Submitted by Skip Henk, EDP, President/CEO of Xplor International
March 17, 2015

When you read the title, what was the first thought that came to your mind? I am hoping some of you were asking yourselves “What is he talking about? What is a BOK?” That was my dilemma.

Although I have been active and involved in the industry for many years, I did not know what a BOK was or why it was important to our members and the industry in general.

According to our friends at Wikipedia:

a body of knowledge (BOK) is the complete set of concepts, terms and activities that make up a professional domain, as defined by the relevant learned society or professional association.

Making It Relevant
I must admit I was a bit slow to come around to the whole idea of having a BOK for the association. The idea that a document could or would contain the “complete set of concepts, terms and activities” for our industry was difficult to conceive. Looking at the “complete document lifecycle” and all of the inherent components, the different technologies, methodologies and disciplines that put end to end defines our industry would be a monumental task.

Climbing The Mountain
At Xploration^® 13, a group of Xplor EDP members got together and determined that it was time our industry had a Body of Knowledge for the Electronic Document Industry. The “Limited Edition” was presented at Xploration® 14 with the first edition being published and released last year at Graph Expo. In all, almost forty people contributed in one way or another to the creation and delivery of our industry BOK. The scope of the book is impressive and includes:

• Document Development Lifecycle, requirements gathering, business analysis, technical analysis, stakeholder agreement, architecture, information design, project design, development, critical communications recovery(disaster recovery), test and QA, production launch, maintenance
• Document Production Workflow, data, data objects, composition, print streams, transformations, print management, electronic presentation, web and mobile delivery, archiving, print technology, inserting technology, delivery process.

The end product has become the basis for our industries knowledge and the platform that now drives Xplor’s educational mission.

Who Cares? You Should.
Anyone in our industry, no matter what role you play, will benefit from reading it. If you are in a technical or operations role, this book pulls it all together, filling in the blanks and expanding your overall understanding of the electronic document industry. If you are in sales or marketing, it will give you an end to end view of the industry, the various components and the knowledge will certainly differentiate you from your peers.

Special thanks to all those responsible for bringing this ground breaking document to fruition.

The project team: Matt Riley edp, Project Chair, Neil Merchant m-edp, Project Manager, Pat McGrew m-edp, Editor, Scott Baker, Roberta McKee-Jackson edp, Chad Henk eda

The technology contributors: Paul Abdool edp, William Broddy m-edp , Franklin Campbell edp, Tim Ciceran, Brett Dashwood edp, Christine Durfee, Carol Fiore, Franklin Friedmann edp, Neal Gottsacker , Chris Halicki edp, Cheryl Kay, Kevin Lantaff edp, Robert Linsky, Wendy MacMillan m-edp, William McCalpin m-edp, Linda McDaniel edp, Roberta McKee-Jackson edp, Neil Merchant m-edp, Denise Miano edp, Tim Nelms, Stephen Poe edp, Rebecca Rodgers m-edp, Kevin Tondreau edp

So, Do You Wanna BOK?
For more information on the Electronic Document Body of Knowledge (EDBOK) visit the EDBOK information page under Career Development.

Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International