Seybold was a pioneering conference and trade show series that helped define desktop and electronic publishing from the early 1980s through the early 2000s. It all started with the flagship newsletter, The Seybold Report on Publishing Systems (launched 1971), and became a key technical reference for the emerging digital prepress and publishing industry. It was followed by the first Seybold Seminar which was held in February 1981 in Los Angeles as a relatively small, single-track gathering with a few hundred attendees and no trade show. It was conceived as a forum where leading practitioners, vendors, and innovators in publishing systems could meet, exchange ideas, and discuss the “revolution” of desktop and electronic publishing.

Seybold played a central role in the desktop publishing revolution, helping drive adoption of PostScript, PDF, and other core technologies by giving major platform vendors a high-profile stage. Historically, Seybold Seminars are remembered as “milestone” events that documented and shaped the transition from traditional print workflows to digital, desktop, and web publishing.

Fast forward to 2013, when the Online Print Symposium (OPS), now called the Online Print Summit, was launched in Munich as a central meeting point for the online print and e-business print sector in German?speaking Europe. The event was conceived by zipcon consulting (Bernd Zipper), and the German print federation Bundesverband Druck und Medien (bvdm), with a similar format to the early Seybold Seminars. It was conceived as a “lead event” for online print, web-to-print and e-business print in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, bringing together company owners, managers, and decision-makers. The first two editions took place in central Munich and quickly attracted several hundred participants, establishing OPS as a dedicated forum for strategy, technology and networking in online print. Recently, OPS has engaged a wider global audience to bring more participation and knowledge sharing to the event.