AFP Consortium President Dennis Carney Q&A with the Imaging Channel
by Patricia Ames
July 31, 2025
In April, the Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Consortium, an international consortium of print industry stakeholders working together to further enhance the AFP document architecture, named its secretary and treasurer Dennis Carney of Ricoh as the organization’s new president. Carney replaced Ricoh’s Jack Condon, who had served as president for eight years. We sat down with Carney for a Q&A session.
How has your experience working alongside Jack Condon influenced your approach to leading the Consortium? What lessons from Jack’s tenure do you hope to carry forward, and are there new directions you plan to explore?
Jack and I have essentially comprised the AFP Consortium leadership team for the last eight years, and he is a wonderful person to have collaborated with. It’s so important in a group like the Consortium that leaders are friendly, welcoming, open, and encouraging of new ideas—Jack is all of these things, and I hope to emulate these attributes in my new role. Jack’s incredible history of AFP experience was invaluable, and given the breadth of his skills and knowledge, I do not believe it is possible to completely fill his shoes. I learned so much from him, not only about technical and historical topics, but also about leadership. His influence on me cannot be quantified but will be ingrained in everything I do as president.
The Consortium is made up of individuals with impressively strong technical backgrounds and a great willingness to collaborate to enhance and increase the functionality available in AFP. I consider these attributes important strengths that generate ideas and will continue to foster them in my tenure as president. We have made a great deal of progress and expect to continue building upon our positive momentum to help the Consortium continue to meet the evolving needs of AFP customers.
With nearly 30 years in the printing industry, what do you see as the most pressing challenges and most exciting opportunities for AFP in the current print industry landscape?
Challenges and opportunities are often two sides of the same coin, and right now, data security is the coin! AFP customers are rightly worried about the protection of their print data, both at rest and in transit. The Consortium is working on solutions to both aspects in order to assuage their fears and make them feel more secure.
Universal Accessibility (UA) is also growing in importance, especially in Europe. The Consortium saw this coming and stepped up to the challenge with the publication of the Metadata Guide for AFP in late 2023. The Guide defines how metadata objects, first added to the architecture in 2014 and enhanced in the years since, are to be used in AFP to “tag” AFP structures, and thus to enable UA in AFP print files. As an example of a real-life application of this technology, the tagging could be used by an AFP viewing application to “read” a blind user’s bank statement aloud, presenting the information in the statement in the correct order and with useful explanations.
Finally, with nearly 30 years’ experience in the printing industry, including working in the printing groups of the companies that originated AFP, I am now enjoying a 360-degree view over the AFP architectural landscape. My role as the owner of all eight active AFP architectures (I owned six before Jack retired and don’t believe anyone else has ever owned more than three), will allow for cleanly-coordinated updates to the architectures when necessary. I expect this perspective, coupled with the ongoing and invaluable contributions of the Consortium members, will inform my view of the AFP architecture as it continues to evolve.
You have been recognized as a Master Inventor and have contributed to numerous patents and standards. How does innovation play a role in your leadership style?
I always try to think with the curiosity of an inventor, whether confronted with a technical challenge or a leadership dilemma. I ask myself why we do things the way we do and if there is a better, smarter, or more efficient approach. For example, I recently had the opportunity to plan the Consortium’s spring meeting for the first time, one of only two events that brings members together annually. I re-evaluated our existing process and made some useful changes to the topics we covered and the agenda flow to maximize the amount of time our international colleagues could participate. These small changes made a big difference in our ability to collaborate effectively for a longer period of time. I expect to approach the fall meeting with the same curiosity as we continue to learn and grow together.
To read this article online, visit: https://theimagingchannel.com/qa-with-dennis-carney/
Patricia Ames
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Patricia Ames is president and senior analyst for BPO Media, which publishes The Imaging Channel and Workflow magazines. As a market analyst and industry consultant, Ames has worked for prominent consulting firms including KPMG and has more than 15 years experience in the imaging industry covering technology and business sectors. Ames has lived and worked in the United States, Southeast Asia and Europe and enjoys being a part of a global industry and community.
