XML Conference & Exhibition 2005

IDEAlliance would like to thank the XML 2005 Planning Committee for helping us bring this conference to you. The Planning Committee is responsible for selecting the talks presented at the conference. The PC is aided in this by the reviewers who blind-review all talk abstracts except late-breaking and product talks.

Sharon Adler, Senior Manager, Extensible Technologies Group, IBM Corporation, United States

Sharon Adler is a Senior Manager at IBM Research in Hawthorne, N.Y. specializing in XML standards and Web Services. Before she rejoined IBM in 1999, she was a Director of Product Management for Publishing Tools for Inso Corporation in Providence, Rhode. From 1985-1992, Sharon held several key positions with IBM Corporation in Boulder, Colorado where she was involved with the development of standards-based authoring and document management tools.

Sharon has been instrumental in the development of International computer standards for more than 20 years. She served as Vice Chair /Editor of multiple ANSI/ISO standards committees as well as her current position as Chair of the XSL Working Group from the W3C. She also sits on the XML Coordination Group of the W3C and is a member of the Board of Directors of Idealliance.

Mike Champion, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation, United States

Michael Champion is a Program Manager for XML Standards at Microsoft. He has worked as a software developer since 1980, and in the SGML/XML industry since 1996. He has represented several companies on the World Wide Consortium (W3C), including co-chairing the Web Services Architecture Working Group and serving as an editor of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Core Recommendation. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, and did graduate study specializing in data analysis and computer simulation of international conflict.

Marion L. Elledge, VP of Information Technology Alliances & Conferences, IDEAlliance, United States

Marion Elledge is Executive Vice President of the International Digital Enterprise Alliance (formerly GCA). During his 22 years with IDEAlliance, Mr. Elledge has been instrumental in developing successful industry events focused on evolving standards and technologies, such as XML. He is also responsible for initiating a number of organizational alliances and instituting IDEAlliance working groups, such as ICE and PRISM. Marion holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and Psychology from the University of South Carolina.

Jim Melton, Oracle Corporation, United States

Jim Melton has been the editor for all parts of the SQL standard for nearly two decades, and has represented his employers in the ANSI standards community and the United States in the international standards community for even longer.

Jim is also co-chair of the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Query Working Group and is an editor of the two parts of the suite of documents being developed by that WG: Functions & Operators and XQueryX. In addition to his day job, Jim is a founding member of the SQLX Group, and is active in developing a new part of the SQL standard, SQL/XML, that specifies technology for using SQL and XML together. He has published five books covering several aspects of the SQL standard and is nearing completion of a new book dealing with querying XML data in various ways. Jim has an M.S. in Computer Science from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Brand Niemann, Computer Scientist and Semantic Web Services Specialist, U.S. EPA, United States

Brand L. Niemann received his Ph.D. in Meteorology and Air Pollution Science from the University of Utah and has been with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 22 years and is currently a Computer Scientist and XML and Web Services Specialist in the Office of Environmental Information. He has received awards and recognitions for his work from the U.S. EPA, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the US Geological Survey, LOTUS, and ComputerWorld-Smithsonian. He is the recipient of Vice President Gore's Hammer Award to teams of federal employees and their partners whose work resulted in a government that works better and costs less. He lead a team that was recognized by OMB Associate Director for Information Technology and E-Government, Mark Forman, and the Quad Council with a Special Award for Innovation in the 2002 CIO Showcase of Excellence for their use of XML in a distributed content network and use of VoiceXML in providing universal access to emergency response information. During 2002-2003, he was chair of the CIO Council's (Architecture and Infrastructure Committee) XML Web Services Working Group (http://web-services.gov) which graduated recently to become the Emerging Components Activity (http://componenttechnology.org) of the Emerging Technology Subcommittee of the CIO Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee. He was recently recognized with the Emerging Technology / Standards Leadership Award at the SecureE-Biz.Net Summit, from Mark Forman, Associate Director, IT and eGovernment, OMB, and David McClure, VP e-Gov, Council for Excellence in Government: "for ushering in new technology to allow us to conduct e-Business securely to further implement the President's Management Agenda". He was also recently recognized with the EPA Bronze Medal "for outstanding collaboration on EPA's Geospatial Blueprint on the EPA Geospatial Team which outlines the enterprise approach for acquiring, managing, and deploying geospatial data and tools" by EPA's Chief Information Officer, Kim Nelson. He was recently asked to co-chair the CIO Council's (Best Practices Committee-Knowledge Management Working Group) Semantic (Web Services) Community of Practice (http://km.gov). He is a member of the EPA Enterprise Architecture Team and can be contacted at niemann.brand@epa.gov.

Jon Udell, Lead Analyst, InfoWorld, United States

Jon Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and groupware evangelist. He has been an independent consultant, was BYTE Magazine's editor-at-large, executive editor, and Web maven, and once upon a time was a developer at Lotus. In June 2002 he joined InfoWorld as lead analyst, author of the weekly Strategic Developer column, and blogger-in-chief. He also writes a monthly column for the O'Reilly Network.

Lauren Wood, Senior Technical Program Manager, Sun Microsystems & XML 2005 Conference Chair, Canada

Lauren Wood is a senior technical program manager for interoperability and technology partnerships at Sun Microsystems. She also chairs IDEAlliance's XML conference series in the US.

Lauren has served on many technical and advisory committees, including W3C's Advisory Board (an elected position) and Advisory Committee, as well as chairing the W3C Document Object Model Working Group from its inception through to the successful publication of Level 2. She has worked as an independent consultant, is a published industry analyst, and was Director of Product Technology for SoftQuad Software.

Lauren holds a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Melbourne, Australia.