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The Datalogics Motto – Where Experience Delivers

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Xplor President/CEO Skip Henk Interviews Matt Kuznicki, CTO of Datalogics

Datalogics is relatively new to the Xplor world, exhibiting for the first time at Xploration 17 earlier this year. That said, I reached out to Datalogics’ Chief Technology Officer, Matt Kuznicki, and asked him to introduce himself and Datalogics to the Xplor community.

Based in Chicago, Illinois, Datalogics considers themselves the premier source for PDF and eBook technologies in the industry. I won’t go into more detail than that as Matt gives us a great overview below. However, I do want to introduce you and tell you a little about Matt himself.

Matt Kuznicki is responsible for product development and engineering. He serves as a recognized expert in document applications, eBooks, electronic documents and the PDF file format. Matt is also a member of the board and Chairman of the PDF Association, as well as the US Technical Advisory Group on document management applications (ISO/TC 171 SC 2), and active in the PDF standards and technical communities.

Skip: Tell us a little bit about the company itself and a bit about its history?

Matt:  Datalogics, Inc. is based in the great city of Chicago, and we are proud to be able to say that we have recently celebrated our 50th year in business. We consider ourselves the premier source for PDF and eBook technologies. We were founded in 1967 and started as a small independent software firm, in the era of reel tapes and punch cards. We’ve come a long way from those days, and now leverage tools like Agile and GitHub to keep up-to-date with new ideas in the IT community. Our primary goal when we first started, which still rings true today, has been to surpass our customer expectations by providing them with innovative features and new product updates to meet their needs.

Datalogics offers solutions that include a wide range of powerful PDF and eBook technologies for .NET, Java, and C/C++ developers. We are a partner member of the PDF Association and I have the honor of being chairman of the PDF Association. Datalogics is also a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Readium Foundation.

Skip: Give us some history and context about why PDF has been and continues to be so widely accepted and used as a standard document format?

Matt: PDF has continued to be an ISO standard-driven document format; the PDF format provides consistent interoperability for users, facilitating the creation of portable documents and ensuring reliable interchange. Furthermore, regulated industries continue to require and utilize specialized versions of PDF such as PDF/A (archive) or PDF/X (graphics/print).

As further validation that PDFs continue to be a widely-used document format, based on a PDF Association Technical Conference presentation as of October 2015, there were about 1.6 billion PDF documents on the web, 60% of non-image attachments in Outlook Exchange Enterprise were PDF documents, and conservatively there might be 2.5 trillion or higher PDF documents created each year.

Skip: Where is PDF headed next, and how will it continue to be relevant?

Matt: Since one of PDF’s strengths is its focus on longevity – the ability to use PDF files far out into the future – I believe it’s a good thing that PDF doesn’t undergo drastic change very often. While it’s tempting to focus on new technologies, often times users and adopters of unproven document technologies can find themselves stranded when the hype cycle dies down and they are left with large investments in formats that fail to gain traction. With PDF, there is a broad ecosystem of tools and workflows that ensures the vitality of PDF for the decades to come.

PDF 2.0 is an exciting development that represents an evolution of PDF, one that preserves compatibility with earlier versions of PDF as much as possible. We anticipate that PDF 2.0 will be used first in closed-loop workflows, as end users gradually adopt PDF 2.0-compatible viewers. While many of today’s PDF viewers can view most PDF 2.0 files, new features of PDF 2.0 will take some time to be adopted. We expect that there will be a transition over the next several years, if not longer, as document creators gradually add support for PDF 2.0 creation to their software.

In fact, Datalogics is happy to announce our donation of an initial set of example PDF 2.0 files to the PDF Association. We are proud to help the PDF Association in their mission of providing technical resources and education to PDF practitioners. These PDFs are specially constructed to be readable even to those who aren’t yet PDF experts, and are based in part on PDFs Datalogics has built for our own in-house educational programs.

Skip: What are some key things you should consider when choosing/evaluating a partner/vendor for PDF technology solutions?

Matt: A PDF solutions provider/vendor should be active in the PDF community and be advocates for their users in the broader community by helping to move PDF forward. This ensures that PDF continues to address and solve new business problems while making sure that the needs of current users are also not ignored. PDF vendors should also enable users to solve their problems effectively by providing intuitive, simple and implementable solutions for both common and complex problems, while still adhering to the PDF standards specification.

All these points mentioned above are hallmarks of Datalogics’ strengths. We provide PDF technologies and document solutions to a wide range of industries and businesses and offer unparalleled support and expertise. We have dedicated Technical Support Engineers who are available to our customers and prospects during the evaluation process. We also offer many other resources such as our knowledgebase, customer portal, blog, technical service bulletins, and our development site which include documentation, code samples and release notes. We are also active participants in the various developer communities including Stack Overflow where we have the “Adobe-PDF-Library” and “PDF-Java-Toolkit” tags to help facilitate knowledge sharing.

