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Extreme Markup 2000;
Dancing Geek to Geek!
Extreme Markup 2000
was held August 15-18 in Montreal. Extreme is a new, highly technical conference, concentrating on
the evolving abstractions that underlie modern
information management solutions, how those
abstractions enhance human productivity, and how they
are being applied. Borrowing Jon Bosak's description
for XML Developers Days, Extreme is also an instance
of "dancing geek to geek!" Abstract and concrete information
models, systems built on them, software to exploit
them, SGML, XML, XSL, XLink, schemas, Topic Maps, RDF,
query languages, and other markup-related topics fell
within scope for this conference.
Extreme Markup 2000, attended by
about 250, was quite like GCA's SGML conferences of
old. The crowd was small enough that everyone
could ask questions or have off-line conversations
with the presenters. The conference was
structured with long breaks, receptions, poster
sessions, "birds of a feather" luncheons,
and nocturnes so that new ideas could be explored and
extended by attendees. Conference chairs,
Michael Sperberg-McQueen and B. Tommie Usden,
prohibited standards meetings in conjunction with the
conference so that attendees would be free to engage
in these intellectually stimulating activities.
The conference brought together bright minds from both
academia and corporate technology centers so each
could learn from the other. Noticeably missing
were sales and marketing types (much to the relief of
those focused on the technical side of information
technologies).
Perhaps the most
exciting event of the conference was the face-off of
two knowledge technologies -- RDF and Topic
Maps. But more about that in a related
story.
During this conference,
Liora Alschuler, worked to put together a new video on
the influence of Yuri Rubinsky. We all look
forward to seeing the results during the opening
session of XML 2000!
Extreme Markup 2000 proved to be
the conference of the year for those interested in the
deeply technical aspects of markup technologies.
I look forward to attending next year -- same city,
same hotel, August 2001!
Dianne Kennedy, Editor
XML Files
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