Above The Treeline with Andy Young

One of my recurring observations about the printing industry is how often companies present themselves through physical scale. The aerial view of a large warehouse with access to critical transportation and postal infrastructure. The production floor. The equipment. The size of the operation, or the number of locations spread across the country, becomes the proof point. There is nothing wrong with...

A Personal History with Xerox Years ago, during a customer roundtable, the host opened the session by asking everyone what they had wanted to be when they were growing up. My response, without hesitation, was, “I wanted to work for Xerox.” That answer created a slightly awkward and funny moment. At the time, I was part of Ricoh’s Global Production Solutions team, formerly IBM Infoprint, which was...

I met Amy Machado of IDC earlier this year in Chicago and knew right away we would have a great conversation. So I was really looking forward to sitting down with her for this episode #27 of Above the Treeline . Partly because Amy is an industry analyst. A true market researcher. Someone who has spent years doing the disciplined work of tracking markets, briefing vendors, asking better questions,...

Clients have asked me several times why I do not spend more time looking at the healthcare industry. Honestly, I have avoided it because healthcare communications are differently complex compared to other regulated industries like financial services, P&C insurance, and utilities. I knew that was true, but I could never quite explain why it was more complex or how it was so different. After all, wh...

Episode 25 of Above the Treeline features Andy Keller , a 42-year veteran of USAA Insurance who began his career in 1984 as part of a government-sponsored IT co-op program and retired as a Technical Architect Lead. Over four decades, Keller worked across core claims systems, document composition, image capture, e-delivery, cloud migration, and enterprise modernization initiatives. With renewed con...

When I sat down with Ernie Crawford, President and CEO of Crawford Technologies, I wasn’t expecting such a personal story to launch our discussion on digital accessibility. But it was his mother’s declining vision and a stack of unreadable investment statements that ultimately helped shape a technology platform now used by some of the world’s largest banks, healthcare companies, and service provid...

I recently had a great conversation with Duff Johnson from the PDF Association. Duff has spent his career advocating for PDF, and for good reason. PDF has been one of the most important and enduring standards in enterprise communications. I’ve personally spent more than 30 years working with PDF and Adobe Acrobat, going back to the early days when simply being able to preserve layout digitally was...

One of the more fascinating conversations I’ve had in a long time didn’t start with AI, agents, or customer experience buzzwords. It started with a LinkedIn post about preserving intellectual knowledge. That article, “The Vanishing Wisdom: The Knowledge Tapped Between Two Ears,” was written by Annemarie Pucher , CEO of ISIS Papyrus Group , and it immediately got my attention. Not because it was pr...

There’s something appropriate about opening 2026 with a conversation recorded at the very end of 2025. One year closing, another opening and where you stop debating tactics and start asking more fundamental questions. Not what should we improve, but what are we actually holding onto that no longer works. That was very much the spirit of this conversation with Ray Stasieczko, host of End of the Day...

Because the start of ski season coincides with something we rarely talk about: a spike in struggle. As the days get darker and colder, and as life accelerates toward the holidays, many people quietly slip into depression, anxiety, isolation, or substance abuse. Some fight it in silence. Some mask it behind adventure. Some never say a word. If you’re reading this, consider this your reminder: ask o...

When Nick Keegan launched his startup a decade ago, he was building a mobile app to organize household bills. It flopped. But the idea that failed turned into one of Europe’s most interesting customer-communications stories. Today, Mail Metrics sits at the intersection of print and digital communication platforms a digital-first technology company that also happens to be Ireland’s largest transact...

Thirty two years ago, Adobe launched Acrobat and the Portable Document Format. Two years later, in 1995, I met Duff Johnson. He walked into my office, and I showed him what we were doing with PDF. The rest, as they say, is history. That same year, my company Emerge was named Adobe’s Premium VAR (Value Added Reseller) of the Year , a recognition that reflected just how quickly PDF was starting to r...

In this 14th episode of Above the Treeline , I sit down with Kim Lykissas, co-founder of Cadence Communications, an independent advisory and managed services firm based in Sydney, Australia. Cadence helps banks, insurers, and pension funds optimize their “essential communications ecosystems” which is everything from compliance-driven customer communications to experience design, content governance...

