The South-by-Southwest is well known for its film, music, and interactive tracks. The annual SXSW festival (which sounds much more fun than “conference”) is held in Austin, Texas USA. This year it include more than 5,000 events that took place all over the city of Austin.

I had always wanted to attend SXSW to see, hear, and experience the latest trends. Keeping up with the times keeps me excited about the world (and keeps me young at heart). This year, I had the opportunity, not only to attend, but to participate. Because of standards. Really.

The IEEE put on an “Open Future Series” that included a panel on the Internet of Things. The IoT will be enabled through standards, and I was fortunate to be asked to chair the panel. Little did I know that the topic of open standards would be so interesting to those attending and covering SXSW.

Here are a few of the articles, videos, and slides from SXSW and shortly thereafter that deal with the value of open standards:

Tim Berners-Lee on the making of new worlds (article)

Tim Berners-Lee Explains the Necessity of Open Web Standards (article & video)

Tim Berners-Lee and Karen Bartleson on Open Standards: SXSW Forbes Exclusive (YouTube video, same as above)

Two good infrastructure considerations for the internet of things (article)

Digital Telepathy: When Every Thing Connects (panel abstract)

Digital Telepathy: When Every Thing Connects (slides)

Standards: The Connective Tissue Behind the Internet of Things

Revolutionary Technologies Take the Stage at SXSW (article)

Standards: The Jedi Force Behind the Internet of Things (blog post)

And here is another gentleman that I met at SXSW who used standards to change our world, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet:

When standards are part of a huge convention like SXSW, those of us who play the standards game feel like we have arrived. :)

We are continuously scanning the landscape, looking for areas where new standards are needed for electronic design. Those of us in the standards game have had successes and failures in identifying the needs of the design community for ongoing improvements to interoperability.

I have two questions for you, dear readers.

1. What standards should we develop now?

2. Do we need a compliance lab to test our products’ conformance to existing standards?

Let me know what you think. You can post a comment here, or if you wish to stay out of the public view, feel free to contact me directly. It’s easy to reach me through LinkedIn, Twitter @ karenbartleson, and good old fashioned email and phone.

Thanks!

I thought you might find this interesting. As I begin my two-year term as President of the IEEE Standards Association, these are the kinds of standards struggles that I’ll be exposed to. While not diminishing the importance of EDA standards (and the occasional struggle we’ve been through), this standards struggle puts ours in a whole new light, don’t you think?

A bit of background first. The ITU is an assembly of the United Nations which creates international communication standards, among other things. It uses a national-body-based process in contrast to a market-driven process (as most – if not all – EDA standards follow). A treaty, last updated in 1988, called the International Telecommunications Regulations was due for revision last year. And then, global thermo-standards war began…

US says it won’t ratify UN telecom treaty
By Jennifer Martinez     – 12/13/12 05:33 PM ET
The United States said Thursday that it will not sign a United Nations telecommunications treaty that U.S. technology companies warn would disrupt governance of the Internet and open the door to online censorship.

Full text

There are numerous articles about this topic. Let me know if you’d like me to post some more of them.

2012 was relatively quiet in The Standards Game. At least for EDA, that is. Perhaps we as an industry have matured to the level of “Cooperate on Standards, Compete on Products”. I, for one, hope that peace continues to prevail in the standards arena in EDA and that no one has to be sent to their room for a timeout.
:)

May this year bring you peace, health, prosperity, love, and happiness!

The design automation industry serves a global market. Semiconductor design is performed in countries all over the world. Our products rely on standards for quality and interoperability. SystemVerilog, UPF, UVM, and SystemC are just a few of the numerous standards we use that were developed under the OpenStand paradigm. The market-driven standards paradigm didn’t have a name when we created these standards, but the principles were there and we employed them whether we knew it consciously or not.

Beyond the design automation industry, there are countless examples of global, market-driven standards. They have been benefiting humankind for decades and continue to do so. Internet standards, USB, mp3, and even the icky old QWERTY de facto standard touch our lives every day.

If you spot the OpenStand badge out there anywhere, be sure to let me know. It will be good to see the modern paradigm for global standards become recognized for what it has done and will do for society.

“Voluntary adoption” is the last principle of the OpenStand modern paradigm for global standards. Suppliers are free to choose whichever standards they want to implement in their products. Consumers are free to choose the products they prefer. The market determines the success of the standards.

In our industry, this is a given. Market-driven standards are the way we do things. If our standards choices were taken away by national representation groups or government agencies, I suppose we wouldn’t have as many “standards wars”. But I do think it would stifle innovation and reduce our competitiveness.

Competition in the marketplace is what fuels better products and drives innovation, both of which support growing and mature economies, ultimately benefiting society. The freedom for vendors of products and services to select the best possible standards is an essential element of a global economy.

