Speaker and Presentation Details

Information on all presentations, including technical, basics, dog-and-pony, and more will be listed here.

Leveraging your XML Content: Developing Stylesheets for Personalized Multi-Channel Publishing

(Tim Allen, Scott Youngblom, Oberon Technologies)

This session will provide information on the use of stylesheets and transformations to leverage your XML content across the entire enterprise.  In this session, we will show how you can expose your information through different channels to create new products using your existing XML content.

The discussion will include how you can leverage XML content from databases, content management systems, the file share, and other sources, then using XSL to transform that data to various outputs such as: web, wireless devices, PDF, CDROM/DVD as well as major composition products such as Arbortext, Adobe, Quark, Open Source, etc.

In addition, we will discuss how you can personalize the delivered content using XSL to include or exclude information based on the attribute information contained in the XML.

About Tim Allen

Tim Allen is co-owner of Oberon Technologies, a leading provider of automated publishing IT solutions based on XML and SGML.  With a degree in Electrical Engineering, Tim’s experience in the automated publishing arena spans a career of over 24 years with various organizations working with intelligent information and finding ways to create, store, manage, publish and distribute this content to consumers.  Tim’s journey has included but not limited to the Director of Dynamic Enterprise Publishing Solutions, Director of Engineering, Director of Business Development, Director of Product Management as well as a senior engineer and principle consultant for Arbortext (now PTC).  Tim also included several years at the Newport News Shipyards implementing an SGML single source publishing system.  Tim has worked with several major companies on implementing every facet of an automated publishing solution such as conversion, stylesheets development, data-modeling development, translations, XSL development, content management, workflow, dynamic assembly, publishing, and automated distribution of information.  Companies Tim has worked with in the past, but not limited too are:  Pfizer, Abbott Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Guidant, Medtronic, John Deere, Case-New Holland, Toyota, Wolters Kluwer, Stater, Boeing, Lockheed, Thomson Publishing, West Group, Croner and Visa. 

About Scott Youngblom

Scott Youngblom is co-owner of Oberon Technologies, a leading provider of automated publishing IT solutions based on XML and SGML.  With a degree in Communications and Business, Scott has been involved with an information technology career for over 23 years and over 13 of them specifically with automated publishing solutions.  Having started out as a programmer with EDS (Electronic Data Systems) in his early career, Scott has taken his technical background; along with his knowledge of various “best-of-breed” software publishing technologies, and applied them to Fortune 2000 organizations in support of meeting specific business requirements such as increase company revenue, decrease expenses to improve company margins, or to meet regulatory compliance and quality standards.  Prior to starting Oberon Technologies, Scott worked 12 years at Arbortext (now PTC) as one of their leading Account Executives servicing several major companies such as: John Deere, Caterpillar, Motorola, CNH, Lucent, United Airlines, Pratt and Whitney, Eli Lilly, Abbott Laboratories, Cummins Engines, General Motors, Roll Royce, Rockwell Collins, Wolters Kluwer, World Book Encyclopedia, West Publishing, Bombardier, and GE Health to name just a few.  Scott has also spoken in the past at various industry conferences such as – STC Conferences, PTC/Arbortext User Conference, and several high tech Conferences on XML and knowledge management.

About Oberon Technologies

Oberon Technologies partners with leading XML-based software suppliers to provide complete, end-to-end publishing solutions.  With over 80 plus accumulated years of experience designing, creating and implementing automated publishing solutions, Oberon Technologies' experience has helped hundreds of companies improve their publishing processes resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in savings, improved quality and increased revenue. 

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XSLT Patterns: The Identity Transform

(Mitch Amiano, Agile Markup Corporation)

An important heuristic for solving hard problems is to find the simpler problems embedded within, and solve them first. Another is to emulate and adapt the structure of a solution to a similar problem. The identity transform is thus the basis for a broad class of problem solutions.

We'll walk through the identity transform, illustrating aspects of XSLT as we go, and derive some applications.

About Mitch Amiano

Mitch is an experienced professional with extensive background supporting engineering organizations' processes in software development, change and configuration management, and quality tracking applications. Mitch is also experienced in numerous software languages -- just about losing count -- but his original interest in SGML was motivated by the question of how markup could reduce or eliminate coding. He began using markup in 1994 for software development and product specifications, using AWK to implement a markup language for parameterizing and composing blocks of Informix-4GL and C code, coupling them with SQL queries to generate code; consequently he enjoys XSLT programming. He is co-author with Kay [Ethier] Whatley, Conrad D'Cruz, and Michael Thomas, of the WROX title "XML Problem Design Solution".

