I've been blog-tagged!

Well, last week I received an email from Frank Buytendijk. What could it be? A new million-dollar lead for our Hyperion Practice? He won the lottery and wanted to share a million or so with us? Nothing of that, it was something more shocking. I had been tagged by Frank. Blog-tagged to be precise. I had never heard of blog-tagging before but a quick look at the Wikipedia learned me the first definition (in the Wikipedia) was from september 2006.
The idea is, just like at cocktail parties to share something that most people wouldn't know about you. I tried to track back the line to the first blogger who started this intiatieve. I found out it was Jeff Pulver. However it turned out not to be that easy to track whole line. A short investigation produced the following result.
The link from Frank Buytendijk (Hyperion) goes back to Andy Bitterer from Gartner. Andy received his invitation from Dave Yockelson who is a member from the META Group. From there on I lost track. However a nice overview of bloggers who played this game can be found at The Blog Tag Tree. Unfortunately the list is not up to date.

Okay, now let's start with a list of five things about our CPM-practitioners most people don't know (or don't want to know ha ha ha). You can use this photo to obtain a visual of the cpm-practitioner or just have a look at his blogger profile.

1. Let's first start with myself. Before I joined Deloitte I was in the Graduate Programe Economics & Finance at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. As you all know, studying cost a lot of money so I needed a job on the side! I applied for a job at the Baja Beach Club. What can I say about it? Just check the link and you will find out why it's so hilarious. In the picture mentioned before I am the guy to the left on the lower row.
2. Let's move on to Bart van Onzen. Funny thing about Bart is he likes R&B clubs, however he doesn't like the R&B music itself. So it's for each of you to decide what he likes. It has something to do with girls (sorry Bart). Bart is the fourth guy from the left at the upper row.
3. Rutger van den Berg has a couple of funny things, however, I will not mention all of them. Some things are not really professional (or I am wrong Rutger ha ha ha). When Rutger was a student he wore a mullet (long hair till his shoulders - Business upfront, Party in the Back!). Before Rutger was a student he worked for the Secret Service (back then he was just fifteen). He retired from active duty at the age of twenty. The reason he retired was his addiction to chocolate, which can be a pain in the ass during a stake-out! Rutger is the first guy from the right at the upper row.
4. Now we are talking about addictions, it's time to introduce Damien Wiegman. Damien always looks like he just came back from holiday. Completely (well, completely I don't know actually!) tanned and always ready for a party. The tanning center is really happy to have him as a customer. Damien addiction is for sure the tanning studio. Damien is the second guy from the left at the lower row. As you can see on the picture he took a head-shot during the paintball session.
5. Last but not least is Edwin van den Broek. I know Edwin from the time I just started at Deloitte. At that time he was driving an small car (Opel Corsa), he was working at big project at Delta Nuts (a energy company in Middelburg) and living in Utrecht. He was renovating his house so he decided to drive back and forward each day. At night time he was renovating his house and with a few hours sleep he went back to Middelburg. So Edwin was driving a little bit less than 400 km each day. You can check out his route description at Google Maps. Edwin is the guy to the left at the lower row.

So enough funny details about our CPM-practitioners. Now it's my time to tag some bloggers.

1. Ron Tolido
2. Dan Bricklin
3. Martin Kloos (dutch only)
4. Big Four Alumni
5. Roberdan

Okay guys: TAG! You're it now...

14th International XBRL Conference – Philadelphia, PA

Nearly 500 attendees from diverse segments of the business, government, and academic communities met in Philadelphia last week for the 14th International XBRL Conference, evidence of the positive momentum and great interest in XBRL among regulators, accounting standard setters, analysts and the public and private sectors across the globe. The city of Philadelphia set an appropriate backdrop for a theme of revolutionary times, relevant today to the XBRL phenomenon and its potential global impact on capital markets, financial and business reporting, and business transformation.

Deloitte is playing an active and increasing role in XBRL on a global scale because of its importance to our clients and the potential effect that it will have on the external audit and other services that we provide. We were a platinum sponsor of the Philadelphia conference with significant presence, including presentations from leadership, technical training, and Deloitte representation from North America, Europe, and Australia.

