PDF Industry Events & Calendar

Now 30 years old, PDF continues growing in its role as
the world’s chosen digital document format
complementing the HTML/CSS technology
that underpins the internet.

Likewise, the PDF Association continues growing
as the home of PDF’s technical community
serving PDF’s stakeholders worldwide.

Looking back on 2023

Over the past year, the PDF Association was busier than ever,
with new technical working groups, resources, and projects to meet
the requests of developers and other stakeholders seeking to
understand and leverage standardized PDF technology.

In 2023 PDF Association focused on
resources, services, and standards development.
For details on notable projects in the past year, see:

• After 30: PDF’s bright future (December 21, 2023)

Looking forward on 2024 and beyond

As PDF technology moves into its 4th (!) decade
it continues to evolve to meet changing needs in
a wide and varied marketplace.

From new specifications and standards for
reusing PDF to advancing PDF’s imaging model,
new developments in PDF’s specification, and more,
the home of PDF’s technical community will be busier than ever.

Only a few leaders in information technology
can claim to have changed the world.

Even fewer can claim responsibility for
revolutionizing the end user’s experience.

Fewer still enabled a new paradigm lasting decades.

Dr. John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe, and creator of PDF,
is one such leader.

The PDF Association, its member companies, and
computer users worldwide, owe an extraordinary
debt of gratitude to this extraordinary visionary.

• Dr. John Warnock passed away on August 19, 2023.

How has the low-fi 30-year-old innovation reigned for so long?

A recent article on Medium reveals a nugget regarding PDF usage:

"...Adobe reports that in its 2020 fiscal year alone, about 303 billion PDFs
were opened using its Document Cloud service, a 17% annual increase...."

As the article rightly points out, PDF "has prevailed" and has
"...become the one true standard the paper of the emerging digital world."

Read this story on Medium:

PDF Week is an all-new type of in-person meeting for
PDF Association members, observers and technology stakeholders.

As a technical conference,
PDF Week is designed to foster the PDF ecosystem with extended
in-person Technical and Liaison Working Group meetings and
the opportunity to observe and participate in
the ISO working group meetings governing PDF technology.

PDF Week is therefore a unique opportunity to meet and
network with your colleagues in the PDF space.
It's where the PDF people meet and where
the future of PDF technology is fashioned and decided.

PDF Week offers key benefits for PDF developers,
technical product managers and other stakeholders:

• An opportunity to advance your interpretation
  and agenda in-person


• Meet and learn from industry colleagues,
  international representatives and end users


• Networking and group events


• Observe and participate in ISO meetings


• Build links from ongoing PDF Association
  technical activities to ISO standardization

PDF Week is not just for members.
If you develop PDF technology, or if you manage PDF products,
or if PDF at a technical level is interesting to your organization,
then join PDF Week Fall 2023 here:

• PDF Week Fall 2023, San Francisco - Event and Registration Pages

Report on PDF Week Fall 2023, San Francisco:

• PDF Week shapes the future of PDF, October 23, 2023

Report by Dietrich von Seggern, Managing Director, callas software:

• callas software blog, November 16, 2023, Breaking News.PDF:
  Introducing a few of the discussed technologies

PDF Week is an all-new type of in-person meeting for
PDF Association members, observers and technology stakeholders.

As a technical conference,
PDF Week is designed to foster the PDF ecosystem with extended
in-person Technical and Liaison Working Group meetings and
the opportunity to observe and participate in
the ISO working group meetings governing PDF technology.

PDF Week is therefore a unique opportunity to meet and
network with your colleagues in the PDF space.
It's where the PDF people meet and where
the future of PDF technology is fashioned and decided.

