osrin.net

Looking at the results from the ISO that seem to be poping up all over the web it appears that DIS29500 has now become a fully ratified as an ISO standard.

I’m sure that my colleagues will talk at length about what this means from here for the file format standard, a bright and exciting future where the world can look at issues like interoperability with other file formats and technologies in an environment where the specification is under the stewardship of a global community.

I will add links at the bottom of this post as they appear over the coming few hours.

When I look at the outcome of the voting here in the Asia Pacific region I’m personally less interested in the vote itself, and more interested in what the vote that each country cast teaches me.

Each vote might suggest that the process did a good job of listening to a country’s comments and responding well to them, in other cases it might suggest to me that the process was less understanding of a particular country’s needs and highlight areas where we still have work to do. In other cases where I know the process did a good job with the requirements of a particular country it may offer some level of insight into interpersonal relationships and the weight that they carry.

Whichever way, the vote outcome has the potential to help me in my role at Microsoft, and to help Microsoft work out how to do a better job of working in every country where we have a subsidiary.

The relevance of OpenXML as a key piece of technology and the way in which the community did or didn’t embrace it in each country is one interesting indicator that helps us understand a little more about our overall platform and our company as a whole in that particular geography.

Anyway, the final vote outcome for the countries here in Asia Pacific is outlined in the table below, along with the original position that each of the countries took on at the end of the technical evaluation period on September 2nd;

Overall this represents four countries in Asia Pacific who have moved from DISAPPROVE to APPROVE, and nine countries who have stayed with the decision that they made on September 2nd, six of those were already an APPROVE or an ABSTAIN.

Only India, China and New Zealand decided to stay with their position of voting DISAPPROVE for OpenXML.

When I look back on the last year’s events it is amazing how much we have learned as a company.

A year ago only a select number of individuals understood the process of standardization or how those processes worked in their individual countries. Today the number of individuals who understand and care about standards within Microsoft is probably in the thousands.

When it comes to living up the commitments that we made in the recent announcement about Interoperability Principles the work over the last year with OpenXML is a good start. There is a lot more for us to do though, and I sincerely hope that everybody who I have had the honour to work with in the past year stays as engaged over the next.

While I know it sounds trite, I’m genuinely looking forward to continuing the many discussions that we have started across the region, and very excited to see where those discussions take us.

Other posts on the final outcome of the process;

Microsoft Press Release, Brian Jones, Jason Matusow, Stephen McGibbon, Andy Updegrove, Jerry Fishenden, Gray Knowlton