The Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) is an international assembly of industry associations whose goal is to establish and disseminate process specifications for best practices in graphic arts workflows.
The initiative for the Ghent PDF Workgroup, founded in June 2002, came from Enfocus Software. Enfocus' founder, Peter Camps, was the chair of the Ghent PDF Workgroup for the first year. The idea for the Ghent PDF Workgroup originated during the process of getting a consensus on PDF creation and preflight settings in 2001/2002 in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. That process turned out to be very complex and it became clear quickly that a more coordinated approach was needed.
The founding members agreed to collaborate on specifications for PDF creation and preflight, with the clear intention to come to one set of specifications. Each member however still maintained independent authority to adopt and promote the specifications created by the workgroup. Each member named one or two representatives, industry experts with hands-on experience, to do the actual work. Other interested industry associations started to send representatives to the Ghent PDF Workgroup meetings as observers, to learn from the process.
The picture below shows the members present at the June 2004 general meeting.