Earlier I posted on the existence of a blog that covers industry standards. I came to that site because I was trying to get a grasp of what was going on with ODF, my interest being more in the dynamics around the standard than in the standard itself. It’s been getting a lot of buzz, something we can thank the State of Massachusetts for. If it wasn’t for the buzz, ODF would arguably sit alongside many other very useful, yet completely unused standards – a good piece of technology but little else. I’m not saying that without the State of Mass noise that ODF would be inconsequential, what I’m saying is that standards need a lot of support around them to make them successful.In March of this year, two different organizations were announced to provide support around the ODF standard. The ODF Alliance, hosted by the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) is said to be about educating government entities on the benefits of ODF. A week after the announcement of the ODF Alliance, OASIS announced the formation of the ODF Adoption Committee which is chartered with “increas[ing] the demand for and availability of ODF conforming products.” Okay, so the support organizations appear to be competing, although I’d rather see it as ODF having more support.Conclusion: Any valuable standard can benefit greatly from the support of organizations that are there to promote, evangelize and provide guidance on the use of the standard.