Skip: Matt, I thank you for taking the time to share with our readers more about Datalogics and your thoughts on PDF. Any closing thoughts?

Matt: Just want to thank everyone for taking the time and be sure to check out our website at www.datalogics.com. Perhaps we can do business together in the future with some of you!

Skip: Once again, thank you for your time and for your ongoing support of Xplor International.

I want to go ahead and plug Datalogics as well as our upcoming show by saying I hope all our readers will check out the Datalogics booth at Xploration 18! The show will take place April 17-19, 2018 in Orlando at the Rosen Plaza. Datalogics will be in booth 9. Stop by and say hello, their team will take great care of you!

Until next time! Take care.

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

What EDP Means to Me

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Xplor President/CEO Interview with Franklin Friedmann, 20 Year EDP
July 6, 2016

Continuing from my most recent interview, Benefits to Becoming EDP Certified, I recently caught up with Franklin Friedmann who will be celebrating his 20th year as an EDP this year to discuss what the EDP certification means to him.

If you missed my first post, you can read it and an outline of the EDP Program here.

Skip: Franklin, thank you for taking the time to meet with me!

Franklin: A pleasure.

 

Skip: When did you get your EDP and what drove you to strive for it?

Franklin:  My manager had chosen me to be the first person a Certified Printing specialist with the company. However, recognizing that an EDP(P) had more currency with clients, I told him I would do the Xplor initiative first.

 

Skip: You were a part of the 1996 class, the last year of EDPP Program before they dropped a ‘P’ to better accommodate of digital communication technologies. What have you noticed about this ever-changing industry since?

Franklin: The technology accelerates, though EDP does and should continue to stand for professionalism while content may change.

 

Skip: What does it mean to you personally to be an EDP?

Franklin: It represents a level of attainment, even as the industry shifts to a wider set of values. It therefore is a benchmark.

 

Skip: Has the certification helped you professionally throughout your career?

Franklin: Clients in the transactional space may recognize the credentials. You must prove yourself regardless. My sphere of operation is as a consultant.

 

Skip: Who do you think should attain their certification?

Franklin:  It depends on your current and planned career. EDP is a stepping stone; it may be useful in your organization as a way to measure your knowledge base. It is one of the steps that should also help if you regularly work with clients outside, not only inside your organization.

Thank you again Franklin for taking the time. If anyone has any additional questions regarding the EDP Certification program, please visit www.xplor.org/edp.

Until next time! Take care.

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

After 5 … People Do Amazing Things

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Submitted by Skip Henk, EDP, President/CEO of Xplor International
March 19, 2015

After writing about technology I decided to deviate a little and talk about some of the amazing people in our industry that do amazing things, for others, after 5 (and on weekends).

A few weeks ago I was honored to speak at the Neopost USA sales kick off meeting in Dallas, Texas. I spent three days with hundreds of people from across the country, observing first hand who Neopost was, their culture, and the people that drive the success of the company.

Mike BogadAfter 5
At the end of the day a group of us met in the pub to relax a bit which is when I met Mike Bogad, Director of CCM Channel Development.  After talking about his role in Neopost, our conversation drifted from work to our families and onto the things we do outside of work. Mike spoke passionately about his support of The St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a volunteer-driven charity committed to funding the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers, providing survivors long, healthy lives.

His involvement started when a high school friend invited him to a “shave event.”  His friend’s son played hockey with a boy named Dawson who died from childhood cancer. Mike is on one of the hundreds of teams across the US who help raise money for childhood cancer research. His team, Dawson Hairless Heroes, is based St. Louis, Missouri.

What differentiates being a member of the “Dawson Hairless Heroes” is that some of the more daring ones volunteer to have their head shaved by participating in “the shave event”. Mike is one of those daring individuals.

Amazing Things
Already in his fourth year, Mike’s goal for 2015 was to raise $7525. He finished at $8750, 121% of his goal and secured the #4 spot in fundraising out of 613 “shaves”!  Their event raised 500K. On Saturday, March 7th at 4:45 pm, he stood in solidarity with kids being treated for cancer and had his head shaved!

In Mike’s words, “When I started 4 years ago, I never imagined we could surpass $3000, now we’re over $8,000! My involvement is because of a friend who invited me to a shave, I knew I had a lot great friends that would help!  Since then, families we know and love have been impacted, thus pressing me forward to remain involved.”

This year’s event is over but the need still exists. To learn more about St. Baldricks visit www.StBaldricks.org or if you would like to visit Mike’s site go to http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/739394/2015

To Mike Bogad and all the others in our industry that do great things after 5, thank you.

Next up …. Ken Leslie, (Former Xplor Chair) and founder of 1Matters.org ,whose mission is to house as many homeless veterans nationally as they can, as fast as they can

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International