About Agile Markup Corporation

The name "Agile Markup" conveys the convergence of effective practice in software and technical documentation. As ubiquitous as XML now is, many tech workers and medium-sized businesses still consider it a bit of a mystery. Agile Markup Corporation is a small business focused on helping clients repair existing infrastructure and getting "over the hump" when incorporating new technologies. Clients have included small businesses, universities, and manufacturers. Frequently, other ISVs and consultants have used Mitch to back-fill a need for XML skills. Mitch recently earned a Bachelors Degree in Mathematics from North Carolina State University, and is exploring for new opportunities to build the business and serve. He volunteers on the Rolesville NC Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and organizes the Raleigh Durham Web Design meetup.

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Controlled Authoring, how standardization of content facilitates XML and increases its benefits

(Bob Sima, Tedopres)

Controlled English is a method of writing that makes technical English easy to understand. The use of Controlled English stimulates (global) acceptance of technical documentation as it improves readability and prevents misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Additional benefits include:

• Up to 40% in translation cost savings per language
• Quality assurance for technical content
• Efficient authoring and editing
• Reduced time to market
• Optimum reusability
• Cost savings due to reduced risk of safety, damage and liability claims

As today's authoring environment is changing to structured XML and content management, it would only make sense to also adapt controlled terminology and good writing practice rules to further improve reusability and create additional cost savings.

Doing so will not only standardize the content, it will create efficiency, and further increase the many benefits XML already offers. Reusability is the key word here, which applies both to the English content, as well as to the translations, which can decrease the content up to 30% AND save translation cost up to 40% per language!

The speaker will introduce the CE concept using case studies, and demonstrate how it standardizes technical content, how translations will improve, how XML is facilitated and overall cost and time to market will be reduced.

About Bob Sima

Bob Sima is the Sales Director of Tedopres' North American operations, which is based in Austin, Texas. Bob holds a BA in Business and Psychology from the University of Maryland, near Baltimore. Bob has been working in the technical publishing industry for 12 years. He has held sales and marketing and product strategy positions with Intergraph, Corel and Micrografx and has experience with aerospace and defense publishing and has worked extensively with S1000D and other Mil Spec publishing standards.

About Tedopres

Established in 1974 and with offices in Europe, North America and Asia, Tedopres International offers a full range of technical documentation services, including translations, content management and controlled language solutions (aka Simplified Technical English) for quality assurance and considerable cost savings. Tedopres HyperSTE checker software is the industry's leading solution for controlled language authoring thanks to its flexibility, ease of use, and cost saving benefits.

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Digital Alchemy: Turning Unstructured Content To Gold (Or At Least Something Useful)

(Don Bridges, DCL)

Many XML systems don’t leverage legacy content because it’s considered too painful and/or too expensive to bring older unstructured content to the structured requirements of the new system. Even though the legacy content is technically sound and has application for years to come. The presentation will show what can and what can’t be reasonably done at a minimal expense to impart structure where there wasn’t any before. The tips and techniques discussed can be implemented as part of in-house or outsourced migration efforts as business drivers dictate. Beyond migration, the presentation will also show how reuse can be evaluated on a micro and macro level to build a solid ROI story for funding an XML system.

About Don Bridges

Don manages commercial projects at Data Conversion Laboratory. He leads DCL's effort for technical documentation projects across a broad range of industries (Aerospace, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Software, Telecom, etc.). He is a frequent conference speaker and has written several articles on the business aspects of XML implementations. He is a engineering graduate of LSU and calls Albuquerque, NM home.

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Test Assertions Scripts: a new approach to testing XML documents

(Jacques R. Durand/Fujitsu America, Stephen Green/Doc Eng Svcs, and Boonserm Kulvatunyou/Oracle)

Test assertions is a familiar concept for QA engineers and test developers. Test assertions have been mostly used in the domain of software engineering, and less often in more specialized domains such as XML documents, where ad-hoc solutions have flourished instead. A formal model for test assertions has recently been developed in the OASIS Test Assertions Guidelines (TAG) committee [http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=31076&wg_abbrev=tag]) that can be used as a basis for customizing to specific domains.

Test assertions allow for an integrated approach to XML testing, as various techniques must invariably be mixed (schema validation, semantic validation, consistency with external material).

Other approaches specialized for documents have been proposed (Schematron, CAM), but it is our experience that a careful XML/XPath profiling of test assertions combined with a proper execution engine, lead to the desired ability to compose and to chain test cases and test suites, without loosing on the expressive and processing power of test cases for this particular domain.

The authors have developed an XML mark-up for the TAG model extended with XPath2.0, along with an XSL execution engine, and have applied it to various XML artifacts - either native XML business documents, or XML-formatted material such as message logs. In particular, one author has developed and executed test suites for Web Services profiles developed by the WS-Interoperability consortium http://www.ws-i.org/ using the XPath2.0-extended TAG model. These test suites include test cases that cover a combination of documents (WSDL, Schemas) and message captures formatted in XML. They also allow for chaining test cases in a rule-based manner. At our knowledge, no existing XML-testing technology or methodology allows for this level of flexibility.

