The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) will hold a free conference, Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds, on Friday, April 15, 2016, at the FHI 360 Conference Center in Washington, DC.
The event is intended to explore open source and its impact on the standards community and beyond. It will be hosted by ANSI, coordinator of the U.S. voluntary standardization system, in partnership with American University and the George Washington University School of Law.
McCoy Smith, patent, intellectual property, and open source attorney at Intel, will give the keynote address.
Three interactive panel sessions will follow. During the first, "Industry Impact," panelists will describe how open source is already influencing the direction of their products, systems, and services. The second panel, "The Right Tool for the Job: Traditional Standards, Open Source, and Hybridization," will feature panelists who are working effectively within both the traditional and open source environments. And the third panel, "IPR Policies and the Business of Standardization," will address how intellectual property rights policies and business models have been impacted by the open source environment.
Confirmed panelists and moderators will represent (in alphabetical order): Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, Gesmer Updegrove LLP, Google, Intel, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Microsoft, OASIS, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), W3C, and Zeineddin PLLC.
The draft agenda and registration details are available on the event webpage.
Sponsorship opportunities are also available.
The event is free, and all interested stakeholders including those from standards developers, consortia, government, industry, business, consumer groups, and academia are encouraged to attend and share their perspectives, insights, and expertise.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private non-profit organization whose mission is to enhance U.S. global competitiveness and the American quality of life by promoting, facilitating, and safeguarding the integrity of the voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system. Its membership is made up of businesses, professional societies and trade associations, standards developers, government agencies, and consumer and labor organizations. The Institute represents the diverse interests of more than 125,000 companies and organizations and 3.5 million professionals worldwide.
The Institute is the official U.S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and, via the U.S. National Committee, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and is a U.S. representative to the International Accreditation Forum (IAF).