ISO/TC 211 has just had its 55th plenary meeting; our second hybrid one. It was probably our coldest ever, but the facilities meant we could ignore the fact it rarely got above freezing outside. Some 50 people were very nicely hosted in the Svenska institutet för standarder in Stockholm, with more than that joining one or more meetings via Zoom. My sympathy goes out to those from New Zealand and the west coast of the United States who joined at some very awkward times of day and night. Attendees were from 28 countries and 13 liaison organisations. It was good to see some member countries and several UN organisations taking part for the first time.

As usual more than twenty working and advisory groups met during the week running up to the actual plenary. In different sessions, we heard how Swedish and UN organisations are using our standards and learned more about DGIWG and developments in the European Union. 

Following the system trialled last time, we took simple decisions during the meeting, with three more complex ones open as Committee Internal Ballots. Most of the plenary meeting consisted of informative presentations: we heard about our experience piloting ISO’s new Online Standards Development tool and the ISO SMART project which is looking towards ‘machine readable standards’. We agreed our new Strategic Business Plan and decided to take our first foray into JSON encoding. Of course, there were many other things – apologies if I missed your favourites; the full slide deck is at ISO/TC 211/N 5847 (log in required).