After being witness to a multitude of massive corporate accounting scandals, the world has been forced to re-evaluate almost every area of how business is conducted. A new day is dawning in the world of information, and the people are demanding more visibility into the everyday operations of companies and governments. In order to pacify the public outcry for increased knowledge, regulatory controls such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Base III have been enacted. In addition, regulatory agencies like the SEC are rapidly embracing new approaches to providing the public with information and data through the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The SEC and other governing bodies have recognized that the democratization of corporate and government data, through the use of XBRL, will guarantee a higher level of transparency and usability. Now like never before, transparency is allowing for a shift of power from corporations to the people. Because information is easily available for anyone to download for free, analysis and comparisons between the big guys can be done on a large assortment of public data. This information revolution will no longer allow companies to operate in secrecy and will provide people with the data they need to avoid future bailouts and economic turmoil.
Gary Thompson is Co-founder and President of CLOUD, Inc. (www.cloudinc.org), a non-profit technology standard consortia founded in March 2009 and based in Austin, Texas. Prior to CLOUD, Gary has been involved with numerous startups, all of which push the leading-edge of their industries, including his most recent role as founding VP of Sales and Marketing of Kimbia, Inc., a Web 2.0 online fundraising company for Giving Power™. Gary also served in several sales management capacities at Apple, Inc. over two decades. Former Governor Bush appointed Gary to the eGovernment Task Force for the State of Texas in 1999 and was reappointed by Governor Perry to the Texas Online Authority until 2004.
In March 2000, during the early days of SXSW Interactive, the Texas eCommerce Association (an organization founded by Gary) co-hosted the Texas eComm Ten Awards with SXSWi. The gala was a black-tie affair, featuring Dan Rather of CBS News, Michael Dell, and Flip Filipowski of divine interventures. It celebrated those early days of the “dot com” era recognizing the top ton visionaries of eCommerce from Terry Jones of Travelocity.com to Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban of then Broadcast.com (prior to their sale to Yahoo!).
Jordan Woodard’s professional world revolves around fusing technology and accounting to create a more responsible, transparent financial reporting ecosystem. He worked with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a number of years before joining Rivet Software, where he now works with Fortune 500 companies on a daily basis to comply with recent SEC mandates requiring financial reporting in XBRL format. In non-geek speak, XBRL transforms static financial data into dynamic information that can compared, analyzed and quickly understood by numerous stakeholders. XBRL also makes malfeasance more difficult to hide while providing a universal language for corporate financial reporting.