A survey of various approaches for validating XML material is done and contrasted with the proposed new approach: Schematron, CAM, XBRL conformance suite, OWL reasoner. A technology assessment is made about the latest versions of XPath and XSLT, and learnings from the WS-I testing experiment are summarized.

Future plans include standardization of the TAG mark-up and its XPath extension, along with an open-source - style availability of the run-time XSLT-based technology that supports it.

About Jacques R. Durand, Stephen Green, and Boonserm (Serm) Kulvatunyou

Jacques R. Durand is technical director at Fujitsu America, Inc. with a long-time involvement in XML standard organizations, member of the OASIS Technical Advisory Board, contributor to XML user consortiums such as RosettaNet, OAGI. He has extensive experience in XML-related testing, is chair of the Test Assertions Guideline OASIS committee and of the Testing and Monitoring of Internet Exchanges (TaMIE) committee. He has been leading testing activities for years in the WS-Interoperability consortium and in the ebXML technical committee at OASIS. In a former life, earned a Ph.D. in rule-based systems and logic-programming from Nancy Univ., France.

Stephen Green is an Associate Director of Document Engineering Services, an international consortium of experts supporting universal business interoperability through the use of open standards. His expertise is in finance, business documents and software development for business and financial applications. He has specialized in legacy systems and modern electronic business trends and their impact on small and medium sized enterprises. Stephen has been active in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for seven years, serving on as many technical committees.

He is currently editing the Test Assertions Guidelines of the OASIS technical committee of that name. He previously led the first efforts to provide a small business subset conformance profile for the OASIS Universal Business Language, version 1.0.

Boonserm (Serm) Kulvatunyou is currently a Standard and Product Architect at the Oracle's Application Integration Architecture (AIA) division. Formerly, he was a guest researcher the at the Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At NIST, he has desinged and implemented semantics testing and frameworks for design of document model and instance validation in the contenxt of an e-business testbed using XML and related technologies. He has been an active participants in several standard bodies such as UN/CEFACT and OASIS. His current interests are in architecture and best practices methodology to enterprise data model for reusable and interoperable Service-Oriented Architecture. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in 2001.

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Introduction to DITA, Kristen James Eberlein

(Kristen James Eberlein, IBM)

This session will include a technical overview of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), as well as information about its history and why it is the XML authoring and content-management standard of choice for so many companies. Expect to leave the session with an understanding of both the key concepts of DITA and what it promises in regard to increased productivity and cost savings.

About Kristen James Eberlein

Kristen James Eberlein is an Information Architect for IBM Internet Security Systems. She has worked with DITA extensively since 2004; her experience includes migrating several large libraries from SGML to DITA and developing strategies for helping writers manage the transition from book to topic-based writing. More recently, her work has focused on developing DITA training, instructional materials, and best practices workshops. In addition to DITA, her interests include usability, prototyping, and information design. She is a senior member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and a member of OASIS, the DITA Technical Committee, the DITA Adoption Committee, and the Editorial Board for dita.xml.org.

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Developing XML workflows

(Iain Finlayson and Scott Beebe, Oxford University Press)

Integrating XML into a publishing strategy can have significant benefits, but implementing the workflows required to accomplish this can be problematic. New workflows have implications across departments and can involve considerable changes to existing practices, culture and technology. In this session we will discuss the evolution of Oxford's XML workflows and the advantages of XML-first over workflows which produce XML at the end of a traditional print publishing cycle.

About Iain Finlayson

Iain is an XML Data Engineer for Oxford University Press. His role involves the design of data models for print, online and licensed content; the design and implementation of XML-based workflows; and XML quality assurance. He has worked in book and journal publishing for 10 years.

About Scott Beebe

Scott Beebe is a CMS/Data Analyst for Oxford University Press. His work includes building data models for online products, managing/developing content management systems and working with editorial staff to streamline workflows and improve efficiency through process automation. He holds a degree in Library and Information Science and has worked on digital projects at Columbia University and Columbia University Press.

About Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. In addition to an extensive print business, OUP has produced numerous online products including the Oxford English Dictionary and Dictionary of National Biography Online, Oxford Scholarship Online, Oxford Reference Online, Islamic Studies Online, African American Studies Center, Oxford Reports on International Law, and Oxford Biblical Studies Online.

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Goal Setting and Goal Achieving -- Avoiding the Pitfalls

(Leslie Flowers, LifeSuccess)

Discussion of how our current belief systems are formed. Ten steps required to create a new belief system. Several mistakes people make in goal setting. Interactive activity (attempting to use both left and right brain concurrently!).

