intertwingly

Overall, I was very impressed by the participants.  I've been in similar meetings in the past where what I found was people who were in deep denial and were seeking other people to reassure them.  In this meeting, I found a completely different set of people: ones who are trying to keep on top of the current trends so that they can make informed decisions.

Here is a random set of notes:

SportsML is an example of a vocabulary for a specific problem domain.

PRISM is an ongoing effort on standardizing markup for publishing data.  This is done via modular XHTML vocabulary (disabling portions and additions).  This includes standardizing class names for different types of data.

ICE: once money changes hands, consumer expectations change.  These guys are collaborating (using a Wiki!) on trying to define a set of standards for paid subscriptions - encapsulating any types of data.

Reuters: this goes to the heart of their 100+ year old business model.  Watermarking and signatures are areas that they are very interested in.

Associated Press is a non-for-profit (I didn't know that!).  They have a massive system written using XSLT and biztalk to convert between a number of formats. The output formats most in demand are the ancient ANPA and the more current NITF.  Key message: there is a lot of inertia...

Vodafone: your phone is not allowed to crash

Time: Focus is on a common vocabulary for metadata.