End of Year Message 2019
2019 has been a personal milestone year for me; with recruitment of our Technical Director, Léon van Berlo, I feel we now have the minimum viable core leadership team. We’ve delivered major key standards projects (Bridge, Rail with Road in its final furlong) have delivered formal Candidates Standards for public comment, our investment in partnerships to help deliver broader engagement and working solutions particularly with GS1 and ODA. I’m delighted at the progress with these partnership which have really flourished.
These are on top of our continuing achievements in respect of successful summits (thank you to China and Germany), the addition of new Chapters (Poland, Hong Kong and Turkey), the growth in our membership base (particularly from the vendor industry this year) and the steady improvement in the leadership and activities within our Solutions and Standards program and the Compliance Program. The Awards have been well received and provide much need Case Study materials. Our regular newsletters have highlighted much of the details in these areas so I will not repeat them here. They are also communicated through our growing on-line channels and community and I encourage you to join in the ongoing discussions.
Looking ahead to 2020, I foresee another exciting and challenging year. I am looking forward to further developing and communicating the Value of Open Standards and Solutions messages and ask you to join in that work. We are working on a Strategic Technical Road Map which we see expect to be invaluable to our planning. Refocussing on standards implementation and delivering a viable ecosystem for users will be a new phase. We hope to welcome new initiatives for the Power and Digital Supply Chains communities and anticipate further growth in the Chapter.
I wish you all a restful time over the coming weeks and I look forward to another fantastic year in 2020.
Please tell your colleagues what we are collectively doing and ask them to join in.
Seasonal best wishes
Richard Petrie