Standards Forum Day Four Summary

Final day.  I realize that this is a week late, but I feel I must complete the set, so here goes.  Sibos was discernably quiet.  Perhaps Thursday is the new Friday.  However, no such tail-off at the Standards Forum. All the days sessions continued to be well attended. It takes real stamina to be a standards geek!  [Ed. The great ones make it look so easy!]

Karla McKenna made an impromptu appearance to announce that TC68 (the group within ISO responsible for financial services) has been awarded the Lawrence D. Eicher Leadership Award for Excellence in Creative and Innovative Services and Initiatives.  This award is given annually by ISO to one of its Technical Committees.  We should all be very proud!! 

James Whittle wrapped up the series of Future of Standards talks, this time focusing on collaboration.  James discussed the challenges of building trust across language and cultural barriers. 

Chris Church, SWIFT’s Chief Executive Americas and Global Head of Securities brought the Forum to a close with a few Calls to Action: Can we make it simpler? Can we make it cheaper? Can we engage the asset management community?  Can we prove to ourselves that standards do actually save us money? 

And there you have it.  Another Standards Forum goes into the books. 

It was a week that provided a glimpse into the future on so many levels…

It was a week that offered temporary geek status to the hoi polloi...

A week that brought us debate, laughter, and song; a week that launched an app for the iPad, see sample below…

It was a week that saw Bitcoin and Payswarm fire a couple of warning shots over ISO’s bow; speed up or we’ll go it alone…

And it was a week that offered us a tunnel of hope through the mountain of despair that is the lack of semantics in our standards. 

As you go back to your day jobs, be assured that there are plenty of perma-geeks working quietly behind the scenes to fix all our problems.  To be continued…

Quotes of the day:

It’s no longer a question of **if** we should implement 20022, but a matter of **when**  [Ed.  Here, here]

It is not the beginning of the end [for 20022 migration], but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

We need to be better at articulating the business case.

Going faster might compromise the quality. [Ed. Yes, but this is just as much a truism for standards as it is for just about everything else]

Paddles up, Blackberries down.  [Ed. Does anyone still use a Blackberry?]