

New Strategic Focus

We’re on a mission to take PIAG to a new level. While we will continue to provide the services you know us for, our new 5-year strategic plan calls for enriching your community by targeting other segments of the graphic communications market, building new alliances, and addressing one of the industry’s biggest challenges through new workforce development initiatives for students and current employees.

Supporting Your Future Workforce

There’s a lot of young talent out there. Students with technical skills and creative abilities are considering a career in print thanks to the efforts of PIAG’s Educational Foundation. This year, we distributed more than $20,000 in financial aid and assisted with state and national student competitions through our partnership with SkillsUSA and its Georgia chapter.

Unifying the Georgia Print Industry

Between January 2020 and September 2021, we were unable to hold any inperson functions due to the pandemic. Since then, we have been steadily rebuilding our key events, and this year, we saw attendance grow each time we met. It was capped off with a successful awards night in August where there were nearly 20% more members than the year before. You’ll read a lot more about imPRESS 2023 in this issue of PrintQueue.

Speechwriters typically want to end with a look ahead. There’s an uncertainty about the future that we all feel to some extent. 2024 will certainly be an interesting year for Georgia and the entire U.S. Here at PIAG, we will focus on what we can control and continue making members our #1 priority.

Sincerely,

Jon Krueger
PIAG President & CEO