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{ Yearly Archives } 2004

Authoring Proceedings

One of the things that distinguishes the XML conference is the fact we publish proceedings that are open to the public a few months after the event, and available to all conference attendees as soon as they’re processed.
The speakers often complain about writing them, but the attendees, libraries, students, and technology historians always appreciate [...]

Selecting Papers

Most of the people who submitted papers to the XML 2004 Conference will have heard by now whether their talk was accepted, waitlisted, or rejected. Picking the papers is quite an involved process; since the quality of the conference depends on the quality of the papers it’s also an important process. Every conference picks papers in a different way; here are some notes on how the conference I chair does this.

Bookclub Selection

The bookclub I belong to picked the books for the 2004-5 season. it went a lot quicker this year than last because two of the men had to rush off to their hockey game. We seem to have a somewhat unusual bookclub, in that there are men and women, and we try to read a wide selection of types of books - some old, some new, and occasionally non-fiction. We mostly try for books that individuals might not read without some incentive, or books that look like they’d lead to interesting discussions.

Customer Service at Air Canada

Air Canada has a bad reputation these days; in many ways they are a case study for what not to do in customer service. I recently flew on Air Canada and had some delays in the flight. The way most of the Air Canada staff handled the situation just proved that bad customer service makes for extremely upset customers. It would have been so easy for Air Canada to not make things worse, if they’d just followed a couple of basic customer service rules.

Losing Data

In all the discussions about weblogs.com closing down, it’s good to see that people are going to be able to get their data. And that lots of people are stepping up offering to help convert that data into other formats. This is a service not always available in the commercial world, unfortunately.
The first (non-blog) version [...]

TN Status

As a Canadian citizen who does some work for customers in the U.S., I needed to get some form of legal status for business trips there. For Canadians travelling temporarily, TN status is the easiest if you qualify. Herewith a few notes on my experience of the procedure.