A few weeks ago actually between 14th September till 19th September I was in Seattle.  I was attending the XBRL.US Data forum with folk from Apurba Technologies and our partners at Fujitsu.

It was a great conference. We were around some wonderful people talking XBRL, and all the wonderful ways we can use XBRL as our data format.

And yes it was interesting!!! I am a geek and I am proud. However there was a a reason why I was there, apart from the fact that Seattle is just beautiful!!!

I was along to present at the data forum with my colleague from Fujitsu a solution of enhanced validation of XBRL.  This new solution called XWandCloud would provide all those CFO’s receiving rather official reminders to improve their XBRL filings a simple means to do just that. I am being intentionally polite, if I got such a letter from the SEC, I would be straight onto the Valium.

Then when I calmed down a bit I would register on XWandCloud and get my XBRL filings validated.  Finally after visiting my friendly XBRL doctor from Fujitsu and he has waived his magic XWand on the celestial cloud. I could then relax and take stock to look into the past, present and hypothesize on my future by using Apurba’s Lyticas Prism Cloud, built into XWandCloud. With the Lyticas Prism I could then analyse by pre-market statement using out of the box Key Performance Indicators (the common accounting ones) and compare them to my previous quarters.

For a reasonable subscription I could also see how my company is doing compared to others.  Now all of a sudden my XBRL filing appears to be having a useful purpose other than getting me into a state every damn quarter! I can use it to help my company chart a safe course.

And this leads to the real pearl of wisdom, I gathered from this conference.

XBRL can make a difference to regular folks. It’s not just a regulatory burden placed on companies. I have been aware that XBRL has plenty of uses other than financial, my own company Apurba Tecnologies Inc has been involved in using XBRL in the construction, energy and transportation industries (CET-Taxonomy) with AGC Surety Wells Fargo.

What made the conference specially for me was meeting other folks that felt the same and were doing something about it.

Another area that caught my eye was the use of XBRL as a means of reporting on corporate actions in the financial sector. Just the thought of using XBRL for these purposes made the light bulb turn on. Adoption of such a standard would facilitate data interchange.

This could be used by a financial institution for use within it’s own data ecosystem or could be the currency of a wider data ecosystem involving financial institutions (i.e banks, insurance companies), financial exchanges, private/public sector companies and governments.

It sounds like I am alluding to big data again? Well it seems these days that all rivers lead to that data ocean.

I am still processing all that I learned at the conference, and I will be blogging about it at the data dive during the coming months.

It may be a while before I blog again so I shall leave with some words from the Tao Te Ching –

“The Sea is lord of Ten thousand Streams only because it lies beneath them”.