This page lists a number of resources available to those wishing to learn more about standardization, standards organizations, and the standards process, or to set up and implement a standards process within an organization. I'll be continually adding more links to this page.

Essential Documents and Best Practices

In my paper Principles to Live By I discuss a number of general principles upon which the technical process of a standards-setting organization should be based. These principles are defined in three related documents, the U.S. Standards Strategy, the ANSI Essential Requirements, and the World Trade Organization's Technical Barriers to Trade agreement. I suggest becoming familiar with these general principles before starting any standards activities. The Essential Requirements document is also useful for help in defining a committe process that complies with ANSI requirements, even if you aren't interested in becoming ANSI-accredited.

An interesting paper on the subject of standards, with a history and background of standards activities in the United States is NIST's ABC's of Standards Related Activities.

Training Resources

I provide Standards Best Practices consulting on organizational structure, startups, membership policies, technical committee process and administration, and training of organization staff and volunteers. I can be reached here.

ANSI has a page with introductory learning materials at www.StandardsLearn.org

The Standards Engineering Society (SES) has educational and reference materials on their web site, and hosts conferences and provides certification for standards professionals. 

Standards Blogs and Web Pages

I'll recommend, of course, my blog on standards best practices. I generally avoid the news of the day, though I use current situations as object lessons in how to structure an organization and its policies to prevent various problems that organizations occasionally encounter. This is a continuation of the Kavi Standards Blog I wrote while at Kavi.

ConsortiumInfo.org is Andy Updegrove's site on consortia and standards setting, including daily news and commentary, monthly email newsletter, and bibliography of standards-related publications.

An overview of standards activities within the U.S. federal government is at www.Standards.gov.

A list of academic papers, lectures, and book reviews written by Ken Krechmer on the subject of standards is found at http://www.csrstds.com/klist.html

Publications

Two books by Carl Cargill of Sun Microsystems provide background on standards setting practice and theory, Information Technology Standardization: Theory, Process, and Organizations (1989, Digital Equipment Corp.) and Open Systems Standardization: A Business Approach (1997, Prentice Hall PTR).

The Bolin Group has published a series of volumes of papers presented at their Standards Edge conferences.  

The Standards Engineering Society (SES) has a list of standards-related publications on their web site.

Other collections of (mostly academic) papers are available in Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure, ed. Brian Kahin and Janet Abbate, MIT Press 1995; Information Standards and Standardization: A Global Perspective, ed. Kai Jakobs, Idea Group Publishing 2000; and Information Technology Standards and Standarization Research, ed. Kai Jakobs, Idea Group Publishing 2006.

The American Bar Association has published a guide to patent and IPR policy in standards setting, Standards Development Patent Policy Manual, ed. Jorge Contreras, 2007.

Existing Work

Before starting a new standards organization or activity, I recommend spending a bit of time to see if there's already an existing organization or activity that you could participate in. This saves a lot of duplication of effort and prevents market confusion.

Partial lists of existing standards organizations are available at ANSI, CEN, SES, WSSN, and ConsortiumInfo.org.

Partial lists of existing completed standards are at NSSN. You should also check with the individual organizations to see what work they have completed or is in progress.

Standards are available for purchase from IHS, ILI, ANSI, TechStreet, and other sources listed here, or for free or fee from the individual standards organizations.

Organizational Hosting Services

Organizations that are too small to be able to afford hiring fulltime staff, need a virtual office, or need ocassional marketing or event management serrvices should consider using an Association Management Company (AMC). Association management and hosting services are provided by companies such as Virtual, VTM, Global Inventures, and Forapolis. These service providers work using a variety of models, from providing an ala carte menu of services up to making your standards activity part of their organization's process such as at IEEE-ISTO and OASIS.

My Papers

Please go to my Standards Papers page to see papers that I've written and published on the topic of standards.