When I spoke with Gina Armada, CEO of MHC, our conversation kept returning to one word: agility. Not the buzzword kind. The kind that determines whether a company can adapt fast enough to meet the expectations of its customers and its regulators. “Agility is critical. Change is coming at all of us so fast… it’s absolutely paramount that organizations can change quickly and adapt those communicatio...

Introduction: Rethinking Email When most people talk about email strategy, they’re thinking about campaigns such as promotional blasts, loyalty offers, and direct marketing. But David Allen of Cumulo9 makes a sharp distinction: not all email is created equal. In fact, his company’s research shows that essential (regulated, transactional) emails are opened at twice the rate of campaign emails and c...

Mike Porter has built a career on words. He’s been writing about mail and customer communications since 2010, ghostwriting business books, and creating content that gives companies and business leaders credibility in a crowded market. But what stood out most in Episode #11 of Above the Treeline is how seamlessly Porter ties writing to the other two themes shaping our industry today: direct mail an...

Episode #10 of Above the Treeline is a conversation with Amit Sawhney, CEO of FCI, that deserves your full attention. In just 25 minutes, Amit shares how a family-run print shop in India, home to 1.4 billion people, grew into one of the nation’s largest transactional PSPs, then broke through the digital barrier to where more than 50 percent of revenues now come from digital, while still maintainin...

Amanda's story is a masterclass in personal reinvention. From the pressroom floor to managing high-volume in-plant operations to shaping go-to-market strategies as a creative force in the print and communications industry, Amanda has never been afraid to stand out, and it's made all the difference. We covered everything from her early love of screen printing to managing a 24/6 print operation, bre...

“We shouldn’t lose CCM in the marketing jungle. It’s built on trust, compliance, and integrity.” — Saurabh Raj In this episode of Above the Treeline , I sat down with Saurabh Raj, a rising analyst at QKS Group, for an energizing conversation about the global state of customer communications. Saurabh brings a fresh perspective to a maturing industry, he's not bogged down by legacy definitions, and...

Two years ago this week, I walked away from the traditional analyst world and stepped into the unknown. I didn’t have a company name yet. I didn’t have a website. But I had an idea, a laptop and a microphone. On August 29, 2023, I recorded my very first interview. It was a web conference with the late Dr. Harvey Levenson, Professor Emeritus at Cal Poly and one of the most respected voices in print...

Introduction Glen and I both grew up in family-owned printing businesses. That shared experience shaped how we see the industry and its future. Today, many people assume that print is a relic of the past pushed aside by email, mobile apps, and AI. But Glen and I take a different view, that print and digital aren’t enemies. Together, they can create some of the most effective customer experiences....

What happens when a print software company stops selling features and starts solving enterprise problems? That’s the story of Racami, as told by COO Matt Mahoney in our recent Above the Treeline conversation. Racami has evolved into a platform company with a distinct position: not just as a software vendor, but as a systems integrator for a changing comm… Get full access to TreelinePress at treeli...

When I sat down with Scott Draeger for this episode of Above the Treeline , I knew we’d cover a lot of ground: AI, risk, print suppression, orchestration and the growing overlap between CCM and Martech. What I didn’t expect was how clearly the conversation would crystallize something that’s been coming into view for a while, which is “the job of” custome… Get full access to TreelinePress at treeli...

When I sat down to interview my nephew, Matt Young, a 3D environment artist currently working at Crowbar Collective I expected to hear how artificial intelligence was transforming his industry. I assumed that, like in so many sectors, AI had become an essential part of the creative stack. I was wrong. What I found instead was a conversation that reframed my assumptions not just about gaming, but a...

If you're still clinging to the idea that mail volume decline is only a U.S. problem or that a small rate adjustment could turn the tide, this interview might challenge that thinking. I sat down with David Allen, a longtime leader in the customer communications space in New Zealand, to talk about what happens when mail stops being essential and digital becomes the only viable option. In his market...