After its debut in November 2025, dpsuisse is following up. On 30 and 31 October 2026, the ThinkTank by dpsuisse meets again at the Riverside in Zweidlen-Glattfelden, this time with a single question: what happens when print jobs are no longer placed by humans, but by AI agents acting on customers’ behalf? The testing happens on each company’s own business, in real time. I’m co-moderating, so I’m not neutral here — I’ll say that up front.
The customer stays. Their buyer becomes an algorithm.
Anyone who was there last year for the first dpsuisse ThinkTank will remember 24 hours in which content, AI tools, and social commerce weren’t explained, but tried out on the spot. The format’s success is why dpsuisse is continuing it this year and developing the theme further. Instead of social commerce, 2026 has agentic commerce on the programme. Instead of the question “How do we win new customers?” the question now is: “Does the agent even find us?”
Readers of this site already know the background: AI agents are starting to search for suppliers, compare quotes, and trigger orders. Without a website visit, without a phone call, and without the lovingly designed homepage of the online shop ever being seen. WebMCP and the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) are the protocols currently emerging through which such agents talk to shops and providers. For the printing industry, that means: whoever isn’t legible to an AI agent doesn’t exist for the order it wants to place. That applies just as much to the full-range online printer as to the commercial print shop whose quoting process has consisted of a contact form and a callback since 1998.
At ThinkTank’25, we showed what AI can do in marketing. This time we’re turning the tables: it’s not us using the AI, it’s the AI using us — or not, if it can’t find us. That’s exactly what I want to see live, for every single business in the room. And yes, that can hurt.
Not a hackathon. A real-time insight workshop.
One thing up front: ThinkTank’26 is not a hackathon. Nobody has to code, nobody builds a prototype in 24 hours. What dpsuisse is setting up here is a real-time insight workshop for executives from print and media. While a hackathon produces software, the ThinkTank produces a finding about your own company, and you get to watch it happen.
Friday lunchtime kicks off with a welcome lunch, followed at 1pm by my keynote on GEO, agentic commerce, and agentic print. After that, Leon Mehlau takes over and guides the group station by station through the “agent journey”: from being found, through understanding products and prices, to placing an order or requesting a quote. Both paths, shop and enquiry, get played out.
Then it gets serious. In two hands-on blocks, every participant tests their own company: Does the agent find us? What does it say about my company when it reads our website? How far does it get before it gives up? The results don’t end up in a report, they end up on the wall. Visible to everyone, including the biggest obstacles.
“Most print shops are built for people: a nice website, a form, a callback within 24 hours,” says Leon Mehlau, founder and CEO of Levanty. “An agent reads that, doesn’t understand it, and moves on. At the ThinkTank by dpsuisse, participants see live exactly where it moves on. That’s uncomfortable. But it’s the only way to change it.”
Saturday begins with a WebMCP prototype Mehlau has prepared: an agent that actually talks to a print shop, not as a vision, but as running code. After that, it’s homework time: which product data, availability, and prices need to be machine-readable, instead of sitting only in people’s heads, PDFs, and spreadsheets? And finally the part I take on: the operation behind it. Prepress, production, finishing, shipping, complaints. Where does the business break down once there’s no human in between anymore?
“I’m not going to lecture for 90 minutes about protocols,” says Mehlau. “I’ll show what’s actually working, and then we’ll dig together into the question of what’s missing in each company. The knowledge is already in the room. We just make it visible.”
Why I find this remarkable
A trade association that voluntarily has its members screened by an AI agent and hangs the results on the wall is doing something that isn’t standard practice in association work. The classic trade association event consists of three talks, a panel, and the realisation that something urgently needs to be done. Associations are good at formulating positions. dpsuisse has its members test whether their position actually holds up — and accepts that the results won’t always be flattering. That’s a kind of stress test, and the fact that the association offers it, and its members go along with it, says a lot about the Swiss printing industry.
The question of the industry as a whole is also on the programme. On Saturday morning, I’m moderating the discussion on whether Swiss print shops should present a united front on UCP, so that smaller businesses show up in agentic enquiries at all. A shared standard, a shared presence, or everyone for themselves? The group takes a position, and so does dpsuisse.
What’s left at the end
ThinkTank’26 doesn’t end with a handout, but with a round of commitments: one sentence per participant, the first step within 90 days. Concrete, dated, said out loud. The lunch afterwards is explicitly part of the programme. Experience shows that’s the block where commitments turn into actual arrangements.
What personally preoccupies me about the agent question isn’t the technology. WebMCP and UCP will arrive, with or without the printing industry. What preoccupies me is the speed at which purchasing is changing, while many businesses are still polishing their website for humans. The agent doesn’t read nice pictures, it reads data. Whoever doesn’t have that is out before the competition has even started.
Two half-days, no slide battles, your own company as the test subject: whoever drives home on Saturday at 2pm will know exactly where things are stuck.
The Facts
- Date: Friday, 30 October 2026, 12:00pm to Saturday, 31 October 2026, 2:00pm
- Location: Riverside Seminar- & Eventhotel, Zweidlen-Glattfelden (Switzerland)
- Format: real-time insight workshop for executives from print and media
- Moderation and input: Bernd Zipper (zipcon consulting, Initiative Online Print) and Leon Mehlau (Levanty)
- Audience: exclusively for members of dpsuisse and partner associations
- Bring along: laptop, your own website, and price list
- Registration and programme: dpsuisse.ch
My Take: I’m moderating the ThinkTank, so I’m not neutral. Even so: this format is the most honest thing I’ve come across in association work in a long time. Most industry events deliver a good feeling, a buffet, and the collective certainty that everyone else isn’t quite there yet either. ThinkTank’26 by dpsuisse delivers a finding. It may well be more uncomfortable, but you can actually work with it. That it’s a Swiss association, of all things, sending its members into this test strikes me as a signal. Germany and Austria should pay attention. Not to copy the format, but to understand why it works: because it doesn’t lecture its members, it tests them. And because nobody has to code. See you in Zweidlen — don’t forget your laptop.
