Ladies and Gentlemen,
The ISO Week 2017 will take place in Germany. On behalf of DIN, the German member for ISO, it is my great pleasure to invite you to Berlin. We are enthusiastic about hosting the ISO General Assembly 2017.
The path to standardization contains lots of new challenges. The world around us is changing at an enormous pace. New technologies and innovations call for new ideas and more flexible standardization processes. We need to find new ways to collaborate and to satisfy the needs of our customers – in the field of standards development as well as in publishing.
This is why we dedicate the ISO week in Germany to the future of standardization. We would like to discuss new challenges as well as their solutions with you. We will share best practices from ISO members from all over the world. Together with all of you we would like to work out, how we can prepare ourselves and the international standardization community for these challenges. We would like to encourage you to think out of the box and reflect how we can understand and fulfill current and future expectations of our stakeholders in the best possible way. It will be essential to secure the future of our international standardization system. This is also reflected in the theme of the ISO week in Germany: „Open-minded. Open for change.”
This central theme will also link the various sessions: A key note on digital transformation, a panel discussion on how we can cooperate with other organizations and consortia, various break-outs where we can discuss how to attract young experts, how to provide standards more quickly and how to work in virtual teams. In addition, we will fully dedicate the Open Session on Friday to our theme “Open-minded. Open for change”. In the morning we hold sessions on various subjects that help us to meet the new challenges and in the afternoon we offer visits to innovative companies and startups in the fields of automotive, smart data and medical technology.
Don’t miss our Open Session on Friday and the opportunity to shape the future of standardization together with us. Be open for new ideas and provide your input.
I count on you and look forward to seeing you all again at the ISO Week in Berlin from 18 to 22 September 2017.
Christoph Winterhalter CEO, DIN
Dear Delegates,
I am very pleased to welcome you to the 40th ISO General Assembly. This year we’re in Berlin, and I would like to thank DIN, our member for Germany, for hosting this special event.
In fact, 2017 is a particularly special year as we are celebrating a number of anniversaries, including the centenary of DIN.
DIN was created in 1917 as the Standards Association of German Industry (NADI - Normenausschuss der deutschen Industrie”) and became a member of ISO in 1951. Ever since, the organization has played an active role in the work of ISO, both in our governance groups and as a leader in the technical work. I would like to congratulate DIN CEO, Mr Christoph Winterhalter, and his team, on this special occasion. I am very happy that we will be able to celebrate together in Berlin.
2017 is also the 70th anniversary of ISO. While much has changed since our 25 founding members met in London to bring the organization into existence, much remains the same. For example, the need for collaboration, for searching for consensus and finding common-ground – core building blocks of the ISO process – remain as important as ever. Our annual week of meetings is a unique opportunity for us to share ideas and best practice and to come together to find solutions to some of our common challenges.
This year, the theme for the week focuses on how we can support a more flexible standardization system; one that responds to the evolving needs of today’s, and tomorrow’s, customers and stakeholders. “Open-minded. Open for change”, around which our hosts have designed a thought-provoking open session, will help us focus on the future of standardization, on new tools, new products and new processes, and to collectively explore some of the common challenges many NSBs face.
I look forward to seeing you all again in Berlin for the ISO week in Germany.
Dr ZHANG XiaogangISO President
