ISO/TC 184/SC 4 is meeting 2 - 6 November in a full virtual plenary consistent with the latest guidance from ISO regarding virtual meetings.
As the saying goes, "May you live in interesting times!" How prophetic can such a simple statement be? As we head into our 80th Plenary meeting, my first and most important concern is one of health and safety. An ISO/CS has been communicating frequently, we are prevented from meeting in person and will be holding a virtual Plenary meeting. We simply can't afford to create a situation where the mere act of interaction with each other creates risk to one's health and has the potential to bring harm to you and those you care most about. Please take care of yourself, utilize the appropriate protections and don't forget your mental health as we head into the changing seasons.
Despite the issues coming from the pandemic, we continue to see solid demand for our work. Now more than ever before, the world is coming to rely on the seamless exchange of computer interpretable data for conducting business, maintaining relationships, and progressing economic growth. To that end, we have been very active in promoting our work to our parent committee ISO/TC 184 with the continued participation on the Ad Hoc Group on Digital Twin, ISO/IEC JTC 1 AG 11 for the same topic, IEC/ISO TC/65 JWG 21 for Smart Manufacturing and our continued participation in the ISO/TMB Smart Manufacturing Coordination Committee. In addition, our expertise is being sought in consultation with ISO on the future of standards, so called SMART standards and as a proposed pilot for a new ISO authoring environment for standards.
We are innovating and adapting ourselves as well. We have multiple Living Labs underway, the most of any TC or SC in ISO, ranging from accelerated methods to manage vocabulary to utilization of URLs in standards.iso.org, to managing standards through modern code based control systems like Jira/Git. We are also working on new ways to collaborate with IEC through a joint procedure on managing standards as a database utilizing the IEC CDD. All are intended to make us more efficient, bringing value to our end user with higher quality, and reduced flow time.
As we turn our attention to the Plenary itself, you will see that the agenda is markedly different from our typical format. Similar to our experience in May, we will be adopting a full virtual format designed to meeting our highest priority needs while acknowledging the multiple time zones everyone is now participating in. We have uncoupled the working groups from the Plenary itself to give flexibility to Convenors in planning what they need to plan in order to support the event. We have also published more schedule information and briefing materials with videos to assist delegates in having a successful event. Despite the challenges of the format, we are figuring out how to bring more content back to the event like the Orientation briefing, the PPC Change Board, and the joint meetings of WG3/12/13. The Quality Committee even has a virtual quiz bowl scheduled! You won't want to miss testing your knowledge of Quality methods at this event.
In closing, I want to thank each one of you for what you do contributing to the development of standards and representing the strong technical foundation for this community. The dedication of each one of our experts is deeply appreciated. Despite the challenge of our current situation we will get through this together.
Thank you, stay safe, and take care of yourself!
Kenny Swope
Chair, ISO/TC 184/SC 4