Balizage

Steve Newcomb welcomes us to Balizage (with a 'Z'). He tells us that he was seduced into this madness by the military industrial complex. He also tells us that we are the keepers of the worlds standards...although I think NIST might disagree.

James David Mason is introducing the timer to the conference. "We'll allot you some time and it counts down. When the red goes away, so do you."

Debbie LaPayre "The parade of the organizing committee is both moderatly boring and moderately useful. And if you ask us a question we'll all answer, 'Ask Tommie'". If you need an impromtue room just walk up to the desk and say "I need a room for the night".

Is it just me or does that sound dirty?

Debbie also introduces us to the concept of posters. I'll try to take a few pictures of the ones I might understand.

Michael Sperberg-McQueen now steps to the podium. "This is not the first conference on markup, in August, in Montreal." "How many people are here for the first time?" Almost a third of the hands went up. His suggestion for getting to know people; "Pretend you are the host of the party and that it is your job to make sure everyone has someone to talk to."

Debbie is now introducing Tommie Usdin, "Somebody really interesting."

I've arrived

I'm sure you were all worried.

Four things I've learned today or that might help others in the future:

1. NEVER buy a cheese steak from an airport vendor
2. When arriving via air in Montreal be prepared to WALK to the Documentation Area
3. When taking the Airport Shuttle Bus make sure to tell them you want to go to Sheraton: Le Cetre. That way you can just walk a block and a half to the Hotel Europa.
4. When checking in at the Hotel Europa get the i-hotel access code BEFORE going up to your room.

But the important thing for me is that I am here. I am looking forward to the conference tomorrow. I understand that a few other people did not make it out at a reasonable hour yesterday either. Perhaps we can all commiserate together?

Sitting In A Railway Station,

Got a ticket for my destination...

Well actually it is an airport but I do have a ticket. And, approximately five hours after it was scheduled to depart I believe we actually will. I say this because I believe they will have a riot if they move us from one more gate or tell us one more time "we'll tell you when the plane arrives". But maybe that is just my cynicism about Post-9/11 air travel.

So my hope is that I reach Montreal in time for a quick nap and then the Versioning Symposium. If not, I hope someone else blogs about it.

In Soviet Russia you wait. You do not ask why you wait." - Anonymous

Update::Bad thunderstorms at the Philly airport. The plane appears to be sitting 20 yards from the gate, but we have no idea what is going on. Communication is not an US Air's strong suit.

Update II: Well I am still in PA. I'll be trying to get out on a flight this afternoon. But it doesn't look good. Perhaps I should just drive?

Balisage Poster

I registered for Balisage: The Markup Conference (which I still contend is repeating oneself) and almost immediately received an email from Debbie Lapeyre asking me to put up a poster. Being that I have a hard time saying no to Debbie (she can be persausive) I agreed.

Thank god she didn't ask me to get up and speak at the Speaker's Corner at the Versioning Symposium.

So part of my idea involves the a light-hearted look at the connections between things like DocBook, the NCBI DTD, and DITA (and others). But I was stymied by what to call them. Since I am steeped in NCBI I normally refer to these things as 'tag sets'. But I know that DocBook calls itself a schema and DITA is an architecture.

The former is too confusing with for my tastes and the latter sound like a marketing professional infiltrated the working group. So I asked a professional collegue of mine what she thought. She falls on the tag set side as well, but gave me the profound statement of the month:

"But there is nothing you can do that won't sound stupid to someone."

I think, as long as I keep the 'someone's to under half the room, I am in good shape.