About Leslie Flowers

Leslie Flowers is an international speaker, teacher and coach who is widely recognized as a leader of leaders. LifeSuccess Management CEO and star of "Beyond the Secret" Paul Martinelli has tapped Leslie as "one to watch." In just a few months, Leslie applied the skills she acquired as a student with Martinelli to remove barriers to her success, to eliminate more than $100,000 in federal and state liens on her credit report and purchase her dream house on a lake. Now, she's teaching others to make a difference in their lives. She works extensively with those seeking to be leaders in their families, businesses and communities and is the first to offer a LifeSuccess family program to bring success strategies to young people. Leslie powerfully connects people to their life's calling by helping them recognize and release the limiting beliefs that prevent personal and professional growth -- moving people from possibility to probability in the goals that matter most to them. She is a master trainer in Carnegie's principles of success, master coach in the laws of the universe and certified Gove Siebold speaker. Her clear, perceptive communication style connects her quickly to audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Leslie leads workshops, group coaching, and one-on-one sessions with business leaders, entrepreneurs, employee groups, and community organizations, to name a few. Leslie tailors programs to the specific needs of her audiences. She offers an eight-session "Mastermind" program based on the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill to introduce the principles of success. In her follow-up "Goal Achiever" course, participants identify their goals and create a plan and a supportive community to achieve them.

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Author, Manage and Publish Topic based Documentation using TCS2

(Mahesh Kumar Gupta, Adobe Systems)

Technical documentation is becoming more and more granular and distributed across the globe.

The drivers for topic based documentation are:

• Distributed Authoring
• Content Reuse
• Multi-channel Publishing

The best methodology to implement the concept of topic based authoring is through XML. XML provides ways of separating the structure and the content which greatly helps authors and at the same time it maintains consistency among the contributions made by different members of the distributed team.

TCS2 allows authors to create new XML and DITA based content and it also provides the unique ability of seamless aggregation of unstructured and structured content together for publishing. FM9 books help in harnessing True XML power and in addition, leveraging the strengths of FrameMaker. The authored content can also be re-purposed into multiple formats with live FrameMaker document linking functionality in RoboHelp.

About Mahesh Kumar Gupta

Mahesh Kumar Gupta is the Product Manager for Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe FrameMaker. He has managed several products in Adobe and prior to his MBA, he worked with IBM for a long period post his Engineering. Though he has made several presentations and conducted workshops on several topics but XML and DITA support is his key topic of interest.

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XForms and Genericode

(Betty Harvey, ECC)

XForms is a W3C specification.  This presentation provide an overview of the XForms specification and will show concepts of how XForms can be used to create and save valid XML documents.  Complex forms can contain simple as well as complex authority lists (code lists).  Genericode is an OASIS-Open standard vocabulary for defining code lists or authority lists using standard constructs.  This presentation will give the audience an understanding of Genericode.  The presentation will show how Genericode can be used to facilitate complex business rules based on decision trees functionality based on codes selected in a form.

About Betty Harvey

As President of Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc. since 1995, Ms. Harvey has led many federal government and commercial enterprises in planning and executing their migration to the use of structured information for their critical functions. Over the past 14 years she has helped develop strategic XML solutions for her clients.

Ms. Harvey has been instrumental in developing industry XML standards. Ms. Harvey is a member of OASIS Open and is currently an active participant in the Universal Business Language initiative. Previously she was a member of the Core Components subcommittee of the ebXML initiative. She is the co-author of "Professional ebXML Foundations" published by Wrox.

Ms. Harvey founded the Washington, DC Area SGML/XML Users Group in 1995. She still coordinates the users group which is the longest standing XML users group.  Ms Harvey is also a member of "The XML Guild" and recently co-authored the book "Advanced XML Applications From the Experts at The XML Guild" published by Thomson.

Currently, Ms. Harvey is working with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on developing future system evolution for the Electronic Records Archive (ERA) system.

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Validating XML Naming and Design Rules

(Betty Harvey, ECC)

Organizations often develop XML Schema Naming and Design Rules (NDRs) in order to maximize interoperability and quality of the design of XML Schemas. NDRs are a good way to help enforce best practices in designing XML schemas. NDRs are proliferating at a rapid speed. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Manufacturing Integration Systems Division, has developed a tool for validating NDR rules using Schematron or JESS for validation called QOD (Quality of Design). This presentation will provide information about validation of NDR rules using Schematron and QOD.

About Betty Harvey

As President of Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc. since 1995, Ms. Harvey has led many federal government and commercial enterprises in planning and executing their migration to the use of structured information for their critical functions. Over the past 14 years she has helped develop strategic XML solutions for her clients.

Ms. Harvey has been instrumental in developing industry XML standards. Ms. Harvey is a member of OASIS Open and is currently an active participant in the Universal Business Language initiative. Previously she was a member of the Core Components subcommittee of the ebXML initiative. She is the co-author of "Professional ebXML Foundations" published by Wrox.

Ms. Harvey founded the Washington, DC Area SGML/XML Users Group in 1995. She still coordinates the users group which is the longest standing XML users group.  Ms Harvey is also a member of "The XML Guild" and recently co-authored the book "Advanced XML Applications From the Experts at The XML Guild" published by Thomson.

