DocuSign Hosts Memorable 2010 ESIGN Summit in San Francisco

President Clinton and Executives from Salesforce.com, National Association of REALTORS® and Box.net Address Positive Impact of Electronic Signature and the ESIGN Act on Global Commerce and the Environment
On Wednesday, June 30, we hosted the 2010 ESIGN Summit in San Francisco to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Electronic Signatures in Global National Commerce (ESIGN) Act that President Bill Clinton signed on June 30, 2000. We also celebrated the Congressional Resolutions designating June 30 as National ESIGN Day.

DocuSign CEO and president Steve King welcomed more than 300 attendees with the news that DocuSign led a coalition to make June 30 National ESIGN Day. Both houses of the U.S. Congress passed the resolutions to make this happen (see the blog post link for details). The ESIGN Summit began with a special message from Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) who commented on the transformation the ESIGN Act has had on how we conduct transactions and commerce today, and applauded DocuSign's leadership in driving e-signature adoption to increase productivity and efficiency for businesses and government. In the video below, these remarks take place from 1:57- 2:52.

In his address titled “Embracing Our Common Humanity,” President Bill Clinton greeted the attendees, citing a number of significant anniversaries his foundation observed.

Along with presenting a balanced budget to Congress and the Middle East peace process, he noted that the ESIGN Act will have one of the largest impacts on how people live and work. President Clinton spoke about the top challenges the world faces today, and the ways information technology can be used to better the lives of people around the world. He expressed his belief in the transformative power of the Internet and said he was concerned most about expanding its use worldwide to connect more people and remove additional barriers:

We've learned throughout all of human history that trust is the basis for all commerce...We have to work harder to get countries not to block it, rather than keeping bad apples out of it

Next Gary Thomas, first vice president-elect, National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), discussed the importance of relationships in the real estate industry. As the largest trade organization in America, NAR made a strategic financial investment in DocuSign in November 2009 through its Second Century Ventures fund.

NAR's 1.1 million REALTORS® are helping people realize the American Dream of home ownership. Our alliance with DocuSign enables REALTORS® and their clients to track business from any place any time. Now real estate closings are radically faster, contracts don't have to be faxed back and forth, and home buyers and sellers don't have to come into the office to sign papers—they can even be signed from an airplane 30,000 feet in the sky

Thomas said, referring to a recent San Francisco Chronicle story about a couple who e-signed their real estate documents midflight with DocuSign.

Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer at salesforce.com, shared the company's vision for Cloud 2, collaboration that leverages mobility and social networking features popularized by Facebook and Twitter-like profiles, status updates and real-time feeds to empower enterprises with a new level of productivity only possible in the cloud. In speaking how electronic signatures are moving to Cloud 2, Collins said traditional wet signatures are slow, provide no tracking and are not environmentally friendly:

I am happy to say that the last mile of every transaction is now done in the cloud. We are delighted today to be talking about our relationship with DocuSign, a leader in electronic signatures.

DocuSign founder and chief strategy officer, Tom Gonser, joined salesforce.com on stage to demonstrate how integrating DocuSign's electronic signature platform with Salesforce Chatter can foster collaboration within an entire organization, sending alerts when a contract is opened, signed and when a deal is won in real-time.

Aaron Levie, co-founder and chief executive officer of Box.net, described the new workplace that takes place outside the walls of a single organization between networks of vendors and partners and business, where content is centralized in the cloud to integrate, manage and access online. Levie announced:

We are excited about the ability to now easily transact business in the cloud through our partnership with DocuSign. The millions of documents on Box.net can now be signed and transacted with DocuSign.

In conclusion, DocuSign's Tom Gonser spoke about the evolution of how business transactions have been signed through the ages and showcased DocuSign's latest innovations that are adding new levels of flexibility, collaboration and mobility to core business processes of completing business transactions. Gonser related that electronic signature technology has moved beyond just signing documents and that DocuSign has created a platform that manages the entire document electronic signature process—with powerful collaboration and negotiation tools to accelerate business from anywhere, anytime.

He demonstrated the first Apple® iPad electronic signature application, illustrating how easy it is to access documents for signature via handheld devices and the rich real-time reporting DocuSign offers.

Attendees praised DocuSign for driving the National ESIGN Day resolution and taking the industry lead on raising awareness of the key role of electronic signatures in the growth of commerce trend toward more environmentally friendly and efficient business practices.

DocuSign chairman Keith Krach commended the event for bringing together industry luminaries and leaders in markets such as finance, e-commerce and real estate:

DocuSign is not only leading the industry with the most advanced product, the most strategic partnerships and the greatest number of customers, by creating the industry discussion about the future of business transactions, DocuSign is validating its position as the market leader and global standard in electronic signature.

Click to learn more about the 2010 ESIGN Summit, or you can view a short video of the event below: