July 28 - 30, 2009

This 2 ½ day event, hosted by Hitachi Data Systems at their headquarters in Santa Clara, California, brought together XML developers and other professionals from around the Pacific Rim who are implementing XBRL reporting standards worldwide and who were interested in learning more.

Discussion sessions and hands-on workshops were held to educate and generate ideas on solving issues in XBRL development such as rendering, versioning, data quality and validation, among others.

Highlights from the workshop:

• XBRL US, XBRL Japan and the IASB are working together to bring convergence to public company reporting taxonomies for Japan’s EDINET, US GAAP and IFRS, through an ongoing evaluation of architecture, content, and the development and maintenance approach
• Many companies in the US have begun filing per the mandate by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with fewer extensions and better data quality than expected
• Maintaining taxonomies requires constant review, evaluation and change by all users to ensure high-quality, consistent data; the maintenance process in Japan and the US were compared and contrasted
• Corporate actions is cited as the next major initiative for XBRL in the US marketplace, driven by SWIFT, DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) and XBRL US; a draft taxonomy has been developed which will soon be posted to www.xbrl.us for member review
• XBRL was cited as an important measure to measure social investing returns needed by all types of investors, ranging from philanthropic, who need to understand the social impact of the program to market investors, looking for financial return.
• XBRL US is building tools for preparers, software companies and users of data including a database of US GAAP extensions from filings submitted, a tool to let users check that their XBRL-formatted documents are consistent with the US GAAP Taxonomy and a change management tool to evaluate taxonomy version changes
• Interns who have been working with XBRL US over the Summer presented the results of project assignments covering the building of an extension database, review of adherence to the EDGAR Filer Manual, corporate actions and use of the XBRL formula linkbase.