Alan Yacavone

I work in the Newsroom Technology office of The New York Times and own a design and consulting company, Liquid Digital. My wife Susan and I have one great kid.

Embracing technology started early for Alan. Living near Hanover, NH Alan was exposed to the Kiewit computer center at Dartmouth College. The kind of computer center with big mainframes, punch cards, computer paper with holes on the side. Alan got printouts that were just ASCII characters up close but when you stood back, it formed the starship Enterprise; very cool to a 10 year old kid. Somehow Alan's brother Mike convinced their parents to put a terminal in their house, in their kitchen in fact. There they were, in 1976, with their phone connected to a coupler talking to a big computer at Dartmouth.

Being around publishing and printing started as a summer job for Alan. Working at Whitman Communications in Lebanon, NH he shot halftones, cleaned the stripping tables and swept the floor.

Then one day the owner showed up with an Apple Lisa computer. No one else seemed interested in it, but Alan sat in front of it every day. Seeing how Whitman was setting type and producing proofs Alan knew things were going to change. The Lisa of course did not change the world, but the Macintosh did.

Alan graduated from two prestigious New England prep schools, Cardigan Mountain School and Brewster Academy, At Brewster, Alan was involved as they set up their first computer center where he learned the Cobol and Pascal computer languages. After Brewster, Alan attended The School of Visual Arts in New York City to study graphic design. The year was 1985 and the Macintosh was making waves in the publishing world. Alan took a class taught by Bert Monroy and learned Digital Darkroom and PhotoShop 1.0. Not everyone believed that the publishing world was going to change radically, but Alan did.

During his college years, Alan was involved with Siggraph, an organization of computer graphic and interactive design professionals. During this time Alan worked with visual performance artists such as Peter Gorden, Mollie Davies and Kit Fitsgerald. Alan was the technical coordinator for Kit Fitsgerald's production, "Return of the Native" which was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music NextWave festival in 1988.

In 1989, Alan joined The Microcomputer Publishing Center, Inc. (MPC) as an Output Technician. It was at MPC where Alan gained his real world pre-press and publishing skills and gained the nickname "King of all output". By the time Alan left MPC in 1995 he was managing 20 employees in four different departments over three shifts in the PostScript Imaging Center. The industry changed tremendously while Alan was at MPC and he kept the company on the cutting edge of technology.

In 1995, the digital printing industry was emerging and started another revolution. Alan signed up. He joined Agfa to work with the Chromapress brand of the Xeikon digital press. As Application Manager he was responsible for all software and front-end technologies for the Chromapress in the United States. He was the liaison between the R&D headquarters in Belgium and the marketing and support groups in the US.

During the next five years, the digital printing industry continued its growth path, and while at Agfa, Alan moved right along with it. There were faster machines, wider print formats and the introduction of variable data printing. Variable data printing promised to change the printing industry forever and Alan was a key participant in a number of the most famous variable data printing projects produced to date including; General Motors, Novartis Seeds, and Rogers Seeds.

Today, the digital printing industry is still growing and changing. In 2000 Xeikon bought the Agfa division that was selling the Chromapress and Alan brought his experience to the larger base of Xeikon users. Also in 2000, Heidelberg announced its entry into the digital printing marketplace at Drupa, the once every five year trade show in Germany. This was big. The NexPress, as Heidelberg called it, was to prove to the publishing world that digital printing was here to stay. In 2001 Alan joined Heidelberg as a Digital Color Specialist. Focused on NexPress, Alan worked with customers to help them understand the technology, trained their personnel on the operation, developed workflow solutions around other Heidelberg equipment, and providing technical support for the digital front-end and variable data applications that drive the NexPress.

In July of 2002 Alan started Liquid Digital Group, Inc. Liquid Digital is all about providing expert analysis, developing workflow solutions, delivering training, and understanding complex software.

Of course, being in the publishing world for so long, Alan’s first love is the Macintosh. As an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC) and a Premier Member of the Apple Consultants Network, Alan is recognized as an expert in Macintosh solutions and support. In the Macintosh world, the release of OS X has been a huge change from earlier operating systems. Alan has developed strategies and implementation plans to move Macintosh based businesses to OS X. In addition, Alan can provide cross-platform solutions to integrate Macs in a PC environment, implement server based to solutions to grow your business and develop network configurations to improve your workflow.

In February 2003 Alan joined The New York Times technology office after consulting with them for 9 months on color management and workflow solutions. Today, Alan is leading the change to an OS X based workflow in the Design, Graphics, and Photo departments in addition to supporting the Quark Publishing System workflow of The Magazine and Book Review.

Working with new technology, managing change, developing solutions and answering questions to complex situations. This is what Alan does best.