At 07:13 AM 10/2/2003, Chiusano Joseph wrote: >- "ebXML gains traction in Japan" > >My questions are: > >(1) Is this observation valid? I don't have data and perhaps most of you already know the following. But living in Tokyo 1983-1997 I came to observe that in Japan, innovativeness itself, can be a sort of product and a career... The country has been bringing in foreign ideas, adopting foreign words, chinese characters, and even whole character sets, for centuries. Stupifying amounts of money were made bringing in foreign technology, applying it with a high quality workforce etc. The entire country has an innovation bias. Look at ASCII corp, Masa Son, the company did hardly anything but Japanese translations of foreign software at triple the prices. Expats in japan watched in amazement, as this guy became a billionnaire. There was the financial crash in Japan of course and the tech crash. But still, to this day, a mid-career Japanese professional or engineer can *still* make a living, being a specialist or evangelist for any arbitrary technology from overseas. Americans and Europeans face language barriers, trying to quantify or measure the rate of adoption. Even a dedicated Japanese researcher would have great difficulty. People who know can't tell, outside their firm (i.e. the big trading companies, manufacturers, etc. ) (I'm sure they already have byzantine legacy systems, for supply chain and distribution etc. And ebXML collaboration with an open community of parties, openly defined collaboration patterns, hmmm, that doesn't sound very Japanese!) (and hundreds of those Japanese IT people will read these words, today and in future years, but none of them will hit the "Reply" button. ) This is NOT to imply that ebXML is not being adopted in Japan. I have no information. But it is a fact, other standards efforts having uncertain adoption in Europe or Japan have gone into Japan, done meetings or conventions, and then fedback those impressions to their domestic audience when really there was little adoption in either place. So, ebXML after 4 years of work, should be maintaining a page on a website someplace, listing their sites or companies, in production, in Japan. Instead the ebXML keeps dynamiting its websites and deleting its message archives every year or two. tsk tsk. I love Japan and have a Japanese wife and two fine sons, I hope ebXML succeeds in Japan! They need it! Banzai ! Todd Boyle CPA 9745-128th Ave NE Kirkland WA 98033 425-827-3107 - http://www.ledgerism.net/tokyomemes.htm
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