Ladies and gentlemen

On behalf of the World Standardisation Cooperation (WSC) I am very pleased to welcome you to this International Cooperation for Education about Standardization (ICES) workshop during this the first WSC academic week.

WSC is a partnership between my organization, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

WSC’s aim is to strengthen and advance the voluntary consensus-based international standardization system.

The partnership helps us to respond to the need for international standards as technologies converge and innovation brings new ways to work sustainably, economically, environmentally and socially.

ISO, IEC and ITU are very keen to increase dialogue with academic institutions in order to raise awareness about the economic and social benefits of standards, and to foster cooperation and joint initiatives.

Many new technologies originate in the minds of academics.

Academia has made great contributions to many standards, and our organizations have a long and profitable history of engagement with the world's universities and academic institutions.

We strongly believe that the profit that we gain from this is reflected in the benefits that academia can gain from attending our meetings, networking with world-class engineers and getting a unique perspective on the development of today’s latest technologies.

In recent years we have begun to explore how to increase our engagement with academia.

This event is one example.

Over the course of this week we will give you much more detail on initiatives promoted by ISO, IEC and ITU to recognize academic excellence, namely the ISO Award, the IEC Challenge and Schools competition, and the ITU Kaleidoscope event.

In ITU there is strong support among the membership to create a new membership category for academia and a substantially reduced membership fee of 2,000 USD a year.

Participation for universities will offer many benefits:

• Networking opportunities: With the world’s major companies
• Global exposure: The opportunity to become part of an international team creating leading standards shaping tomorrow’s industries
• Access to resources and events of our organizations
• Prestige: The possibility that your work may be adopted as international standards
• And Education: The opportunity to profit from understanding of the open and transparent standardization-making environment of our organizations

Ultimately though we can always do more and learn from engagement opportunities such as this week’s event.

We are particularly interested in the work of ICES, and share the belief that young technologists, economists, and business students should be exposed as early as possible in their professional careers to the unique value proposition of standards.

Hopefully this will create a new standards culture that will feed into the technical committees of IEC, ISO and ITU.

We welcome your advice on what channels are open to us and look forward to an interesting and stimulating discussion.

Thank you