Special Report

Increased Attendance at IDEAlliance XML Conference & Exposition 2002

by Dianne Kennedy

Despite the lagging economy, the IDEAlliance XML 2002 Conference saw a dramatic increase in attendance. 1,275 attendees filled the Baltimore Convention Center this week to attend tutorials, hear the latest announcements from software vendors and learn from fellow delegates. This year's conference, Putting the Pieces Together was chaired by Dr. Lauren Wood (pictured above), a member of the advisory council for the World Wide Web Consortium. XML Conference & Exposition 2002 is the latest in the IDEAlliance XML conference series, the largest, and longest-running annual gathering of XML users and developers in the world.

Opening Keynotes

This year's conference opened with two outstanding keynotes. Robert Haycock (pictured above), Manager for the Office of Management and Budget's Federal Enterprise Architecture Initiative provided a perspective on the role of XML in federal government initiatives. According to Haycock, "Both XML and Web Service create a foundation to support the horizontal and vertical integration of federal, state, local, and municipal government services. This level of interoperability, an integrated U.S. Government, will provide citizens with an avenue of approach, to engage the services of an integrated U.S. Government."

The second opening keynote was provided by Pam Samuelson, Professor, University of California at Berkeley (pictured above). Samuelson focused on the copyright wars that have now come to the XML community in the form of standards under consideration concerning rights expression languages (REL) to support digital rights management (DRM) technologies.

XML Cup Award

IDEAlliance, awarded the 2002 XML Cup to Jon Bosak (right) and Tim Bray (left), for outstanding contributions to XML. The presentation was part of the opening session of the XML Conference and Exposition 2002, being held this week at the Baltimore Convention Center, in Baltimore, Maryland. Jon Bosak was the Chair of the W3C Working Group that created XML, while Tim Bray was one of the co-editors of the XML specification as well as writing the first XML parser.

Microsoft Unveils XML in Office 11

Perhaps the most exciting, and certainly the longest, presentation of the XML 2002 Conference was given by Jean Paoli, XML Architect for Microsoft Corporation. Paoli,a long-time member the IDEAlliance XML community, has been the chief architect of the Microsoft strategy for XML on the desktop. According to Paoli, he did not want to make the mistake with XML that he made with SGML. Putting backend XML servers and plumbing was the critical first step. XML on the desktop could only make sense when these systems were in place. Paoli demonstrated how XML is now at the heart of the Office suite. While Microsoft has provided schemas for each tool, the use of custom XSD schemas is also supported..

XML Exposition

As always, an XML Exposition was an important part of the event. Here delegates could learn more about new products on the market and the newest of existing products.

IDEAlliance will host its major European XML conference, XML Europe 2003, in London during May. To learn more about this XML conference link through the Events menu on this Website.