PDF Week offers key benefits for PDF developers,
technical product managers and other stakeholders:

• An opportunity to advance your interpretation
  and agenda in-person


• Meet and learn from industry colleagues,
  international representatives and end users


• Networking and group events


• Observe and participate in ISO meetings


• Build links from ongoing PDF Association
  technical activities to ISO standardization

PDF Week is not just for members.
If you develop PDF technology, or if you manage PDF products,
or if PDF at a technical level is interesting to your organization,
then join PDF Week here:

• PDF Week 2023, Paris - Event and Registration Pages

PDF Days is the most popular and most important PDF event of the year.
It’s where the PDF industry meets, and where institutional and
corporate users come to learn what else PDF could do for them.

PDF Days is known, first and foremost, for PDF technology expertise and
top-quality educational presentations and networking opportunities
focused on the world's de facto digital document format.

For 2022 the PDF Association is offering a hybrid event,
in-person in Berlin at the Novotel Berlin Am Tiergarten,
and live-streamed online.

PDF Days Europe 2022 consists of:

• Deep Technical Workshop: September 8--9.

Led by PDF Association and ISO 32000 Project Leader Peter Wyatt,
the Deep Technical Workshop is intended for developers
working on low-level PDF technology.
Attendance is limited to 60 in-person attendees only.



• PDF Days Europe 2022: September 12--13.

These educational sessions focus on areas of interest to
application developers and integrators.
In-person attendance is limited to 200.
In addition, presentations will be live-streamed to facilitate
questions from the online as well as in-person audience.



• PDF Association Members' Workshop Day: September 14.

These sessions are offered by PDF Association members
where they present products and services that solve
various PDF challenges.

This hybrid online and in-person event allows attendees to retain
maximum flexibility in light of the current COVID-19 situation.

Choose online or in-person attendance...
and then change your mind, if needed!

In cooperation with the Novotel, PDF Days Europe 2022 offers
a great networking environment under present conditions.

Sign Up for PDF Days Europe 2022 Here:

• Agenda and Registration, PDF Days Europe 2022, September 12--13




• How to convince your boss to let you attend PDF Days Europe 2022:
  5 key reasons to come to Berlin this September





• Elevator Pitches by Member Vendors, September 13, 09:45--10:30

Among them:

• axaio software

  Plug-ins to automate and optimize
  print output and export processes from
  Adobe InDesign/InDesign Server/Illustrator/InCopy
  and QuarkXPress



• callas software

  Automated PDF quality assurance workflow technology for
  print production, publishing, document exchange and
  document archiving



• Foxit Software

  High-volume document to PDF conversion, compression,
  and optimization for both image documents and
  born-digital files




• axes4 Day 2022:
  Best Practice Day for PDF Accessibility,
  September 14, 09:00--17:00




• callas software,
  Online Launch Event, callas pdfToolbox v14,
  September 14, 10:00--16:30

PDF/UA is considered the "gold standard" for accessible PDF.
The reason is straightforward: PDF/UA conformance represents
an authentic, and challenging, test of whether the content of a
given PDF file is usefully available to assistive technology.

Unlike HTML, PDF’s origin lies in delivering a precise
visual representation of the author’s intent.
The familiar objects of logical structure
(paragraphs, headings, tables, lists, etc.)
are typically taken for granted (if often abused) in HTML,
but are entirely optional in PDF.

At the core of PDF/UA are the PDF format’s features
known as logical structure and Tagged PDF.
Logical structure provides for the organization of
paginated content into a hierarchical tree structure,
while Tagged PDF defines PDF’s structure types.

If accessibility is a requirement, as it is for many PDF use cases,
then these features are essential.

Today, the need for not only "tagged PDF" but
"properly-tagged PDF" is increasingly recognized.
For end users, this is typically accomplished by, for example,
applying appropriate styles in a word-processor.

Beyond software that knows how to make Tagged PDF,
accessibility requires authors to use the available tools
to indicate their content’s semantics
(headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, etc.) when creating.

PDF Days is the most popular and most important PDF event of the year.
It’s where the PDF industry meets, and where institutional and
corporate users come to learn what else PDF could do for them.

