I've just returned from the Drupa International Media Conference.

To pr?cis, this could be described as the press conference equivalent of speed dating - 16 presentations over two-and-a-half days. And all taking place at the home of Drupa itself, the Messe centre in Dusseldorf.

Now the task begins of assimilating all of this information. I feel like I need a high-capacity SD card for my brain, so I can jettison some of the useless content contained therein and free up some valuable space for new info.

The show has been billed as "the inkjet Drupa" before, of course, but it's safe to say there will be no shortage of new activity in this space in 2012: Heidelberg, Timsons, EFI, Canon, Fujifilm, Domino, Epson, Screen, KBA, Landa Digital Printing and Komori will all certainly be showing noteworthy inkjet developments. And this list will no doubt become longer. Much longer.

Inevitably some of these new developments will be the sort of technology demonstrations that may, or may not, result in a product some way down the line that will make money for both manufacturer and end user.

So, while I am hugely interested to see all the new bleeding edge action, I'm also just as interested in "the Drupa of stuff that actually works".

It's not a terribly snappy descriptor, I know. I'm working on it.

One of the presentations I saw this week caused me to sit up and take notice in this regard. It came from Hybrid Software, a relatively young company with a clever system that allows printcos to join up their production departments - and their existing kit - to create end-to-end integrated workflows.

Quite a handy thing when most companies have a mixture of legacy systems and don't have the luxury of starting with a blank sheet of paper.

I asked Hybrid founder Mike Rottenborn if there was a certain size of company that most benefited from putting in the Hybrid solution, and he said the sweet spot was "between $2m-$20m turnover". Although Hybrid also has clients that are $1bn businesses, which tells you something about the adaptability of this system.

Worth a look for anyone who, like me, is keen on "stuff that actually works".