Currently, Ms. Harvey is working with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on developing future system evolution for the Electronic Records Archive (ERA) system.

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IDCMS Blue: An ID Lifecycle and Content Management System (Case Study)

(Mike Iantosca, IBM)

IBM' s long standing commitment to our clients is to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time and in the right place. To that end, IBM has embarked on a multi-year development initiative to create an End-to-End Life Cycle Management System for its product technical documentation. The system, known internally as IDCMS Blue, is intended to integrate and automate the IBM Information Development processes and tools. This second-generation system is based on a DITA-enabled FileNet P8 solution. IDCMS Blue provides a complete ecosystem using DITA as the common currency and by applying robust workflow and metadata management using FileNet P8. The solution encompasses the full product life cycle. That life cycle begins with the product plan for the total information experience and extends through design, authoring, quality management, translation, and distribution. The goal of the system is to not simply stop at establishing centralized content sharing across a far flung enterprise, but achieve a high level of integration between processes, best practices and tools as well as enable automated interchange with other requestors and providers that are both upstream and downstream to the Information Development process. In this presentation, this paper describes our vision for this solution.

About Mike Iantosca

Mike Iantosca is the corporate product development team (PDT) lead for IBM DITA Authoring Tools and Content Management Systems for IBM Information Development worldwide. A founding member of the team that ushered in the era of SGML and XML/DITA in IBM Information Development, Mr. Iantosca has served multiple roles including systems analyst, architect, senior advisor, project, and product manager. Mr. Iantosca led the worldwide conversion of millions of pages of IBM product documentation to SGML and XML; he also served various roles in IBM Information Development as a writer, instructor, developer, tester, and evangelist of structured document solutions in IBM for more than 25 years.

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Deploying help systems using XML: Two case studies

(Larry Kunz, SDI Corporation)

This presentation sketches different ways in which XML can be used to develop online help systems, with an emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages that each approach presents for the help developer. In one approach, for example, XML is used to organize content contained in non-XML formats (like HTML) to facilitate reuse. Another approach tightly integrates help text with screen contents to ensure consistency between the two.

About Larry Kunz

Larry Kunz is a project manager and writer with Systems Documentation, Inc. (SDI) in Durham, NC. In 30 years as a writer, manager, and planner he has experienced first-hand the transition from book-based documentation to today's integrated information delivery of information from a wide range of sources using different formats and media.

Larry has managed and provided content for traditional technical writing projects and marketing projects. He holds a Masters Certificate in Project Management from the George Washington University, and a BA from the College of William and Mary. He is a Fellow in the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and currently heads up the Society's strategic planning effort.

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Introduction to Schematron

(Debbie Lapeyre, Mulberry Technologies)

Schematron is a small, powerful and lightweight fact-checker for XML documents. It offers the best error messages in the world - you write them yourself. Whether you are using XSD, DTD, or RELAX NG, there are some validations that those grammar-based schema languages just can't express, or which, for practical or business reasons, you do not want to build into your basic XML models. Schematron offers a practical way to reach into these corners. Schematron can supplement your schema validation with targeted reporting on elements and attributes, testing their presence, absence, values or value ranges, checking co-constraints and other tricky situations, and warning about suspect occurrences that require further examination. To express its rules, Schematron relies on XPath, the industry-standard query syntax for data retrieval and linking within and among XML documents. This makes it a natural fit with other applications in the XML family of technologies including XSLT and XQuery; eases development and maintenance; and rewards your organization's investment in XML expertise with a higher quality product. This session is a presentation, discussion and demonstration using real-world data, suitable for newcomers to XML-based document production as well as for editors, production staff, and technologists more experienced with XML.

About Debbie Lapeyre

About Debbie Lapeyre Ms. Lapeyre has been working with XML, XSLT, and XPath since their inception and with SGML (XML's predecessor) since 1984. Debbie is an architect and developer of XML Tag Sets (vocabularies) who designs and writes the schemas (DTD, XSD, RELAX NG) that model those vocabularies. Most recently, she serves as the architect and as a member of the design team for the NLM Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Suite, now the de facto standard for tagging journal articles worldwide.

As a document-oriented publishing analyst, Debbie helps clients to analyze their information management, retrieval, and distribution/publication requirements and translates these requirements into functioning production systems, based on XML technologies. As a senior XSLT and XSL-FO consultant, she designs both pages and specifications for complex XSLT transforms and stylesheets as well as develops prototype XSLT applications.

Debbie is a member of the XML Guild. She is also a co-chairs of "Balisage: The Markup Conference" and has previously co-chaired "Extreme Markup Languages", "Markup Technologies", and the annual international "SGML/XML'XX Conference". She teaches XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, Schematron, What-is-XML-and-Why-Should-You-Care, and XML print workflows at venues all over the English-speaking world.

About Mulberry Technologies, Inc.

