Why You Should Attend

The benefits of participation

• Provide input into policies and legislation that facilitate ICT standards based procurement at government and enterprise levels
• Discover how ICT standardization can be used to improve procurement in government and private industry
• Gain insight from experts who have taken procurement from operational to strategic
• Discuss how less formal standardization options may used to meet government procurement guidelines, particularly in the EU
• Learn how  procurement policies can provide sufficient unification to enable information exchange while facilitating localization and why this is critical
• Understand how corporate and government procurement policies interplay
• Discuss whether procurement policies do or should include open source and alternative standardization options

The Standards Edge™

The Standards Edge conferences are structured to encourage maximum exchange of information. Our goal is to provide a forum that brings together decision makers from across geographical and industrial boundaries to discuss how the digital world can evolve with the help of a strengthened ICT standardization system. The speaker expertise featured in this conference series provides an opportunity for attendees to learn about key topics around standardization. More importantly, the conferences facilitate collaboration among those not likely to meet in their everyday lives. We welcome your participation in this effort to strengthen and maximize the impact of standardization and encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to create your own collaborative opportunities.

Standards Edge Sponsors
The Standards Edge conference series has been sponsored by governments, business, standards setting organizations, and academic institutions worldwide. Past sponsors have included:

This variety of sponsors ensures that conferences present the many (often passionate) viewpoints that surround the world of ICT standardization. We welcome all viewpoints in our discussions.

The Standards Edge™ Book Series
The Standards Edge book series is designed to tackle the latest technological and standards issues and their impact on business. This series includes articles from representatives of many of the conference sponsors as well as:

• Numerous Global 500 organizations, including AT&T, Nortel Networks, BT, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, General Motors, and Sun Microsystems
• Senior government representatives in the US Congress, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the European Union, China's Ministry of Commerce, and Japan's Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry
• Standards setting organization such as the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), British Standards Institution (BSI), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and Object Management Group (OMG)
• Leading educational institutions such as the Stanford University, Georgetown University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Colorado, Delft University of Technology, the University of Oslo, and the University of Helsinki

Previous volumes in the series include:

The Standard Edge
The Standards Edge: Dynamic Tension
The Standards Edge: Open Season
The Standards Edge: Future Generation
The Standards Edge: Golden Mean
The Standards Edge: Unifier or Divider? (forthcoming 2008)

For further information on The Standards Edge series and to view analyses of previous conferences, please visit http://www.thebolingroup.com.