Presentation Abstracts

Keynote

Kathie Morgan - From Transactional to Transformational
The relationships that SDOs have with our members, customers, partners, and other stakeholders are evolving and expanding more quickly than ever before.  The keys to adapting and leading in this dynamic environment include becoming more outcomes-focused, partnership-oriented, and innovation–driven.  

SESSION 1 – Leadership Roundtable: Forging New Visions for Standardization in Dynamic Times  

This session brings together leaders from SES, standards oversight bodies, and organizations engaged in standards and conformity assessment for an interactive, roundtable discussion about the current landscape for the standards community and the challenges and opportunities for leadership as the who, how, and what of standardization continues to shift and evolve.

SESSION 2 – Developing and  Engaging the Next Generation of Standardization Professionals

Laura Brumsey    Strategies for Engaging the Next Generation 
Demographic, economic, and industry trends continuously impact the availability of resources to support the development of private standards. Today’s business environment increasingly demands a lean approach to staffing, which has a multi-faceted impact on standards development efforts. This presentation will address several factors related to the retirement of today’s subject matter experts and engagement of the next generation of standards professionals, including:

·       understanding the impact on the standards development process;

·       membership monitoring and evaluation of resource availability;

·       strategies for engaging the next generation of professionals;

·       transition protocols for introducing new participants to standards development; and

·       facilitating the transfer of knowledge to the next generation.  

Mark Ramlochan So you want to be a Standards Professional? – The Essential Skills for the Young Standards Professional

In today’s fast changing environment, Standards Development Professionals are required to possess critical skills and behaviors in order to execute standards development initiatives quickly and effectively. Young professionals entering the Standard Development profession are challenged to identify and develop the unique skill sets that are required in this profession. This session will provide insight to Young Professionals on some of the key skills and competences that they should focus their development in order to establish a dynamic career in standards. Drawing on first-hand experience, the speaker will provide credible examples of how development of certain skills can lead to opportunities for success. From core skills such as project management, understanding of consensus, and communication, to intangible skills such as negotiation, leadership, and motivation, this session will discuss the balanced approach to developing these essential skills through on the job training, formal courses, and mentorship.

SESSION 3 – Engaging Stakeholders: Different Pathways to Encourage Participation and Leadership

Standards committees understand the urgency of bringing new participants into the process, retaining current participants, harnessing their capabilities, and developing a pipeline of leadership. However, there is often a struggle with exactly how to address this issue, and understanding the roles that SDOs and volunteers can both play to leverage standards development participation and provide the “WIIFM” for technical experts. These breakout sessions provide an interactive exploration to answer, “How do we increase participation and engagement in the standards development process?”

SESSION 4 – The Future is now: Using Standards to Promote Innovation

Ed Eckert

The thought of using standards to promote innovation may seem to be a stark contradiction, however technological innovation rarely occurs for technology sake alone.  To secure development resources, innovation that solves real business problems or creates new business opportunities requires a well-built business case.  All too often, the zeal to create technology gets in the way of this foundational objective.  Using standards-based technologies to validate business cases, from early evaluation through minimum viable product, makes perfect sense.  This session will explore some of these concepts as well as some real-world cases where standards do promote innovation.

SESSION 5 – Leveraging Diversity to Strengthen the Standards Landscape 

We cannot deny that in the US and around the globe, there is a critical discussion ongoing about the impacts of diversity. But, how specifically does diversity affect the standards landscape?  What are the impacts of diversity on communication and groups working toward a common goal? Can we leverage diversity to make standards stronger? This session through a series of impact statements will explore these questions and more, while attempting to identify the opportunities and challenges of the ever-changing standards landscape.

SESSION 6 – Comparison of Standards and Conformity Assessment Systems in North America

Presenters from US, Mexico and Canada will each present an overview of their country’s standards and conformity assessment system structure. This overview will highlight similarities and differences between the three economies including examples.

SESSION 7 – Idea to Standard: Exploring the Road from Identification to Creation of a Standard

Alec Clark Helping Canadian Companies Scale-Up through Standards Setting
As part of Budget 2017, the Government of Canada introduced the Innovation and Skills Plan with an aim to accelerate the country's economic growth and to create good, well-paying jobs. The Plan highlights the value of standards-setting in advancing Canada's economic interests linked to growing globally successful companies. The Standards Council of Canada (SCC) received $14.4M over five years to develop and advance standardization initiatives that will benefit Canadian innovators, enhance market access and create new middle class jobs. SCC is working closely with leaders from within Canada's existing innovation ecosystem to identify high-potential companies whose technologies, products, platforms, processes and/or services can benefit most from some form of standardization activity. Through early identification and active leadership in standards development, SCC is working directly with innovators, providing tailored end-to-end support in developing effective standardization strategies to drive innovation, accelerate the commercialization and adoption of Canadian innovations, and create a global market advantage for Canadian businesses.

Richard Schule

SESSION 8 – Unique Standards: Case Studies Addressing the Opportunities and Challenges

David Wroth Our Opportunity – Climate Change Adaptation and Standards  
The impact of climate change will increase dramatically in the next 50 years, including increased intensity and frequency of severe weather events, climbing mean temperatures, sea level rise, and shifting climatic zones.  To enable the adaptation of products and systems, standards must be transformed to provide guidance, performance criteria and test methods for the new climatic conditions.  CEN/CENELEC Guide 32 provides an approach for updating standards to address climate change adaptation.  This presentation provides a starting point to address this important opportunity to create and revise standards for climate change adaptation, and will make these standards more resilient and useful.

Karen Reczek Standardization in Forensics – Challenges and Developments   
It has been almost 10 years since the National Research Council issued a critical report citing a lack of scientific research supporting some of the testing and opinions being offered in court, and lack of uniformity in the way forensic laboratories approached cases, potentially impacting the reliability of the work being done, and leading to cases being dismissed, or wrongful convictions. Has the community since been successful in bringing standardization to forensics? Learn about the history and challenges associated with standardization in forensics and get up to date information on current forensics standards development activities nationally, regionally and internationally. 

Jen Rodgers  
Driven to effectively respond to market needs in standardization, while continuing to adhere to the principles of a proven consensus process, ASTM International looks to incorporate innovative approaches to the implementation of technology in the development process, and through the delivery system of standards and services to the marketplace. In new and emerging areas, the ability to engage stakeholders in the development process can present unique challenges. In this presentation, we’ll look at some of those challenges in emerging areas, such as Smart Textiles, and the approaches taken to meet stakeholder expectations.

Closing Keynote

Roy Swift, Realizing the Benefits of Creativity, Innovation, and Quality through Dynamic Diversity

Stephen Covey once said, “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” Dynamic diversity is critical to the future growth of the standards community if they are to keep up with change, meet diverse customer demands, and adapt quickly to environments that are continually evolving. The research on dynamic diversity is very clear, and shows that diversity is essential to growth and prosperity of any organization. In a Forbes study, diversity was found to be the key to creativity and innovation. In another study, groups of diverse problem solvers were found to outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers. Additionally, the Harvard Business School found that diverse, multicultural networks promoted creativity, the foundation for innovation. It is evident that diversity is often the foundation that fosters business success today. This presentation will highlight some of these research findings, and show how they can be practically applied to the standards community. James Surowiecki, author of the book The Wisdom of Crowds, states “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”