Key Speakers
Bob Kueppers, Deputy CEO, Deloitte USA LLP, joined a host of financial industry luminaries to address the plenary session, including leaders of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), International Federation of Accountants (IAFC), Bank of Spain and, from the United States: the SEC, FDIC, FASB, FAF, and the AICPA. Bob believes that XBRL can play a key role in helping companies meet the challenges of managing their businesses and evolving reporting and regulatory requirements. “(XBRL) facilitates reporting information for multiple purposes, which is critical in the current environment of multi-GAAP reporting, overlapping regulatory requirements and dynamic internal reporting needs. It provides the platform for truly integrated reporting, bringing financial, risk and control, and operational information together.”

Bob spoke about the impact of XBRL on the profession. “We need to make sure we understand and are prepared for the potential effect of XBRL in conducting audits, by asking ourselves: What will we be auditing in the future? (We know we will be providing assurance on financial statements filed in XBRL – what about other business information?) How will we execute our audits in an XBRL reporting environment? How can the ability to transfer XBRL data without manual re-entry be used to improve the audit trail? How can the power and flexibility of XBRL be used to develop better audit tools? In the future, will auditors be auditing the financial statements OR will we be auditing the process by which statements are prepared?”

Bob also called for the profession and all stakeholders to “take the lead in driving XBRL forward, playing an active role in shaping the future of business reporting, and dramatically shorten the time that it takes for investors, regulators, public companies and the accounting profession to reap the benefits of these powerful new ideas. “

A transcript of Bob’s speech can be found at: https://www.deloitteresources.com/pgContent.aspx?cid=240053

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox was the keynote speaker at the conference. The SEC has been redoubling efforts to get U.S. companies to use XBRL in financial statements. Chairman Cox reiterated that the SEC is working to accelerate the development of U.S. GAAP taxonomies and is committed to their completion by mid-2007. This major undertaking, in which Deloitte is becoming involved, will result in a fully functional U.S. GAAP taxonomy that will support financial statement filings by this time next year.

Reconciling differences between U.S. and international accounting standards is another area where Cox expects interactive data to be helpful. “It's easy to imagine more that the world can do with this powerful new capability… It is already possible to imagine that XBRL taxonomies — written without bias toward any particular set of accounting rules — could be used to instantly translate any given set of financial data from one accounting system to another.”

Chairman Cox also commented on the effects of XBRL on our profession. “I want to commend the XBRL International Assurance Working Group, which met at the World Congress of Accountants in Istanbul last month, and will meet again here on Thursday. The Working Group is absolutely right to consider how the adoption of XBRL might improve the audit process. Just last month, in a report issued at the Global Public Policy Symposium in Paris, six of the world's top accounting firms extolled the benefits of XBRL, and firmly stated their belief that its adoption will significantly lower both internal and external audit costs.” (This report can be found at: http://www.xbrl.org/Announcements/Interactive-Data-Assurance-2006-11-10.pdf)
A full transcript of Chairman Cox’s speech can be found at http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2006/spch120506cc.htm

The Deloitte Exhibit
At the Deloitte conference booth we provided practical demonstrations to showcase the technology we’re already using around XBRL. Two tools were featured. The Deloitte Radar (DDAR) pilot tool which benchmarks financial information using XBRL data, and begins to bring the idea of XBRL as an integral part of the audit approach. One of our member firms, Deloitte Australia, is developing and presented a tool to support an online service that will be made available to small and medium sized companies in Australia. Through this tool, companies provide their financial data that is then converted to XBRL to meet a variety of external filing requirements or for internal consolidation.

XBRL Technical Training
Yossef Newman, Deloitte Project Manager for XBRL and Jeff Hansen, AERS, delivered a full day technical training program, "Preparing XBRL Financial Reports". This XBRL International certified course introduced participants to basic XBRL concepts and common XBRL report editing tools, and included hands on exercises in the preparation of XBRL based financial reports.

For more information regarding the 14th International XBRL Conference, please visit the website at http://conference.xbrl.org/ The 15th International XBRL Conference is scheduled to be held in Munich, Germany in June 2007.

Deloitte’s leadership role in this important gathering is noteworthy, and consistent with the position we are taking, both in the U.S. and globally, in the XBRL initiative. Though we can’t be sure of the pace of its adoption, the conference underscored for me the fact that we are at a critical point in time where we must recognize the importance of XBRL to our business. The impact that it might have on reshaping our business models for auditing and the services that we provide to both attest and non-attest clients requires a rapid response and increasing involvement on our part. When we also consider the demands that are potentially at hand from the regulators, and the needs of our clients who are pursuing various uses of XBRL, our mandate for action becomes clear.