I've just been to a couple of conferences - the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) and Extreme Markup Languages. OSCON went pretty well, and I got to meet Raph, an extra bonus.

At OSCON, I expressed some concern about XML's declining direction, so far as I can see it, and the W3C's lack of understanding of the technology it supposedly stewards. My doubts unfortunately continue to grow.

Except for one moment, a presentation by the brilliant Liam Quin which was a masterpiece of the very kinds of URI-poisoning that rest at the heart of my concerns about the W3C and XML, Extreme was a showcase of the possibilities that lie ahead for markup.

Extreme is wonderfully refreshing because it tends to be filled with people who understand markup and care about markup, rather than with people who have problems they think markup might solve sort of adequately. Extreme is also filled with people who incorrigibly think for themselves, so questions are hard-hitting and ideas are fast-flowing, with little deference to institutional authority. Makes for a great set of conversations.

I put up a poster on Monastic XML, and presented on my Out-of-line (Ool) markup work There were some great pieces on comparing markup, approaches to creating overlapping markup, extending the reach of regular expressions, and building systems for autonomous processing of markup.

Phew!