This reporters expectations were not exceeded by this weeks gathering of the great and the good of the XML industrah!
Having already failed to spot a German public holiday a couple of years ago (when the place was full of puzzled looking Americans wondering where everybody was) one might have thought that the business process improvement team at Idealliance might have checked their dates before organising a conference in London on a UK public holiday.
Whether they did or they didn't, the pointy-bracket brigade stayed away in their droves. No doubt attendance will be misrepresented as usual, but the scene at the reception desk - 3 little boxes of name badges for those who had pre-registered - revelaed the truth.
Simon Nicholsons prophecy is coming true! There is as much need for an XML show as there is for an ASCII show (or an EBCDIC one).
A massive 26 exhibitors packed the Monarch Suite at the Hilton Metropole on Edgeware Road (well, a small corner of it). The corridors and coffee shops (£7 for 2 glasses of water and a small coke) hummed with talk of all things XML. As a subscriber to the Nicholson Prophecy, I was disappointed to realise how many faces I recognised, and how very few customers with budget there appeared to be.
But it was pleasing to chat with some familiar faces and share a bit of gossip, and to be able to go home at the end of the evening.
I had high hopes of spotting some classic SGML/XML Cardigans, and spent as much time as I dared loitering at the XML club stand, but none were in evidence, and I didn't want to get too close - Pam Genusa was hugging people (obviously I wouldn't have been a candidate huggee, but it was nonetheless unsettling and disturbing sight).
I briefly entertained the idea that something new and exciting might appear, but other than some nice looking SVG stuff that Corel now have the song remained pretty much the same (as did most of the singers, come to that).
I narrowly avoided a collision with someone who I assumed had just escaped from presenting a 1970's Open University Maths lecture, but who actually turned out to be someone from a company supplying a rather mediocre XML Differencing toolkit. That was a narrow escape.
I'm certain that many exciting discussions were had, technological differences aired, and visionary prognostications challenged, but for me I just missed those little old ladies with their cardigans and questions about subdoc.
Roll on the 6502 Assembler Show!
Cardigans with little metal badges and name tags with funfty different color ribbons underneath. Takes me back.
Posted by: Marc at May 8, 2003 08:14 PM