This fall, FPPA is bringing technical education directly to your team with our three-part virtual Lunch & Learn Series!
One registration gives you access to all three sessions, including recordings. Join us live for the remaining webinars on October 21 and 28, and catch up on the October 14 session with the recording.
Each session delivers practical, relevant information for the flexographic prepress and platemaking community, with insights designed to help attendees strengthen their technical knowledge, solve real-world challenges, and bring new ideas back to their organizations.
Choose an individual registration or register your entire company so your team can learn together. All registrants will receive access to the full series and recordings.
Who Should Attend?
The Fall Lunch & Learn Series is designed for professionals throughout the flexographic prepress and production process, including:
- Prepress technicians
- Platemaking professionals
- Pressroom personnel
- Production managers
- Customer service representatives
- Technical and operations teams
- Sales professionals supporting the flexographic printing industry
Whether you work directly in production or support the teams that do, each session is designed to provide useful information you can take back to your organization.
Fall Lunch & Learn Schedule
October 14 | From File to Plate to Press: Where Flexo Problems Really Start
Join Kern Cox of Clemson University and Colleen Larkin Twomey of Cal Poly for a technical Lunch & Learn on the challenges that affect flexographic print performance.
Kern and Colleen will walk through common upstream decisions that can lead to downstream print problems, including image resolution, overprints, transparency, spot colors, dielines, screening, trapping, barcodes, minimum dots, type, knockouts, and white ink.
The session will then connect those decisions to what operators actually see on press, helping attendees better understand where issues begin and how they show up later in the process.
October 21 | Data & AI Journey
Join Mike Agness of Hybrid Software for a technical session exploring how prepress data and artificial intelligence can drive greater efficiency and responsiveness.
Mike will discuss the data that can be captured throughout prepress, opportunities to improve workflows, and how that data can feed AI models to help businesses react faster to customer requirements.
The session will also explore current uses of AI in the market and how businesses can prepare to embrace the emerging “AI Employee.”
October 28 | Brad²: Optimizing Pre-Press Performance, Perfecting Color, Winning Higher-End Work
Registration & Access
Your registration includes access to the complete three-part FPPA Fall Lunch & Learn Series, including all session recordings.
Individual Registration: Provides one attendee with access to all three webinars and recordings.
Company Registration: Provides access to all three webinars and recordings for employees within the registering company. Share the learning experience with your entire team!
Already registered for a session? You're all set! Anyone who previously registered for an individual Lunch & Learn will automatically receive access to the complete series at no additional cost. No need to register again.
Meet Your Speakers
Kern Cox
Senior Lecturer
Clemson University
Kern Cox is a distinguished senior lecturer in Clemson University’s Department of Graphic Communications, where he delivers engaging undergraduate and graduate courses on major printing processes, electronic prepress, package printing technologies, and color management. With a passion for advancing the field, his professional and research interests focus on flexography, corrugated packaging, and color management. Since joining the department in 2012, Kern leverages his 20 years of expertise in professional education development, providing innovative training and R&D services through Clemson University’s Printing and Converting Research Center and the Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics. His impactful work has served diverse market segments, including post-print corrugated, narrow and wide web flexography, and offset lithography.
Colleen Larkin Twomey
Senior Lecturer, Graphic Communication
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
With thirty years in the printing and graphic communications space, Colleen Larkin Twomey has developed a wide range of experience and expertise—working both in the industry and in the classroom. Currently a professor of Graphic Communication, she teaches courses such as Flexographic Printing, Consumer Packaging, and Digital File Preparation and Workflow. Prior to joining academia, she was a fixture in the industry, serving more than twenty years at MacDermid Printing Solutions.
Brad Turner
Technical Sales Director
GMG Color
Brad has spent his career focused on color management — from process control and R&D to managing color standardization programs across conventional and digital printing, including nearly 20 years at Sealed Air/Cryovac, 13 of them as North America Color Manager. Now at GMG Americas, he helps packaging printers, prepress teams, and converters tighten color control and reduce makeready across production. He uses his press, inkroom, and graphics experience to guide them through a range of color challenges, so they can focus on consistent, predictable output instead of fighting it.
Brad Gasque
Technical Marketing Leader
DuPont Printing & Packaging
Brad received a BS in Graphic Communications from Clemson University in 2011. He was hired at Clemson’s Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics to manage the Advanced Print Technologies lab along with R&D projects and teach university classes and industry seminars. Brad joined DuPont™ Cyrel® Flexographic Solutions in 2015 as part of their Technical Service Team where he supported customers with troubleshooting plate/print issues, performing audits, and conducting hands-on training. In 2023, he moved into a Technical Marketing Leader role for North America.
Mike Agness
Executive Vice President of the Americas
Hybrid Software
Mike Agness is the Executive Vice President of the Americas for Hybrid Software. Hybrid Software delivers innovative prepress software solutions to the various packaging related businesses with a focus on the corrugated business. Hybrid’s software tools are flexible, open, built on industry standards, and have proven to deliver great efficiencies to the packaging industry. Hybrid’s technology for the corrugated industry adds efficiencies to flexo plate manufacturing, including patching, along with print quality improvements.
Interested in Sharing Your Expertise at a Future FPPA Lunch & Learn?
We’d love to hear from members who have ideas, insights, or practical experience to share with the FPPA community.
FPPA welcomes presentation ideas from members interested in sharing technical knowledge, educational insights, and helpful takeaways with the flexographic prepress and platemaking community.
Future Lunch & Learn sessions may include member-led presentations on best practices, case studies, technical processes, workflow improvements, and other industry-focused topics that attendees can bring back and apply within their own organizations.
A few guidelines to keep in mind:
- Presentations must be educational and industry-focused
- Content should remain vendor-neutral and not sales-oriented
- Product demonstrations, promotional pitches, and commercial advertisements are not appropriate for this program
- Preference will be given to presentations that offer practical takeaways, best practices, case studies, technical knowledge, or process improvements that attendees can apply in their organizations
- FPPA may request modifications to presentation content to help ensure it aligns with program objectives
FPPA leadership will review submissions and follow up with potential presenters as future opportunities become available.