On 16 October, the Slovenian Institute for Standardization (SIST) organized its first RAST Conference, an event to celebrate World Standards Day, to raise awareness to the importance of standards, and to present the benefits of using standards through success stories from prominent Slovenian companies. The conference, which took place at Brdo Congress Centre, offered the participants a wealth of content on current global challenges.
The event saw the participation of top representatives of international, European and Slovenian standardization, including President of SIST dr. Bogdan Topič, Director of SIST Marjetka Strle Vidali, and foreign guests Jo Cops, President of IEC, Sauw Kook Choy, Director General of Enterprise Singapore and member of the ISO Council, Elena Santiago, Director General of CEN and CENELEC, as well as Maitane Olabarria Uzquiano, Director General of SBS.
The main goal of this conference was to highlight the importance of standards and the benefits of getting involved in the early stages of their development, including through the experience and practice of leading Slovenian companies. Experts from Slovenian companies from different sectors, such as energy and environment, sustainable mobility and logistics, space technologies, innovation and medical technologies shared with participants the innovations and challenges they faced and how they successfully overcame them with the help of standards.
The highlight of the event was the first SIST Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Ms Olga Naglič, who has been actively involved in the field of standardization throughout her professional career, starting during the Yugoslav standardization era and then continuing as an active member of SIST. For four consecutive terms (2007 – 2023), she was entrusted by the members with the leadership of the SIST Technical Board for the General Area of standardization. SIST is honoured and proud that such an outstanding person has been part of their Expert Council for many years and could express its gratitude to Ms Olga Naglič with the well-deserved award at such an important and well-attended event.
In summary, standardization is important in all areas, and through standards, companies achieve quality, safety and reliability in their products and services. The RAST conference was certainly a successful stepping stone in bringing together experts from different fields who are currently facing global challenges, as well as standardization experts who can offer them tools to help them successfully overcome these challenges. SIST set the RAST conference to become a recurring event to share knowledge and experiences and to foster collaboration across different sectors.
Giovanni COLLOT
gcollot@cencenelec.eu
