This XML Conference series has a number of features that set it apart from all other XML-related conferences. It is presented by a non-profit organization called IDEAlliance, formerly the Graphic Communications Association. GCA was involved in generic markup in the very early days (the late 1960s) and GCA committees were involved in creating SGML (the precursor of XML). GCA presented markup-related conferences from 1982, and SGML conferences from 1986 (the year SGML became an ISO standard). The first XML conference (presented by GCA) was held in March 1997, shortly after the first public working draft of XML was released at SGML 96.For more information on previous conferences, please visit the web sites.