Learning support activities are increasingly recognizing the importance of competencies as abstractions of human capabilities and behavior. This covers traditional human resource development and training, vocational training and even school education, but also e-learning and competence management. There are many interesting approaches that have shown the feasibility of competency-oriented methods, several large research projects investigate competency-related issues (like APOSDLE and TENcompetence), and our research has provided also some insight into the relationship of organizational and individual competencies and how they can be exploited. But before we can deal with competencies efficiently on a large scale, many open issues need to be resolved, culminating in competency-related standards. The Study Group Competencies has established itself as an international special interest group with people like Claude Ostyn, Wayne Hodgins, Eric Duval, Luk Vervenne among several others. I have participated in the first conference call, and my first impression is that although there is still a very long way to go towards a shared understanding of competencies and their usage, such initiatives are important to bring people together - beyond traditional European research projects. Next conference call is scheduled for mid-January.