Mulberry Technologies, Inc. is an XML and XSLT consultancy that specializes in consulting for startup XML implementations that deal with prose documents. We provide advice and support for such implementations; run facilitated Document Analysis sessions; write DTDs and schemas; construct XSLT stylesheets; teach XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, and Schematron classes; evaluate existing and newly developed DTDs, schemas, and stylesheets; and help with hardware/software selection and workflow and process reorganization.

We have put together (and pathologically documented) industry-wide and small-scale XML Tag Sets (DTDs and schemas).

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Introduction to XSLT Concepts

(Debbie Lapeyre, Mulberry Technologies)

You keep hearing that XML is exciting; that once you have your content in XML you can do anything with it; that XML is powerful and flexible. And then you look at an XML file and don't see what the fuss is all about! XSLT is the language that makes XML powerful and flexible. XSLT is a language written to transform XML. Using XSLT you can: convert XML into display formats (including HTML and PDF); make XML into tool-specific formats (such InDesign and QuarkXPress); and automatically add numbering, cross-references, tables of contents, and generated text. You can even use XSLT to convert documents tagged according to your DTD/schema into documents tagged according to someone else's tag set! The availability of XSLT, a comparatively easy transformation tool, has changed the way we think about XML content.

In this introduction to XSLT you will learn the principles that underlie XSLT, its processing model, and how it is being used in a variety of real environments. This is a concept course; showing "just enough" syntax.

About Debbie Lapeyre

About Debbie Lapeyre Ms. Lapeyre has been working with XML, XSLT, and XPath since their inception and with SGML (XML's predecessor) since 1984. Debbie is an architect and developer of XML Tag Sets (vocabularies) who designs and writes the schemas (DTD, XSD, RELAX NG) that model those vocabularies. Most recently, she serves as the architect and as a member of the design team for the NLM Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Suite, now the de facto standard for tagging journal articles worldwide.

As a document-oriented publishing analyst, Debbie helps clients to analyze their information management, retrieval, and distribution/publication requirements and translates these requirements into functioning production systems, based on XML technologies. As a senior XSLT and XSL-FO consultant, she designs both pages and specifications for complex XSLT transforms and stylesheets as well as develops prototype XSLT applications.

Debbie is a member of the XML Guild. She is also a co-chairs of "Balisage: The Markup Conference" and has previously co-chaired "Extreme Markup Languages", "Markup Technologies", and the annual international "SGML/XML'XX Conference". She teaches XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, Schematron, What-is-XML-and-Why-Should-You-Care, and XML print workflows at venues all over the English-speaking world.

About Mulberry Technologies, Inc.

Mulberry Technologies, Inc. is an XML and XSLT consultancy that specializes in consulting for startup XML implementations that deal with prose documents. We provide advice and support for such implementations; run facilitated Document Analysis sessions; write DTDs and schemas; construct XSLT stylesheets; teach XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, and Schematron classes; evaluate existing and newly developed DTDs, schemas, and stylesheets; and help with hardware/software selection and workflow and process reorganization.

We have put together (and pathologically documented) industry-wide and small-scale XML Tag Sets (DTDs and schemas).

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The Rise of the Documentation Solutions Architect

(Jonathan M. Roe, SCCI)

As more organizations adopt XML and content management solutions to store, manage and publish their documentation, the processes and technical requirements needed to manage the documentation grow in complexity. To manage writing, editing, reviewing, and publishing documentation, you’ll need tools, applications, and customized scripts. If you adopt DITA as your content development standard, you’ll likely need specialization. And you’ll need expertise to develop, implement, and maintain your XML-based documentation solution.

This presentation discusses how adoption of XML and DITA has spawned a new role in the technical documentation community: the documentation solutions architect. The documentation solutions architect is familiar with the discipline of technical writing and editing, but is also familiar with the tools that render XML to other formats (such as XSL), tools that manage publishing the content (such as Ant), scripting tools that generate reports and perform other functions (such Python or Perl), tools for content management (such as Subversion and Perforce), and applications for authoring in XML and DITA.

The presentation will help you decide if you should 1) hire an experienced documentation solutions architect, 2) train someone in-house to be a documentation solutions architect, or 3) seek a third-party consultant to implement your solution. It will also help you get a better idea of how much implementing an XML- or DITA-based solution will cost.

The presentation is geared toward managers considering implementing or expanding an XML-based documentation solution or anyone in the technical writing community interested in XML- and DITA-based documentation solutions.

About Jonathan M. Roe

Jonathan Roe is a senior XML solutions architect at SCCI in Austin, Texas. He has worked in XML and related technologies for almost 10 years. He has implemented XML-based solutions on small and large scales, including projects requiring localization.

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Open Graphics and the Sustainable Web: Scalable Vector Graphics and Canvas

(Doug Schepers, W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs)

This is an introductory presentation on SVG, Canvas, and how they fit into the larger Web ecosystem.

