XBRL Data Forum
The annual XBRL US Conference was held in Seattle this week and saw a wide range of talks on both the SEC mandate and developments in XBRL data consumption and analysis. Highlights included a keynote speech from John Connors, former Microsoft CFO and now Managing Partner at leading VC, Ignition Partners. Connors described the accelerating innovation that is impacting business and the central part that data, specifically structured data, now has to play. Taylor Hawes, long time senior Microsoft Executive and leading XBRL advocate lead a live demonstration of the way that his Finance team is able to combine unstructured data and XBRL data to provide his organisation with vital information about the current acquisition of Nokia.
A consistent theme of the conference was data quality and consistency and there were a number of interesting talks on this important issue, including updates on HR5405. The conference heard about developments at the SEC and the way that it is using XBRL data, as well as the way that the FASB is increasingly embedding XBRL into its process for developing standards. There were updates on the DATA Act and a very interesting set of sessions on a proposed “Construction, Energy and Transportation” taxonomy, to modernise the process of construction contract surety bonds. In addition, the first meeting of the new XBRL International Corporate Actions Working Group was kicked off successfully at the conference.
Numerous data providers gave examples of the benefits that structured data provides to US investors. We’ll feature some of these in the coming weeks.
