For 20-plus years, I have struggled to learn Japanese. A primary challenge has been to remember some 2,000 characters Japan imported from China. Because they derive from ideograms (ie, graphic symbols of ideas), like many students, I have tried to remember the character by looking for the graphical elements of meaning still present within it.
There have been several threads behind looking at XBRL for corporate actions. The problem is long-standing and multinational.
Max Mansur is a Global Market Manager in Securities Markets at SWIFT. He works in the asset servicing domain addressing the needs of custodians, securities market infrastructures, broker/dealers, investment managers, issuers, and their agents. Mr. Mansur has 31 years of information technology experience including system design, program management, quality, and financial solutions.
XBRL Japan held a workshop in February on “How to Use XBRL for Analysis,” which I discussed in an interview with this blog. The attendees — analysts, data intermediaries, and representatives of securities firms — focused on how users can analyze statements using the XBRLized earnings digests that the Tokyo Stock Exchange has been providing on the Web since last year.
Paul Wilkinson is Chief Strategy Officer of CLOUD, Inc., the Consortium for Local Ownership and Use of Data. He was Senior Adviser to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox from 2005 until 2009.
Trevor Pyman is Director and CEO of XBRL Australia Ltd. and an independent consultant to PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Three years ago keeping up with developments in the XBRL world was fairly simple: create a Google Alert for keyword XBRL, do periodic searches in a couple of engines, and sign up for daily digests from the XBRL Public Yahoo group.
Because Hitachi Data Systems hosted the XBRL Technology Workshop & Summit, my objectivity may be justifiably questioned if I sing its praises. But the event, presented by XBRL US, was much more interesting than I had thought it would be.
“Where are the missing masses?” is a question that social theorist Bruno Latour poses for sociologists. It also a useful query for the XBRL community.
In an ideal world, properly formatted XBRL files should render using the various software packages on the market matching the presentation of the HTML or PDF version of the same information.
