Representation on standards bodies

There have been a number of studies discussing the benefits of conforming to standards in your products and services. For the standards around production printing, they mostly concentrate on decreased risk, increased cross-vendor compatibility and being able to focus your efforts on the issues that your product is differentiated on. As an example, adhering to the PDF standard means that a digital press vendor can put more emphasis on print speed and quality and on supporting more classes of substrate because less energy is required to address software compatibility issues.

But there is far less written of the value of being involved in the development of standards, which can be significant, including:

• Early knowledge of standards under development enables product manager to understand what they will need to do, and even plan them into a roadmap
• If a new standard addresses one of your pain points, but misses some vital details, you may have the opportunity to correct that omission
• If you feel that the industry would be served by a new standard you can propose it for consideration
• Standards meetings (and, in normal times, the discussion over a beer or dinner afterwards) are excellent opportunities for learning about what is important to other people and other vendors in your industry.