Wednesday.  Sibos fatigue is setting in for most normal people but the Standards Forum is still going strong.  Andrew Muir, still basking in the glory of his triumphant rendition of Happy Birthday, might just be the most enthusiastic person I have ever met. How does he do it? 

In the Future of Standards series Ineka Bussemaker questioned whether consumers and merchants can afford to wait for regulators and standards bodies. Innovation and standardization are inherently conflicted. Flexible standards are key, as we’ve heard so many times this week, and yet it is a double edged sword.  Too many options in a language inevitably results in multiple dialects. 

In the lunchtime session we learned that Big Data is all around us. In the press and social media big data is typically thought of in the context of consumers and retail.  In the context of institutional financial markets we haven’t heard about it quite so much, and yet we’ve been doing it for years. We just didn’t call it big data.  That said, now that it is becoming a discipline in its own right it’s time for us to hop on board.  Mary Knox from Gartner led a very interesting discussion of the challenges and issues around the implementing of big data, and how standards might be able to help.

The day was rounded out with a workshop style session led by Manu Sporny of Digital Bazaar.  No hiding in the back row allowed in this one. Manu introduced a number of new concepts and ideas that are being discussed in the halls of W3C.  Banks should not be afraid apparently.  Hmm. Not so sure about that! 

Quotes of the day

“Innovation happens and standardization follows”

“Are we creating mini-SEPAs?”

“We’ve been creating paths, not highways through the big data jungle”

“One of the main flaws of MyStandards is that it wasn’t here 10 years ago”  [Ed. I remember yearning for a way to validate at the level of market practice.]

“We need to understand where standards add value and where they don’t”

“Lack of standards increases the stickiness of vendor platforms”

“We need a standard way of defining information in your own organization” [Ed. Where’s that semantic layer when you need it?]

“There has been so little focus on data architecture”

“What does it mean to be compliant with a standard? It hasn’t been defined”  [Ed. It’s not rocket science]