Converging next month on Vancouver, Canada, will be an international assembly of regulators, institutional investors, equity exchange executives, banks, CFOs, controllers and other senior finance executives to discuss XBRL and other ways to make business data more interactive, reliable, timely and accessible. The keynote at the global conference will be U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, who has consistently been a strong advocate of XBRL and the modernization of the SEC's EDGAR system.

In recent years XBRL has gone global with the Chinese government recently mandating its use and the Japanese government requiring companies to file in XBRL by April 2008. According to the XBRL International Consortium, 550 of the world's largest technology, accounting, financial services and government regulatory agencies in 30 countries–including the IRS, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank, the FDIC, IBM, AIG and the International Accounting Standards Board–are involved in the development and use of XBRL. Speakers at the Vancouver conference to be held Dec. 3 through 6, reflect the international nature of the technology. Besides Cox, they include: Ontario Securities Commission Chairman and CEO David Wilson; Paul Madden, the program manager for standard business reporting at the Australian Treasury; Jose Maria Roldan, the director general of banking regulation for the Bank of Spain; Usha Narayanan, the executive director of the Exchange of India; and Toshinori Kobayashi, director of enforcement of corporate disclosures at the Japanese Financial Services Agency.