In retrospect, 25 years have seemed to go by rather quickly for me and my involvement in the GWG. My first introduction to the embryo of the GWG was during my part-time role as the PDF editor for Seybold, which was the leading publisher and event producer for print and publishing technologies. PDF/X was already a standard as early as 1999, although PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, and PDF/X-4 really established the format as ‘the’ gold standard for print file exchange.

In August 2002, Enfocus Certified PDF, developed around the Pitstop preflight application, became a foundation for the establishment of a “regional” standard adopted by the print associations in the Benelux countries. During that time, at Seybold, in conjunction with DDAP (Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publications) we were testing PDF workflows and discussing the need for a set of “global settings” for PDF/X for the various printing applications.

At the 2002 Seybold Conference in San Francisco, I was chairing a PDF Days program which included seven minutes with a developer, a way for the developers of PDF software solutions to bring attention to their products, and drive the audience to their respective booths. During the presentations, I postulated that it was important to have an “agnostic global set of settings (specifications) in favor of various regional sets.” After the session, I had a discussion with Peter Camps, then-CEO of Enfocus, to promote the idea, at which point he invited me to the next meeting of the Enfocus Certified PDF group held at the Artevelde University in Ghent, Belgium. At that meeting, I was joined by other country print association representatives from outside of the Benelux region, including the UK, France, and Spain.