Jonathan Robie is the XML Program Manger at DataDirect technologies. He is also a co-inventor of XQuery, the W3C XML Query language, and is now an editor of many of the specifications which define the XQuery language. He is also a co-inventor of XQL, an earlier XML query language which was a predecessor of XPath. Jonathan has been significantly involved in several other W3C Working Groups, acting as an editor for documents produced by the XML Schema and Document Object Model Working Groups, and has also participated in the W3C XML Information Set and XML Stylesheet Language (XSL) Working Groups. He is well known in the XML world, both as an innovator and as a speaker.Prior to joining DataDirect, Jonathan worked as an XML ResearchSpecialist at Software AG, where he helped design architectures forXML servers and represented Software AG on the XML Query and XML Schema Working Groups. He has been on the architecture team for three XML databases or repositories, at Software AG, Texcel Research, and POET Software. He has a total of 13 years experience with advanced database systems and complex database applications, especially object oriented databases, multimedia databases, workgroup database applications, and XML/SGML databases.

Paul Cotton is Program Manager of XML Standards with Microsoft Canada. Paul has been active within the W3C XML Activity since 1998 and has been the Chairman of the W3C XML Query Working Group since the WG was formed in 1999. Paul is also Microsoft's alternate on the W3C XML Protocol WG.Paul was elected to the first W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) in Dec 2001. The W3C TAG is responsible for defining the W3C's view of the architecture for the Web. Paul was an elected member on the W3C Advisory Board from July 2000 through Dec 2001 when he resigned to join the W3C TAG.Paul has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry and has been working on SQL standardization for 15 years. Paul holds a M. Math from the University of Waterloo.

Cliff Schmidt is the XML Standards Strategy Program Manager for Microsoft's Webdata team, which is responsible for MSXML and the .NET Framework's XML classes. Aside from working with several W3C working groups to address a broad cross-section of XML-related issues, Cliff also represents Microsoft on the W3C XML Schema Working Group and previously served on the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee. Cliff has worked as both a program manager and software developer on projects including .NET My Services (formerly code-named, "Hailstorm") and the Microsoft.com platform infrastructure. He has been working in the software industry since 1987, with the exception of serving six years as a submarine officer for the US Navy. Cliff received his B.S. in Cognitive Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also worked as a researcher at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science.

Jeni Tennison is an independent consultant specialising in XSLT andXML Schema development. She trained as a knowledge engineer, gaining aPhD in collaborative ontology development, and since becoming anconsultant has worked on using XML in a wide variety of areas,including publishing, water monitoring and financial services. She isthe author of "XSLT & XPath On The Edge" (Hungry Minds, 2001) and"Beginning XSLT" (Wrox, 2002), one of the founders of the EXSLTinitiative to standardise extensions to XSLT and XPath, and hasrecently become an invited expert on the W3C XSL Working Group. Shespends much of her spare time answering people's queries on XSL-Listand xmlschema-dev mailing lists.

Dr Michael Kay is a member of the systems architecture team at Software AG. He represents Software AG on the XSL and XQuery working groups of the W3C, and is editor of the XSLT 2.0 specification. He is widely known through his book XSLT Programmers Reference published by Wrox Press.Within Software AG, Michael Kay provides consultancy on XML standards and specifications to internal projects both in the product development units and in field engineering.Dr. Kay has 25 years' experience in the IT industry. His Ph.D was gained at the University of Cambridge for work on database management systems. He has led design teams for a series of software development projects encompassing database software, free text retrieval software, and software engineering repositories, and has provided strategic consultancy to clients implementing eBusiness solutions in a number of industry sectors.