About Doug Schepers

Doug Schepers works for the W3C as the Rich Web Clients Activity Lead, and the Team Contact for the SVG and WebApps Working Groups, and participates in several other groups, including HTML. He is an editor of the Element Traversal, DOM3 Events, and SVG specifications, and co-chairs the SVG Interest Group. Before joining the W3C Team, he has been a long-time developer of Web applications, with a focus on SVG. Doug works from home in Chapel Hill, NC.

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Ex-XHTML HTML

(Doug Schepers, W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs and Sam Ruby, W2C HTML Working Group)

There is a lot of confusion and misinformation about the future of HTML and XML. This presentation will cover some of the differences (and similarities) between HTML5, XHTML, and XHTML2, discuss the future roadmap of X/HTML and XML in browsers.

About Doug Schepers

Doug Schepers works for the W3C as the Rich Web Clients Activity Lead, and the Team Contact for the SVG and WebApps Working Groups, and participates in several other groups, including HTML. He is an editor of the Element Traversal, DOM3 Events, and SVG specifications, and co-chairs the SVG Interest Group. Before joining the W3C Team, he has been a long-time developer of Web applications, with a focus on SVG. Doug works from home in Chapel Hill, NC.

About Sam Ruby

Sam Ruby is a prominent software developer who has made significant contributions to many of the Apache Software Foundation's open source software projects, and to the standardization of web feeds via his involvement with the Atom web feed standard and the feedvalidator.org web service.

He currently holds a Senior Technical Staff Member position in the Emerging Technologies Group of IBM. He resides in Raleigh, North Carolina.

He is the co-chair of the W3C's HTML Working Group.

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Sending messages to the future: preservation aspects of data representation

(C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Black Mesa Technologies LLC)

One rationale often given for creating large collections of electronic resources is that such resources can be reused by projects other than the originator. For this promise to come true, creators of resources and the communities interested in such resources must take steps to ensure their successful preservation. Preserving resources of a future we cannot predict in detail is like sending messages in bottles to recipients we do not know. There are no silver bullets, no methods that guarantee success in preservation endeavors. But a relatively simple analysis of some obvious failure modes shows that there are steps we can take to improve the chances of success.

About C. M. Sperberg-McQueen

C.M. Sperberg-McQueen is the founder of Black Mesa Technologies LLC, a consultancy specializing in information management using descriptive markup, He was a founding member of the XML Working Group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), co-edited the XML 1.0 specification, and serves as an invited expert on the W3C XML Schema and XSL Working Groups. From 1999 through 2009 he was a member of the technical staff at W3C. Before that he worked for twelve years in the Academic Computer Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and for two years at Princeton University, where he served as a consultant for humanities computing questions. He also served from 1995 through 2004 as a co-coordinator (with David R. Chesnutt and Susan M. Hockey) of the Model Editions Partnership, and from 1998 to 2003 held a position as visiting researcher at the University of Bergen (Norway).

He has served as co-editor of the Text Encoding Initiative's Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange (1994), of the W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 specification, and currently serves as a co-editor of the XML Schema 1.1 specification.

He has a Ph.D. in comparative literature but strayed into computing as a graduate student and never came back out.

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XML Schema (XSD) 1.1: what's new?

(C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Black Mesa Technologies LLC)

The W3C has recently issued a 'Last Call' working draft of version 1.1 of the XML Schema Definition Language (XSDL). What's new in XSDL 1.1? And what can it do for you and for your schemas?

The talk will offer an overview of the changes in version 1.1 of the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Schema Definition Language (XSDL).

Some familiarity with XSDL 1.0 will be assumed. The major topics to be covered are the major areas of change between XSDL 1.0 and XSDL 1.1, namely:

• support for XML 1.0
• changes to content models: weakened wildcards, open content, negative wildcards, more powerful all-groups
• default attribute groups, to make it easier to incorporate xml:* and other groups of attributes into every complex type in your schema
• more consistent handling of validation when type definitions or element declarations are missing from a schema
• assertions on complex types, expressed in XPath 2.0
• elements may not have multiple substitution-group heads
• conditional type assignment (the type assigned to an element can depend on the values of its attributes)
• simpler rules for complex type derivation by restriction
• changes to ID and IDREF to allow multiple attributes of type ID; this makes it easier to support both xml:ID and ID attributes already present in existing languages
• methods to allow schema authors to write XSDL schema documents compatible with schema processors supporting different versions of the language
• alignment of the set of simple types with XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0
• addition of the precisionDecimal datatype
• miscellaneous small changes to the Datatypes specification

About C. M. Sperberg-McQueen

Biographical data coming soon.

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XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 - Basic Introduction with Focus on What's New

(Andrew W Spyker, IBM)

Introductory session covering changes to these technologies. Great for newbies and gurus alike.