PDF Days is known, first and foremost, for high-quality
presentations, education and networking opportunities
that focus on the world's chosen digital document format.

As usual, PDF Days 2021 will offer both
Developer and Solutions tracks.

All presentations will be streamed online,
and without cost for the audience.

PDF Days Europe is the most popular and most important PDF event of the year.
It’s where the PDF industry meets, and where institutional and
corporate users come to learn what else PDF could do for them.

Agenda - All Dimensions of PDF

From scanned pages to smart forms 3D models,
ISO-standardized PDF technology is indispensable across
a vast range of document applications.

To most end users, PDF is simply a reliable, printable page.
Informed users know that PDF performs as a critical workflow enabler,
a multipurpose content vehicle and a powerful and
broadly supported archival file-format.

PDF technology goes far beyond the format:
PDF enables digital document solutions on every continent,
in every language, in every business sector worldwide.

At PDF Days Europe 2020 we'll be celebrating the diversity of
PDF applications and solutions. Expect provocative presentations from
leaders in the development of PDF technology.
Come to learn what other companies are achieving by
leveraging PDF technology!

The popular post-conference - April 29, 2020 -
will offer a range of workshops, soon to be announced!

PDF Association 1/2-Day Tutorial, September 23:
"More than just digital paper - Hidden features of the PDF format"

PDF is the most common file format on the Web after HTML,
and everyone in the Document Engineering community without exception
has to deal with the format in one way or another.

Just about everyone is familiar with PDF being “digital paper",
after all, that is really how it started out.
But PDF has become “smarter” in the last few years,
yet it is still struggling to shake off its reputation as a purely end-of-line,
dumb file format that is unsuitable for further machine processing.

Comparatively few people, and this includes even many
DocEng participants who do not work directly with PDF,
are not familiar with PDF’s additional features,
which have grown over the past few years.

PDF Association will be presenting a half-day tutorial titled
"More than just digital paper - Hidden features of the PDF format".
The aim of this tutorial is to introduce the audience to the most
important of these features and give practical examples on how they
can benefit from generating and exchanging PDF files that go
beyond digital representations of the printed page.

Doing more with PDF!

Intended for technical product managers, developers and
others evaluating electronic document technologies.

An intensive educational experience over two days,
the event offers over 50 sessions reflecting a wide range of
experience and perspectives on implementing applications
that use electronic documents.

PDF Day France will be the first French-speaking event of the PDF Association.
It will take place in Toulouse which is the home ground of Airbus and
Airbus will present a case study around its usage of
PDF/A in their document management environment!

PDF Days Europe is the most popular and most important PDF event of the year.
It’s where the PDF industry meets, and where institutional and
corporate users come to learn what else PDF could do for them.

PDF Days Europe 2018 offered three optional tracks:

• PDF for users! With use cases and practical solutions for business.
• PDF for developers! Technical presentations around PDF 2.0.
• PDF for marketers! Marketplace information & resources for
  PDF Association members.

On May 14 -- 15, topics such as:

• ISO standardized PDF: what’s current and what’s next
• PDF market analysis
• Next-generation PDF
• PDF in mobile implementations
• Accessible and reusable PDF files
• Especially for PDF Association members:
  Resources to augment own marketing and much more!

On May 16 PDF Days continued with a post-conference program,
and for developers, a PDF 2.0 Interop Workshop.

Recorded sessions of PDF Days Europe 2018

PDF Day 2018 at the National Archives an all-day event designed for
government and business professionals, managers, and executives
dealing with document management technology and policy.
This event brought industry experts, vendors, and managers
together to discuss the importance and utility of
the Portable Document Format (PDF) and its various ISO standards.

Topics include:

• The PDF standards: PDF 2.0, PDF/A, PDF/UA and PDF/X
• PDF as a service
• Cloud-based PDF solutions
• PDF in business
• And many other interesting sessions