International Organization for Standardization. The ISO is a voluntary, nontreaty organization founded in 1946. Its members are the national standards organizations of the 89 member countries, including ANSI (U.S.), BSI (GB), AFNOR (France), DIN (Germany), et al. It has issed over 5000 standards (including the OSI) and has almost 200 Technical Committees. Each TC has subcommittees (SCs) that are further divided into Working Groups (WGs). Proposals may be made to establish a TC. Roughly 30,000 "volunteers" - experts in their fields - participate as national delegations, chosen by the ISO member for the country concerned. Most of these volunteers are either government officials who want their country's particular standard adopted or people who are assigned to this by their employers, who are trying to get their products standardized.

(1) One of the national standards orgs feel the need for an international standard in a certain area.
(2) A Working Group is formed
(3) The Working Group establishes a Committee Draft (CD), which is circulated to all members, who then have 6 months for comments/criticism
(4) If approved, the revised document, called the [Draft International Standard (DIS), is circulated for voting.
(5) The final text of the International Standard (IS) is approved and published. This process can take years (we're talking about committees here).

Also a cheesy personal ad acronym which stands for In Search Of - It's often used to delineate the this-is-who-I-am section of the ad from the this-is-who-I-want section (for ads so structured, anyway).

I often see it terribly misused (perusing the personals ads?? who? ME?????) as in "GWM ISO of TSG" -- did you catch the redundant 'of' ??

Film Term
In photography, the ISO have defined the standard for measuring film speed. The ISO rating of a film gives a (relative) indication of how quickly the emulsion on the surface of the film reacts to light.

A film's ISO rating is a combination of it's ASA rating and the equivalent DIN rating. For example, an ISO 200/24° rating indicates a film speed rated at 200 ASA/24° DIN. In reality, the DIN rating is less commonly used, (probably because it uses a logarithmic scale), so the ASA and ISO ratings are effectively interchangeable.

The higher the ISO number, the "faster" the film is said to be. A doubling in ISO speed indicates twice the light sensitivity.

Incentive Stock Option -- a specific type of stock option usually granted at an early-stage startup. It has specific tax "benefits" that a Non-Qualified Stock Option does not, but is also subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax.

ISO was founded in 1947 (not 1946) and is based out of Geneva. It is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 130 (not 89) countries, having one body from each country. ISO is not an acronym but derived from the Greek isos, meaning “equal”. This way the international word does not change depending on the language or country in which it is being used – yes, ISO is so consistent that even the name is standardized across all countries.

ISO’s mission is to promote the development of standardization to facilitate the international exchange of goods and services and to develop cooperation in intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. International standards make the modern, globalized world possible in the following ways:

  1. Improves worldwide progress in trade liberalization
  2. Assists interpenetration of industry sectors
  3. Facilitates worldwide communication
  4. Provides global standards for emerging technologies
  5. Assists developing countries in creating infrastructures

Some examples of widely used standards are the following:

  1. ISO film speed code for photographic equipment (mentioned above)
  2. Telephone and banking cards for worldwide use
  3. Paper sizes
  4. ISO 14000 series for environmental management
  5. International codes for country names, currencies, and languages

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