RE: A real community service

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

It begins to thin out when they run out of new 
jokes.  Consider the incredible amount of 
redundancy in the presentation topics, how many 
of the revelations are old news if you either 
attended other conferences or sat in on these 
maillists.  How many times have you seen 
or heard about the failure of the Mars probe 
based on confusing metric and english units, 
or the noisyness of the american voting 
process used to validate the concept of 
noisy communications?  How many presentations 
on syntax vs semantics have you heard?  
Convergence?  At least we have quit debating 
link types, but I suspect it will get 
rediscovered too.

Many years ago, a NASA scientist was telling 
me about the Skylab they had just flown.  
He said, "the excitement about the lab diminishes 
as we start to run out of useful things to 
do up there.  The reality of usefulness is 
more limited than the excitement of the event."

And that will happen in these conferences too. 
There is a Measure of Boredom (say MOB) and past that, 
the signup lists thin out and the MOB goes elsewhere.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Fitzgerald [mailto:mike@wyeast.net]
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 10:22 AM
To: Jonathan Borden; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: A real community service


I don't think Tim was being disingenuous at all. It was just a funny
coincidence. He probably appears on the site without his direct permission.
I certainly did not mean for it to be a laugh at his expense; there
certainly have been a few laughs at my expense on this and other lists. %^}

I got an email this morning from a suspicious source about a turf dispute
between SYS-CON vs. Camelot Communications, both XML conference purveyors. I
am not surprised by the proliferation of conferences or in-fighting when
there is so much hay to be made. I think we'll have fewer choices in a few
years. XML conferences, like XML "standards," tools, and books, are all
subject to the "meritocracy of geeks" test (the MOG test?) we heard tell of
on this list last year. Word of mouth -- whether about books, movies, ski
boots, or speakers -- rules in the long run, and sometimes even in the short
run.

I think XML 1.0, XSLT, and SAX have passed MOG. I think RELAX, RDDL and TREX
and other initiatives by people who know what they are doing will pass MOG.
I hope other W3C activities will too, but the jury is out on many of them.
Strong swimmers rise to the surface, and sometimes even cross the English
Channel. I'll be watching closely.

-Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@mediaone.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 6:18 PM
> To: Michael Fitzgerald; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: A real community service
>
>
> Michael Fitzgerald wrote:
> >
> > I had a look at the XML Edge site. The irony of seeing a chapeau-ed Tim
> > Bray -- twice mind you -- emblazoned on the page, in light of his
> > post, was
> > one of the best moments of my day.
>
> yeah well at first glance you might think that Tim was being disingenuous
> but what is really outrageous is that this site (xmledge or whatever) is
> listing people who gave keynotes at last year's XML DevCon in San Jose ...
> which I was at and at which Tim as gave a terrific keynote. it seems to me
> that this other conference site has patently false advertising.
> on the other
> hand I may have simply had no idea where I was at the time.
>
> -Jonathan
>
>
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