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[Rzepa, Henry]

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.


CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

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.


RULES FOR SUBMISSIONS

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.


RULES FOR PRESENTATIONS

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.


SUBMITTING PROPOSALS

Send all submissions by July 19 at midnight California time to Jon
Bosak (bosak at 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

Dr Henry Rzepa,  Dept. Chemistry,  Imperial College,  LONDON SW7 2AY;
mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk; Tel  (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804.
URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ 

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