XML Europe Awaits; IDEAlliance Hosts Conference in Barcelona!

If you haven't made plans to go to XML Europe this May, it's stll not too late. XML Europe provides the premier European forum for the XML community, spanning the worlds of electronic business, publishing, the Internet, software and standards development. This year's conference takes as its theme "Down to Business: Getting Serious About XML," reflecting the growing body of experience in deploying XML: from the birth of new XML standards to the practicalities of developing software and schemas, from business advantages of using XML to potential legal and regulatory impacts.

This year the conference will be opened with a keynote provided by Peter Pappamikail, Head of Information Resources Management, European Parliament, Belgium. Pappamikail's explicit mission is to develop a new information architecture for the European Parliament. He is coordinator of the ParlML project (to develop common XML vocabularies for parliamentary work) and a member of the Advisory Board of the EU project "Managing Information Resources for e-Government" (MIReG). Pappamikail is also the author of the forthcoming "XML by Stealth - A manager's guide to strategic implementation", to be published by John Wiley & Sons. The keynote presentation will focus on strategies for the development of large-scale XML vocabularies.

This year's closing keynote will be presented by Ray Walker, Special Advisor on Trade Processes and Electronic Business, United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry, United Kingdom. Walker is seconded to the United Nations' Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) where he is a Vice Chair and the Chairman of its Steering Group. Walker is widely recognized as one of the driving forces behind the development of global electronic business standards such as UN/ EDIFACT and ebXML.

XML Europe 2002 was developed to serve three different audiences.

High Level View Audience—suitable for attendees who wish to see the "big picture". Sessions are designed to give an overview of a topic, discuss the business aspects of a technology, and/or cover a number of related topics. These sessions may contain some technical content, but not much.
Technical View Audience—suitable for attendees who wish to go into detail about a specific topic. Sessions will be structured for more of a technical audience. Attendees will possibly require prior knowledge of the subject to fully understand the contents.
High Level/Technical View Audience—suitable for all attendees. Sessions are neither a high-level overview of a topic, nor an in-depth technical discussion. Somewhere in between.

Tracks for XML Europe 2002 include Application, Content Management, Case Studies, Database , Practical E-Business , ebXML, Financial , Graphics and Multimedia , Government , Industry Initiatives , Knowledge Technologies , Keynote Addresses , Late Breaking News , Legal , Publishing , Technical , Training , Vendor Presentations and Web Services.