HVTO Q&A:
Brett Dashwood, EDP
Vice President, Asia-Pacific Region
OutputLinks

Segment One

Brett Dashwood, EDP, OutputLinks’ vice president of the Asia-Pacific region, joined the electronic document systems industry in 1990, offering part-time tech support services while at university.  For full-time employment, he started as a laser printer operator and then as a programmer in 1991, working for Salmat, Australia’s largest mail service bureau. He later moved into technical managerial roles at Salmat and then moved to PrintSoft in early 1996.

During his time at PrintSoft, Dashwood held various regional and international, technical and business, middle and senior management roles, including his appointment as CEO of PrintSoft Americas in 2002. That same year, Dashwood received his EDP (Electronic Document Professional) certification from Xplor International.

On return to Australia, Dashwood moved into various regional and global services and solutions management positions with PrintSoft, and over his time on the board of Xplor Asia Pacific, held the roles of director of program development and secretary.

In April 2007, Dashwood received the EDP Award of Merit from OutputLinks for outstanding service to the industry. He ended his long service to PrintSoft early in 2008 to commence his own technology and consulting company and accept the vice president appointment from OutputLinks. We chat with Dashwood to learn more.

Question:
How did you get started in this industry?

Answer:
I got the computer bug in the 1980s while at High School. Like all good kids, I was still living at home with the folks when I was studying for my bachelor of computing (information systems) at Monash University in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield.

This was okay in itself, however, I felt a little push from my father to contribute a little more financially to my living arrangements than my fairly casual jobs were allowing.

I was going quite well at my studies---rather “nerd-like” in fact---and my Dad put the word out to a few of his mates to see if they had any work going.

My father is a welder by trade and since I was old enough to move an extension cord for him or be ready and waiting to hand him the tool he was about to need, I had labored for him on weekends and holidays. No surprise that my first gig was laboring for a mechanical engineer, but then in 1990, a mate of Dad’s had recently started a software company.  He and his business partner had been working out of a house and had just moved into an office, looking for someone to help part time with technical software assistance to clients.

The mate of Dad’s was Peter Murrihy, the company was PrintSoft, and the software PReS (actually it was simply PRS back then – Printer Resource Software, I even still have my September 1990 PRS Reference Manual…full of its Microsoft Windows 2.0 screen shots).

Things went very well and after university in 1991, I was looking for something more.  PrintSoft still was not at a stage to employ anyone full time (I remember Peter Murrihy walking in the office and saying, “yes, customer number six!”) but they wanted to help me find some other work in the industry.

I then started doing some casual laser printer operator work for one of PrintSoft’s early customers, Laser Computer Services (LCS).

I completed the Xerox 8700/9700 Laser Printer Operator Training (yes I can still probably replace a corotron wire, and polish a photoreceptor belt) and got some more casual work at another early PrintSoft customer, Salmat Security Imaging.

Salmat started their Security Imaging/Laser Printing division in September 1991 and work very quickly ramped up. Salmat had just taken delivery of the first Siemens Nixdorf 2090 duplex continuous printing system outside of Poing, Germany. 

A few hours a week turned into 60 hours a week (five 12-hour shifts) fairly quickly and by late 1991, they realized they needed a PReS programmer. I interviewed for the job and got it; employee No. 5  at Salmat Security Imaging (SSI) Victoria.

SSI started off with an old Videojet inkjet printer, two cut sheet Xerox printers (an 8790 and a 9790 MX), the SNI 2090 duplex system run by SPSS on a C40 or a PRS PC via a channel emulation card, a Type2 interface connected TROY TMP impact MICR printer, and Hunkeler roller/unwinder and continuous stacker. Added to this over the subsequent years was another SNI 2090 (they all then received 2140 then 2240 upgrades), the first three SNI  2075 cut sheet printers in Australia, a few Xerox 4135 MX printers, as well as a few high-end (for then) HP laser printers. It really was a great place to get a good level of broad experience.

Over my years at Salmat, I held supervisory and then technical management positions in the applications development and programming department (including being responsible for many of the major applications for banking and utility companies), but in early 1996---which had now become Salmat Laser Printing Services and was over 80-staff strong just in Victoria---I left Salmat and went back to PrintSoft as a full-time employee to manage the technical support department.

As employee No. 12 at PrintSoft, I was managing two staff (both of whom are still there today) and again in the prime position to grow myself in a company growing to be a leader in the high volume transaction output (HVTO) and general document and output industries.

Over the following years, I held various middle and senior, technical and business, regional and international management positions for PrintSoft in Australia and overseas (including CEO of PrintSoft Americas). I was intrinsically involved in the design and development of document solutions projects around the world, I ran internal and external training courses---including setting up the technical staff for many of PrintSoft’s Asia Pacific distributors---and presented at conferences and seminars on five continents.

In late 2007, I decided a change was in order. So after 12 years, early 2008 saw me leave PrintSoft to start my own company---Dashwood Consulting, offering technology, training and consulting services for effective document and Web-based communication---and take-up the regional management position for OutputLinks, after being appointed vice president – Asia Pacific.

Question:
What do you like most about working in the HVTO industry?

Answer:
Like any industry (particularly those that are IT-biased) the HVTO industry is constantly changing, however it still hasn’t lost much of what made it what it is today.

For years we have seen the merging of the data services bureau and commercial print industries, mainly through the emergence of full color digital printing systems, but the best of both worlds still remains.

Although it was early in my career that I moved into management roles, I have always stayed very technical; that’s where I started and that’s what I love!

Each time I explain or train someone about kerning or placing data in columns, micro-spacing or what a “dot” really is, I realize how lucky I was to have been at the right place at the right time---and good at the right things---to have grown with growing companies that both became leaders in their respective places in the industry. But I’m also lucky to have witnessed the most radical changes that the printing industry has ever seen, which occurred over the last 20 years, and I was smack dab in the middle of it all.

Watch for next week’s OutputLinks eNews as we chat more with Brett Dashwood, EDP, and learn about his thoughts on the industry. Brett Dashwood can be reached at bd@OutputLinks.com.