Patrick Durusau speaks out again. I'm glad to see that Patrick Durusau is continuing to share publicly his thoughts on document formats. His latest post is on the topic of Co-Evolving OpenXML and OpenDocument Format, and Gray Knowlton has some interesting commentary about how Patrick's view compares to the public statements that others have made on this topic recently.
Biztalk and Open XML. BizTalk is a powerful tool for XML-based integration of disparate business processes, and the Open XML formats are a great fit for the types of workflow documents and reports that such processes often need to generate. Nick Heppleston has an interesting post about how to create Open XML documents from BizTalk, including straightforward code samples and hands-on implementation details. Thanks for sharing, Nick!
Why is Bob Sutor so scared of Rick Jelliffe? IBM's Bob Sutor is pleading with his readers to come up with a way to prevent Rick Jelliffe from participating in the BRM. Apparently the fact that Rick is the author of most of Australia's comments on DIS 29500 and a longtime participant in document-format standards in general makes him a bad choice for the BRM in Bob's view. My theory is that Bob saw Rick's question recently about whether fondue will be served at the anti-BRM, and is now deathly afraid that there may be somebody in the room who actually knows a bit about markup language standards. Sorry Bob, it looks like you'll need to re-write your presentation. Or not serve fondue.
Blogging and the BRM. Speaking of Rick, I noticed that he has publicly stated he won't be blogging about the BRM next week. I'll also not have anything to say here about what's going on in Geneva, for similar reasons: all members of the US delegation have been asked to refrain from making public statements about the content of the BRM, because we're representing the interests of the United States and not our respective business interests. I'm honored to be part of this process, and intend to follow the rules strictly, so the only thing you'll see from me about Geneva may be a pretty picture or two, if I get a chance to take any.
Come on, Doug. Many people who will go to the OFE event ("Anti-BRM" in your words) are from the Microsoft community. I spoke to the organizers yesterday. I pledged the organizers in favour of also admitting Zuck as a second ACT participant. We like him. The problem they have is that their participants list is kind of full because of the great interest. Many standard guys freak out over a participation of "Vint Cerf". Alex Brown's concern was that the event would be too attractive, so BRM participants defect.
Other news: the boat sank. So no boat trip. ;-)
What surprises me is that Microsoft didn't publish their own events. Anyway, we will appreciate your invitations.
As Of Rick, I don't think that Bob Sutor is scared. It is more that the Australians are pissed.
I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that "something must be done" means to attempt to replace me: it might mean that they should try to see if third member were possible at this late stage, for example. However, we only have two places so this is not possible.
I wonder how many participants at the BRM are from IBM which is of course a company that refused to cooperate on OOXML in Ecma and show only interest in a negative outcome of this standardization proces. For them to protest against other people participating is just funny.
I hope you guys have taken earplugs with you, as getting sleep might get difficult otherwise:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/169233/open-xml-vote-has-turned-into-a-riot.html
Thanks for the warning, hAl. I've relocated to a hotel in Zurich and plan to fly back and forth each day.
So I'll be able to sleep fine, but I'm a bit concerned about how my manager will respond to the expense report. I need to find a customer in Zurich to take to dinner each night, and I'm hoping that can provide a business justification for this arrangement. If you're a big customer in Zurich, please get ahold of me ASAP! :-)
Sorry, i can't even afford a legal version of MS Office 2007 so I don't qualify as a big customer I guess
I said in my last post that I'd try to post some photos from Geneva, and here are a few so far. I'm here
I said in my last post that I'd try to post some photos from Geneva, and here are a few so far. I'm
we did actually go for a fondue after the keynote. It was really tasty. I didn't know in advance that it was going to happen or I would have tried to alert Rick to it. For the record we all paid for our own meals. The boat didn't happen, but we went to a very weird contemporary art gallery, I think that event was sponsored by the local IBM offices.