About Andrew Spkyer

As a Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM) in the WebSphere Application Server development teams, I focus on three major areas. Using my five years of experience leading the WebSphere Application Server performance team, I advise the performance team. As a SOA runtime architect, I own driving consistency across our SOA runtimes of which I mainly focus on benchmarking strategy, performance, and XML consistency. Finally, with most of my time, I own the creation and driving of the XML strategy of the WebSphere portfolio. Currently I am the chief architect of the WebSphere Application Server XML Feature Pack.

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Using the new XML standards of XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 in Java based Middleware

(Andrew W Spyker, IBM)

This intermediate session will document some common usage scenarios of the W3C XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 in Java middleware environments. Through the use of scenarios, the session will explain why to use each standard, what common issues are and how to best avoid them. Comparisons will be drawn between using these XML programming models and their object oriented counterparts – Document Object Model (DOM) and Java API for XML Binding (JAXB). The session will then focus on API’s for invoking XML programming models from Java. An analysis of the Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) will show how this API is lacking when providing for XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0. Alternative Java API’s beyond JAXP will be discussed and advantages of each will be discussed. Finally, enterprise usage in Java based middleware will be considered focusing on performance, reliability, and full standards compliance.

About Andrew Spkyer

As a Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM) in the WebSphere Application Server development teams, I focus on three major areas. Using my five years of experience leading the WebSphere Application Server performance team, I advise the performance team. As a SOA runtime architect, I own driving consistency across our SOA runtimes of which I mainly focus on benchmarking strategy, performance, and XML consistency. Finally, with most of my time, I own the creation and driving of the XML strategy of the WebSphere portfolio. Currently I am the chief architect of the WebSphere Application Server XML Feature Pack.

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Creativity or Confusion Factor? The Case for Word-, Phrase-, and Sentence-level Reuse in Writing for a Global Audience.

(Kent Taylor, acrolinx North America, Inc)

Analyses of large document sets, translation memories, websites, and knowledgebases indicate that migrating to structured authoring can significantly reduce translation/localization time and cost:

• Use of a structured markup language like XML reduces overall translation costs by about 13% by automating page make-up/composition in the target languages.
• Chunk-level reuse in a structured environment can produce an additional 15% time and cost savings.
• Controlled reuse of approved words, phrases, and sentences can reduce translation cost and time by an additional 25% or more.
• Up to 15% of the words aren' t needed -- unnecessary modifiers (very, extremely, approximately, etc.) and common phrases
• 10% to 15% of the phrases and sentences in any given corpus are typically expressed an average of 3.5 - 5.5 different ways.

In a corpus of a million sentences, consistent use of a single, approved sentence instead of multiple variations on the theme, could reduce translation requirements by 250,000+ sentences. At an average cost of $2 or more per sentence. Per language.

Come to this session to learn how new tools can expose this redundancy, help you deal with it effectively, and significantly reduce translation costs and time-to-market.

About Kent Taylor

Kent is an industry veteran (with the scars to prove it!) with 20 years experience managing tech pubs and training operations at AT&T/Lucent Technologies, and another 10 years of consulting experience. He has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of large-scale multimedia, multilanguage information supply chains.  An early implementer of Gen Code, SGML, XML, single-sourcing, and machine translation technology, his focus has always been on applying technology in ways that improve the quality of the information that the end-users see.  If you focus on quality and process first, cost and time improvements almost always follow.

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Survivor: XML

(Leigh W. White, Expert Technical Writer, Allscripts-Misys)

Once upon a time on a not-very-faraway island, there was a tech pubs group with thousands of pages of unstructured FrameMaker documentation and RoboHelp topics. Over a period of 18 months, this group learned how to use structured FrameMaker, developed a proprietary XML tagset, an EDD and a structured FrameMaker template, and converted all that information into a single unified, cohesive set of content that is currently being used to produce numerous PDF user guides, quick reference guides, enhancement summaries, and online Help. Everyone in this group is still speaking to each other and no one got kicked off the island. This session presents the challenges of planning the conversion, explains the decisions made and discusses the lessons learned (good and bad!) from the experience. This tech pubs group does not currently use a CMS and has developed some low-cost, easily-implementable processes and tools for tracking their content usage. This session will discuss those tools and processes as well.

About Leigh W. White

Leigh White is a technical communicator with over 15 years of experience as a content creator, content manager, and production coordinator. One of her primary interests is exploring ways that small technical publication groups can leverage existing tools and improve processes to maximize the reuse of their content, improve their efficiency, increase their offerings and save their sanity. To accomplish these goals, Leigh advocates that effective technical communicators need to be more than writers; they need to be part programmer, part designer and part project manager. She is also a devotee of XML and structured documentation and she believes that DITA might just save the world. Her other professional interests include DTD and XSLT design, FrameMaker template design, and relational database design for small, proprietary content management systems. Leigh has spoken on XML, DITA, content management systems and content conversion at a number of conferences, including the FrameMaker Chautauquas and the DITA/TechComm conference. She has also presented hands-on "DITA In a Day" workshops in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.