From owner-xml-l@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE Tue Jul 7 12:13:45 1998 Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 10:02:45 -0700 From: Jon Bosak <Jon.Bosak@ENG.SUN.COM> Subject: Call for presentations: XML Developers' Conference 1998.08.20-21
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS XML DEVELOPERS' CONFERENCE 1998.08.20-21
A two-day technical conference for XML, XSL, and XLL developers will be held Thursday and Friday, August 20 and 21, in Montreal, Canada. Cosponsored by the Graphic Communications Association (GCA) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the Developers' Conference will immediately follow the GCA Metastructures 1998 Conference in the same location, Le Centre Sheraton in Montreal. See http://www.gca.org/conf/meta98/ for registration and other conference details.
The XML Developers' Conference extends the highly successful series of "XML Developers' Days" that began in Montreal last year in conjunction with the GCA HyTime Conference and was repeated in Seattle this March in conjunction with the GCA XML Conference.
In response to the overwhelming number of submissions at the March event and the requests of previous attendees, the conference has been expanded from one day to two to allow for more presentations, and the time allotted for each speaker has been extended from 30 minutes to 45 minutes to allow for more questions. Like the previous events, however, this UnConference(tm) resists the bigger-is-better trend of recent years and maintains the concept of a single-track event featuring just the very best presentations from the cream of XML geekdom.
In other words, this is a conference by developers, for developers. Expect really interesting presentations on fairly deep subjects in a locale noted for its French-Canadian culture, great food, and low prices. If you come wearing a suit we won't actually turn you away, but we don't need your business so badly that we're willing to lower the level of discourse.
If you are engaged in the construction of any software that works with XML -- converters, parsers, servers, browsers, editors, or XML-based vertical applications -- here is your chance to share your work with an audience that can understand and appreciate it.
Since hypertext linking and stylesheet-based rendering are part of the larger XML picture, developers of tools that support XLL, XSL, or DSSSL are invited to show their latest offerings as well. While not primarily oriented toward industry-specific XML-based markup languages (CML, OFX, etc.), the conference is open to a certain number of presentations on specific languages and applications whose features are of special interest to developers and on related efforts such as RDF and XML-Data that may have a significant impact on the future of XML.
Vendors of commercial tools can participate, but the presentations must be confined to the technical aspects of X*L products currently in development. Table space will be made available for the distribution of product announcements and commercial literature.
Note that presenters get into the conference free.
No formal papers in advance at the UnConference(tm)! As in the previous two events, we want the very latest reports on work in progress. So instead of asking months ahead of time for stale papers submitted in someone's word processing format, we're asking right now -- a mere six weeks before the conference -- for just a few long paragraphs (300-500 words) submitted electronically in primitive HTML (version 2.0 or earlier).
You have a little less than a fortnight to get your submission in; all proposals for presentations MUST be received by midnight on Sunday, July 19, 1998. It's OK if some details of your project are still not firm, but you must be careful to indicate those areas in your submission along with their current status and your expectations for their status at the time of the conference. Remember, this is for software developers; just observe the same general rules that you would follow in annotating code in progress. The important thing is that you give enough information for us to decide which presentations to include and to tell other attendees what to expect.
The requirement that you submit the description of your presentation in HTML is so that it can go directly on the conference web page as soon as the schedule has been determined. The requirement for primitive HTML is so that your submission can be read without mechanical intervention and also so that it can be read from the conference web site by blind people. Submissions in some godawful generated HTML format with gratuitous tables, one-pixel GIFs, or embedded nbsp's will either be summarily thrown out or thought very badly of, depending on the mood of the reviewer.
Since the conference program will be formed simply by concatenating the accepted proposals and putting the file up on the web, please write your submission in a way that will work in that context. Veiled threats, offers of cash, and other language attempting to influence the selection process should be put in a separate cover note rather than in the description of your proposed presentation.
Bowing to vociferous demands from previous audiences, we are adding an additional requirement this time that the presentations themselves be given in some kind of format less ephemeral than handwritten notes clutched in one's sweaty palm. While appropriately geeky, this medium is less than satisfactory in answering requests for copies. Please be prepared in the event that your submission is accepted to come to the conference with something that can be displayed on a screen and distributed electronically afterward. Any reasonably common format from ASCII on up to XML with an XSL stylesheet (or sideways to PowerPoint or PDF) is acceptable as long as it can be made available right after the conference in a form that can be downloaded from the conference web site. Note that the presentation itself is not due until the moment that you deliver it.
Send all submissions by July 19 at midnight California time to Jon Bosak (bosak@eng.sun.com). Please allow a couple of days for acknowledgement of your submission before asking what happened to it. Sending your submission in much before the deadline won't really help your chances, so take the time to write the clearest description that you can. The conference schedule will be announced Monday, July 27.
Jon Bosak, Online Information Technology Architect, Sun Microsystems
901 San Antonio Road, MPK17-101, Palo Alto, California 94043
If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for
though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. -- Francis Bacon