Opening Remarks

Norman W. Scharpf - Norman Scharpf, President of Graphic Communications Association, earned his Bachelor's degree in Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh. After gaining experience in the public accounting field, he joined IBM where his sales territory included printing firms. His work with one of these firms led to his appointment in 1967 as the first Staff Director of Graphic Communications Association (GCA), then known as the Computer Section of PIA.

The group's efforts in computer composition led rapidly to an interest in generic markup of text databases. Under Mr. Scharpf's leadership, this interest expanded to recommend and support national and international work in development of standard markup approaches that ultimately led to the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Mr. Scharpf is a PIA Gutenberg Award recipient for his efforts in SGML. Mr. Scharpf now leads an organization of some 300 member firms worldwide covering technological advances in both print media and information technologies.

Pamela Gennusa - Pam is a consultant providing services to associations and consortia in the area of standards-based content management. She was the European Representative for OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, and she has served as the Conference Chair for the GCA's XML Europe conferences since 1991.

Previously, Pam was Joint Managing Director of Database Publishing Systems Ltd where she led the consultancy and development between 1990 and 1999. During that time, she served as consultant for a number of XML/SGML-related applications in the oil, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and defence industries. Prior to joining DPSL, Pamela was the Director of Marketing for Datalogics, Inc. in the U.S. She has participated on both the ANSI and ISO committees responsible for the creation of ISO 8879 - SGML. Until 1992, she served as Co-Chair of the US CALS committee responsible for MIL-M-28001. Pam is a recipient of the GCA Tekkie Award. She served as President of the International SGML Users' Group from 1992-1999. She also served as Chief Marketing Officer and President on the first OASIS (known then as SGML Open) Board of Directors (1993-1995). In 1992, she became a member of the GCA Board of Directors, and served as Chairperson of that Board in 1997-98. She has also been a member of the IDEAlliance Board of Directors. Each Spring since 1991, Pam has chaired the GCA's European Conference. As such, she leads the programme committee in determining the content, does all speaker management, and is responsible for the development of marketing materials and the conference proceedings.

Dr. Charles F. Goldfarb - Dr. Goldfarb invented the SGML language in 1974 and later led the team that developed it into the International Standard on which both HTML and XML are based. He serves as Editor of the Standard (ISO 8879) and as a consultant to developers of SGML and XML applications and products.

While at IBM Dr. Goldfarb led the project that invented SGML's precursor, GML, in 1969. He designed and coded the first and -- with its derivatives, notably SGMLS -- the most widely-used SGML parser, "ARCSGML". He also helped develop IBM's multi-site multi-national GML (now SGML) publishing system, producing 11 million master pages, and served as a market planner for information systems products.

He has been profiled in Forbes Magazine and others, and the Seybold Report cited his "SGML Handbook" as the definitive reference on SGML. He edits Prentice-Hall's "Charles F. Goldfarb Series on Open Information Management" and co-authored the "SGML Buyer's Guide" and the forthcoming "XML Handbook".

Dr. Goldfarb holds the first GCA International SGML Award and the PIA Gutenberg Award. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College.