Daniel C. Burnett

Ph.D., Computer Science & Engineering

Dr. Burnett has over 20 years of experience in Web and Internet standards. As Principal for StandardsPlay, his consulting firm, Dan helped a variety of companies play the standards game, both advising clients in how they could strengthen their brand and market positions through standards leadership and representing them directly in organizations such as W3C and the IETF.

Dan's introduction to standards came while a researcher in automatic speech recognition technology at Nuance, well-known worldwide for its voice recognition technology. Beginning when the World Wide Web Consortium, the organization responsible for HTML, was only 5 years old, Dan co-created VoiceXML, the still reigning standard for Interactive Voice Response systems, receiving two Speech Luminary awards from SpeechTech magazine for his contributions to the industry. Through roles at Vocalocity, Voxeo, Tropo, and Aspect, Dan continued to lead in the development of VoiceXML and its related SRGS, SSML, SISR, and other standards, simultaneously serving in one of IEEE-ISTO's earliest programs, the VoiceXML Forum, as Treasurer, Vice Chairman, and Chairman.

While at Voxeo, Tropo, and Aspect, Dan's standards focus gradually added and then transitioned to the development of WebRTC, the JavaScript APIs in major web browsers that provide plugin-free audio, video, and real-time peer-to-peer communications and data we all relied on during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dan was the initial and, for most of its existence, the longest-running editor of the W3C's WebRTC and Media Capture and Streams standards specifications. A frequent speaker at conferences, Dan was also co-author of the most popular book on WebRTC.

Recently Dan has focused on Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) at W3C, efforts to standardize self-sovereign, cryptographically-verifiable identifiers, claims, credentials, and attestations that can fully replace the need for centralized digital identifiers online.

In the PegaSys standards group at Consensys, Dan began his journey in the blockchain space that led him to his most recent role as the Executive Director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. In his 3 ½ years there, he helped mature the ecosystem via the development of a variety of new programs crucial to business adoption of this emerging Web3 trust network for the planet.

A Board member of IEEE-ISTO for 7 years, Dan is excited to assume the role of President and CEO of the organization.