The fourth principle, “Availability”, was challenging to develop, as you might imagine. Global standards must be readily available to everyone if they are to be adopted without barriers. OpenStand calls for standards to be made available under fair terms.

In today’s world, some standards organizations give their standards away at no cost while others charge nominally for them. To encompass different business models of standards organizations, the OpenStand definition of “fair terms” ranges from royalty-free to FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory).

It’s important that I emphasize again: standards development is not without cost. The OpenStand paradigm addresses this practicality by recognizing and respecting the ways that standards organizations fund themselves so they can continue to do their work.

Standards organizations have to determine what resources they need and how they will obtain the resources. Membership dues, sale of standards, government funding, and industrial donations are some of the ways that standards organizations finance their operations and pay their bills. OpenStand understands this.

“Collective empowerment” is the third OpenStand principle. It elucidates the power and value of global standards that help people everywhere, regardless of where they live and what government they have.

The OpenStand paradigm describes collective empowerment as:

“Commitment by affirming standards organizations and their participants to collective empowerment by striving for standards that:

• are chosen and defined based on technical merit, as judged by the contributed expertise of each participant;
• provide global interoperability, scalability, stability, and resiliency;
• enable global competition;
• serve as building blocks for further innovation; and
• contribute to the creation of global communities, benefiting humanity.”

Standards organizations that adhere to this principle strive for the best possible standards that balance technical aspects with other considerations. These standards accelerate innovation while enabling competition. (Cooperate on standards, compete on products.)

Of the five OpenStand principles, this is the one that makes me the most proud to work in the field of standards.

The second principle of the OpenStand modern paradigm for global standardization is “Adherence to Priniciples”. Before I say more, I have to explain the terminology a bit. It sounds like a circular reference, but it’s not. This principle is not stating “you must obey the law”. Instead it refers to the fundamental tenets of standards development. These are consistent with the World Trade Organization’s principles for standards creation from its Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.

If you think of the second principle of OpenStand as “Adherence to Fundamentals” it helps avoid confusion.

The five fundamentals of standardization are (copied from the OpenStand principles):

Due process.

• Decisions are made with equity and fairness among participants. No one party dominates or guides standards development. Standards processes are transparent and opportunities exist to appeal decisions. Processes for periodic standards review and updating are well defined.

Broad consensus.

• Processes allow for all views to be considered and addressed, such that agreement can be found across a range of interests.

Transparency.

• Standards organizations provide advance public notice of proposed standards development activities, the scope of work to be undertaken, and conditions for participation. Easily accessible records of decisions and the materials used in reaching those decisions are provided. Public comment periods are provided before final standards approval and adoption.

Balance.

• Standards activities are not exclusively dominated by any particular person, company or interest group.

Openness.

• Standards processes are open to all interested and informed parties.

The explanations under each fundamental give clarity to them. They are designed to prevent misinterpretation of the terms. My favorite overloaded term is “open”. In the case of OpenStand, “open” does not mean “free standards”, although free standards are certainly recognized under the OpenStand paradigm. Standards development and maintenance requires resources, and there are different funding models for different standards organizations. I’ll talk a little more about this when I describe Principle 4 in a future post. For Principle 2, “open” means participation in developing standards is available to everyone.

The first principle of the OpenStand modern paradigm for global standardization is “Cooperation”. It is elaborated with “Respectful cooperation between standards organizations, whereby each respects the autonomy, integrity, processes, and intellectual property rules of the others.”

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations in the world that create standards to benefit society in countless ways. Each organization has its own processes for developing standards, maintaining them, and addressing intellectual property rights.

An organization may adopt the processes of another organization in their entirety. It might base its processes on existing ones but with modifications to suit their constituency. Or the organization could develop its own processes from scratch. (Personally, I don’t recommend starting from scratch. It takes a long time and it’s better to build on the vast experience of others.) Expecting an existing, effective standards organization to change its processes to match another one is simply not realistic. OpenStand recognizes that there is more than one way to produce a high quality, well-adopted standard. This is notably true when the market-driven standards paradigm is contrasted with the national body standardization model. Both have served and will continue to serve humanity well.

Cooperation among standards organizations – and let me emphasize respectful – means that one organization doesn’t intrude into another’s back yard and take its standards to be its own without permission. It also provides opportunities for efficiency when organizations don’t consciously duplicate the work of others. Additional efficiencies are realized when a standards organization respects an originating organization and doesn’t insist on rerunning a standard through its own processes in order to recognize the standard’s validity.

Intellectual property issues remain one of the biggest challenges the standards community faces. Established and effective standards organizations have developed intellectual property rules that have been proven to work for them. They take into account local laws and global policies. A standards organization may choose to review the rules of another and modify its own rules or leave its rules as-is. As with standardization processes, there is more than one way to effectively address intellectual property rights in the framework of standards.

Because there will always be numerous standards organizations serving the needs of their local and global economies and citizens, the best way forward is for them to respect each other and cooperate.