Tuesday, December 11

9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
Opening Keynote
Lauren Wood, Director, Product Technology, SoftQuad Software

XML: What Really Works

It's been five years since the first public Working draft of XML was released, and much has changed since then. The family of XML- related standards continues to grow, and experience with implementing and using XML-based technology is also growing. Lauren will explain why the planning committee chose the theme "XML: What Really Works" for this year's conference, and introduce some of the highlights for attendees.

Lauren Wood is Director of Product Technology at SoftQuad Software Inc. She plays a major part in the design of SoftQuad's tools for XML-based e-commerce and e-publishing, as well as representing SoftQuad on several technical committees, and speaking at international conferences. Lauren was until recently Chair of the W3C Document Object Model Working Group and has also been an active member of the CSS and Formatting Properties Working Group, the XML Working Group, and the XSL Working Group, as well as the original HTML Working Group. She holds a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

9:45 AM - 10:30 AM

Five Challenges Facing the XML Community

James Clark, Thai Open Source Software Center

James Clark has been involved with SGML and XML for more than 10 years, both in contributing to standards and in creating open source software. James was technical lead of the XML WG during the creation of the XML 1.0 Recommendation. He was editor of the XPath and XSLT Recommendations. He was the main author of the DSSSL (ISO 10179) standard. Currently, he is chair of the OASIS RELAX NG TC and editor of the RELAX NG specification.

The open source software that James has written includes SGML parsers (sgmls and SP), a DSSSL implementation (Jade), XML parsers (expat and XP), an XPath/XSLT processor (XT) and a RELAX NG validator (Jing). Prior to his involvement with SGML and XML, James wrote the GNU groff typesetting system.

James read Mathematics and Philosophy at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained First Class Honours. James lives in Thailand, where he runs the Thai Open Source Software Center.

Wednesday, December 12

9:00 AM - 9:45 AM

David Reed, General Manager of XML and Data Technologies, Microsoft Corporation

XML and Databases

XML offers an opportunity to unify how structured and semi-structured data is queried, updated, and stored. This has prompted a large industry focus on XML and its relevance to relational databases. A central unification point for academic and commercial research is in the W3C Schema and Query groups. In addition to the standards-based activities, several companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Software AG, and others are innovating at the product level, providing developers with a unified view of relational and XML data. At this keynote presentation, Dave Reed will overview where we are today, and what things might look like tomorrow. He will provide details on Microsoft's plans in the middle-tier and server, and the role Microsoft is playing in the XML and database standardization efforts.

As General Manager of XML and Data Technologies for Microsoft, Mr. Reed drives the direction of XML and Data Access. Technologies that Mr. Reed is responsible for include: MSXML, System.XML, ADO.net, ODBC, OLE DB, and the SOAP Toolkit.

Prior to leading the XML efforts at Microsoft, Mr. Reed was on the orginal development team of Microsoft Transaction Server version 1.0, through the release of COM+ in Windows 2000. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1995, Mr. Reed developed Saber-C++, a UNIX based C/C++ programming environment at Saber Software, Inc. Mr. Reed had been building commercial software since 1983 and is a frequent contributor to developer oriented technical conferences.

Areas of interest include Enterprise Programming Models, Tools, and Compilers.

Friday, December 14

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Simon Phipps, Chief Technology Evangelist, Sun Microsystems

Developing Web Services

This talk will wrap up the conference. Simon will touch on some of the interesting topics from the conference, as well as give Sun's vision of how XML and Java will evolve to enable the creation of a new generation of web services-enabled application software.

Simon Phipps is the Chief Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, responsible for expounding and explaining the 'big picture' of connected computing solutions. In particular, his industry experience gives him unique insight into how open technologies like Java, XML and TCP/IP build together with newer ideas like wireless and internet services to form the foundation for connected computing in the 21st century. He has explained these ideas extensively at international events such as JavaOne, Seybold, Software Development, XMLOne, XML World and many more.

A computer industry insider of 20+ years standing, Simon has worked in such hands-on roles as field engineer, programmer and systems analyst as well as being involved at a strategic level in some of the world's leading computer companies. Fascinated by the idea of 'action at a distance', he worked with OSI standards in the eighties, on the first commercial collaborative conferencing software in the nineties, and helped introduce both Java and XML at IBM. He joined Sun in mid-2000 and is now responsible for their 'Net Effect' meta-narrative, the story behind the product stories.

He holds a degree in electronic engineering and is a Chartered Engineer and Member of the British Computer Society.

Simon lives in the UK with his wife and three children but is based in Silicon Valley in the US. With membership of airline frequent flyer clubs thus taken care of, he is free to indulge in his favourite pastimes of reading, writing poetry, collecting music, taking photographs and playing with cool toys. He's also an occasional preacher at his local Church.

His personal home page is http://www.webmink.net and Sun's software home page is at http://www.sun.com/software. He can be reached via e-mail as simon.phipps@sun.com