Lutz, Fla. – Xplor International, the worldwide electronic document systems association, today named the recipients of the 2018 Brian Platte Lifetime Achievement and Xplorer of the Year Awards. These awards were presented at Xplor’s Annual Conference, Xploration 18, on Tuesday, April 17th during the awards ceremony.

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The Brian Platte Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2007 and is given to an individual, or individuals, whose efforts and contributions have significantly changed the course and development of the digital document industry. This award is open to Xplor International members as well as non-members.

This year, two Brian Platte Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented.

The first recipient is Basit Hamid, founder of Elixir Technologies. Basit is an innovator in customer communications and has transformed the lives of young professionals while spear-heading humanitarian initiatives around the globe.

As a member of Intran’s development team, he helped design the company’s impressive font and image editing system, which culminated in the release of MetaForm, the first commercial WYSIWYG document composition solution. In 1984, Mr. Hamid and his business partner, Eric Searle, left Intran to found Elixir, launching ElixiForms, the first WYSIWYG forms system on a standard PC, in 1987.

For the past fifteen years, Elixir has partnered with a major medical hospital in Pakistan to administer the TELMEDPAK project. This initiative brings medical help to remote areas of Pakistan affected by the Afghan war by conducting seminars for healthcare professionals and offering concept lectures at medical conferences and institutions.

The second honoree for the Brian Platte Lifetime Achievement Award is Bob Gullikson.

Bob began his journey in early 1990’s running a transactional print operation. He was challenged to develop a plan for the future and help engineer new technology that would give his company a competitive advantage and drive revenue. The initial concept his team developed included many presentation modes that didn’t exist at that time and he had to make believers out of skeptical executives in order to garner support for his vision which not only included printing on paper, but also the electronic delivery of documents.

The system simplified the design process to minimize Cobol hard coding and shorten the development time for new documents and changes. Once approved, FDR’s Enterprise Presentation platform was designed and implemented in 18 months.

In addition to Bob’s professional achievements, he has been a consistent supporter and volunteer to community organizations and charities. Bob is an honorably discharged U.S. Air Force veteran who served during the Vietnam War. He was chosen to serve on Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey’s Military Academy Nomination Committee and participated for several years.

The Xplorer of the Year honors individuals or companies that have demonstrated significant service to the association, dedication to the Xplor mission, and recent notable achievement promoting the interest of the electronic document systems and customer communications industry.

This year's Xplorer of the year is Scott Draeger, M-EDP. Mr. Draeger served on the International Board of Directors, retiring two years ago. He is the number one supporter of industry certification and is responsible for the certification of over 35 EDP’s and 150 EDA’s through the EDP Challenge, which Quadient has supported for the last four years.
Scott’s out of the box approach has incubated the idea of the Xplor University Design Competition as well as many other changes to the association in response to an ever-evolving industry.

“I’d like to congratulate Basit, Bob and Scott for their achievements as they are well deserved.” says Skip Henk, EDP, President/CEO of Xplor International. “Our industry as a whole, and the world around us, are better places due to each of their efforts.”

Other Xplor annual awards, recognized and announced at Xploration® 18, include:

Technology of the Year
Winner – Crawford Technologies / Auto Tagger
Honorable Mention – Solimar Systems / SOLitrack 2.0
Honorable Mention – Racami / Alchem-e
Honorable Mention – Indellient / BlueRelay

Application of the Year
Winner: UNUM / Crawford Technologies
Honorable Mention – Volusia County Schools / RICOH USA, Inc.
Honorable Mention – Broadridge Customer Communications / Compart