After not going to the Lindenmeyer Paper Show since 2005, it was fun to return this year, even though this year seemed very different. The show was the same: paper companies in different booths showing off their paper to potential clients, talking about the latest papers, and how it holds color. Great food, nice place, and you get to see some people you haven’t seen in a while. But I couldn’t help to think that in the middle of a national financial crisis, it was very weird to go to a show where the industry that’s hosting it, is in a crisis of its own.

I felt a little guilty eating their food, and enjoying myself while wondering if they’ll be around in the next couple of years. Of course not all paper companies will go, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see 1 or 2 less booths in next years show. Especially if we continue to “save as PDF” instead of “collecting for output”.

My routine a year ago was to stop by a local grocery store, pick up the newspaper (especially if the Mets won the night before) and read it on my way to work. Now my morning routine after dropping off my daughter to school, is to check the newspaper’s websites for the articles and use a great app on my iTouch called Instapaper. This free application allows me to save any article in the web into my iTouch, and read later say in the Subway, even though I’m away from an internet connection. It’s like TVo for web articles.

It’s ideas like these that leaves us all wondering about the future. Will I have another major printing project? Will Lindenmeyer have a show in 2010? Will the Mets get Sabathia? And unless we actually have a crystal ball, we’ll all just have to wait and see what happens.