{"id":106,"date":"2005-12-01T11:02:58","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T19:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/?p=106"},"modified":"2007-04-02T08:23:50","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T15:23:50","slug":"five-years-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2005\/12\/five-years-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Years On"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c<\/span>The time has come, the wal\u00adrus said\u201d \u2014 not to talk of cab\u00adbages and kings, nor even of seal\u00ading wax, but to move on and let someone else with fresh ideas take over chair\u00ading the XML<\/span> Con\u00adfer\u00adence Series<\/a>. XML<\/span> 2001<\/a> was the first con\u00adfer\u00adence I chaired, XML<\/span> 2005<\/a> the last. It\u2019s been an inter\u00adest\u00ading jour\u00adney, full of inter\u00adest\u00ading people and inter\u00adest\u00ading top\u00adics. I\u2019ll miss many aspects of chair\u00ading \u2014 the pos\u00adit\u00adive side of inter\u00adact\u00ading with attendees, review\u00aders, ses\u00adsion chairs, and speak\u00aders, but I am relieved I no longer have to plan my entire year around one week in Novem\u00adber, clean dozens of XML<\/span> papers (well, once this year\u2019s final pro\u00adceed\u00adings are done), or worry about how many last-minute can\u00adcel\u00adla\u00adtions or no-shows we\u2019ll have (e.g., this year, for some reas\u00adon we had a large num\u00adber of can\u00adcel\u00adla\u00adtions so I was glad I had a form\u00adal waitl\u00adist of speak\u00aders and talks).<\/p>\n

When I took the job, I set out to make a con\u00adfer\u00adence that I would want to attend and con\u00adtrib\u00adute to. To me, the key was com\u00admunity involve\u00adment. A con\u00adfer\u00adence is only as good as the speak\u00aders allow it to be; you need know\u00adledgable speak\u00aders talk\u00ading on inter\u00adest\u00ading top\u00adics if you\u2019re to give attendees a reas\u00adon to both\u00ader attend\u00ading. How do you get good speak\u00aders to attend? You make sure there are lots of oth\u00ader good speak\u00aders attend\u00ading, so they can all talk and learn and net\u00adwork. The ideal con\u00adfer\u00adence to my mind is quiet dur\u00ading ses\u00adsions, noisy dur\u00ading cof\u00adfee breaks, and every\u00adone goes away exhausted but exhil\u00adar\u00adated from everything they\u2019ve seen, heard, and thought about. Includ\u00ading the com\u00admunity in this pro\u00adcess was key, and I was for\u00adtu\u00adnate in that so many people in the XML<\/span> com\u00admunity were happy to help out, wheth\u00ader as plan\u00adning com\u00admit\u00adtee mem\u00adbers, review\u00aders, speak\u00aders, or ses\u00adsion chairs.<\/p>\n

I set up a plan\u00adning com\u00admit\u00adtee to help with final decisions, and designed a peer review sys\u00adtem that was easy for the review\u00aders (give a grade from 1 to 4 and add com\u00adments) so people would\u00adn\u2019t mind review\u00ading. One review\u00ader said it was just like read\u00ading a sched\u00adule and decid\u00ading which talks he\u2019d both\u00ader attend\u00ading, which I liked. The review\u00aders made the plan\u00adning com\u00admit\u00adtee\u2019s work in pick\u00ading the final set of talks for the sched\u00adule pos\u00adsible. Many of the review\u00aders were happy to be ses\u00adsion chairs for the con\u00adfer\u00adence itself, help\u00ading out speak\u00aders (par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly new speak\u00aders), mod\u00ader\u00adat\u00ading ques\u00adtions, and, to my mind, under\u00adscor\u00ading the fact that this is a com\u00admunity con\u00adfer\u00adence. I don\u2019t really like con\u00adfer\u00adences that don\u2019t have ses\u00adsion mod\u00ader\u00adat\u00adors or chairs as it seems imper\u00adson\u00adal somehow.<\/p>\n

And then there were the smal\u00adler touches I could bring in as chair. For example, many con\u00adfer\u00adences hand out speak\u00ader gifts, which are usu\u00adally small, semi-use\u00adless tech toys that die after 3 uses. I decided that per\u00adson\u00adally I\u2019d rather have a speaker\/reviewer recep\u00adtion to attend, so that\u2019s what we did. And I star\u00adted the XML<\/span> Cup to recog\u00adnise people whose con\u00adtri\u00adbu\u00adtions seemed to cry out for more recog\u00adni\u00adtion; again, this was inten\u00added as some\u00adthing for the community. <\/p>\n

My reward has been con\u00adfer\u00adences where people are involved, where the hall\u00adways are quiet dur\u00ading ses\u00adsions and the cof\u00adfee breaks busy, where attendees come up and say \u201cmy man\u00adage\u00adment told me to attend and it\u2019s been really great!\u201d, where ideas and tech\u00adniques cross-pol\u00adlin\u00adate from one field to anoth\u00ader. This year it became par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly obvi\u00adous that we could\u00adn\u2019t pigeon-hole talks any more, they were all applic\u00adable to mul\u00adtiple tracks and had applic\u00ada\u00adtions far out\u00adside the uses of XML<\/span> even 3 years ago. XML<\/span> is truly a basic part of today\u2019s IT<\/span> infra\u00adstruc\u00adture in ways that few would have been brave enough to pre\u00addict when I star\u00adted chair\u00ading these con\u00adfer\u00adences. And I like to think that at least some of that is due to this con\u00adfer\u00adence: ker\u00adnels of ideas that are passed around, net\u00adwork\u00ading, and the incub\u00ada\u00adtion effect of hav\u00ading lots of experts in close prox\u00adim\u00adity who can bounce ideas and crazy thoughts off each other.<\/p>\n

Dav\u00adid Meg\u00adgin\u00adson<\/a> will be chair\u00ading XML<\/span> 2006 (Nov 13\u201317, 2006, in Seattle). He\u2019ll do a good job and will bring fresh ideas and energy to the con\u00adfer\u00adence. It will be inter\u00adest\u00ading for me to sit back and watch how it develops!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c<\/span>The time has come, the wal\u00adrus said\u201d \u2014 not to talk of cab\u00adbages and kings, nor even of seal\u00ading wax, but to move on and let someone else with fresh ideas take over chair\u00ading the XML<\/span> Con\u00adfer\u00adence Series. XML<\/span> 2001 was the first con\u00adfer\u00adence I chaired, XML<\/span> 2005 the last. It\u2019s been an inter\u00adest\u00ading jour\u00adney, \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cFive Years On\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference","tag-xmlconf2005"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}