XML 2006: Day Two Keynote

Darin McBeath of Reed Elsevier spoke on Unleashing the Power of XML. He had a very interesting survey that was conducted across the organization (I think).

The biggest challenges for publishers?

• Migration of existing content
• Training

Main weaknesses of XML?

• Namespaces
• Schema is too complex
• Everyone can do it

He had some data showing that XQuery is gaining in popularity, both at the conference and in general technical discussions.

Finally, a list of why XML is important to publishers:

• Custom publishing. O’Reilly’s Safari is the canonical example.
• Content repurposing
• Fabrication/conversion
• Content management
• Search (Oxford African American Studies Center)
• eLearning
• Mashups

Several of these warrant entire presentations.

Key phrase: mind the gap. Pay attention to the chasm between the programmers and the content creators. (see my previous post)

Great keynote — a nice big-picture overview, which is exactly what a keynote needs to do.