A Geek Force for Good

I want to give a shout out to the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC), which helps communities with their technology infrastructure after a disaster.


I found out about the group during the 2013 floods in Colorado, where we specifically deployed to Lyons, Jamestown and Boulder.

The ITDRC has Field Disaster Response Teams (FDRT) and Remote Response Teams (RRT) from all across the United States and are comprised of service oriented IT and AV Professionals from many technology disciplines who volunteer their expertise and skills in times of disaster. We use our tech skills to help communities and small businesses continue operations and successfully recover from disaster.

If you have any technical expertise (especially with wifi, networking, radio communications), we would love to get you on board! Visit http://itdrc.org/volunteer.html for more info. We also love equipment and financial donations. See if your company would be willing to help us help those in need!

This past weekend, we held an Operations Field Exercise in Richardson, Texas. It was a great time to connect with other tech geeks and learn about our deployment kits and mobile command centers.

DITA 1.3 is now an official OASIS Standard

I'm pleased to announce DITA 1.3 is now an official OASIS standard!

From the press release:

 "The OASIS open standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) version 1.3 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. DITA defines an XML architecture for designing, writing, and publishing information in numerous formats, including print, Web-based, mobile, and electronic publications. DITA is widely used for professionally-published books and magazines, technical documentation, online help, training and course development, marketing materials, and medical information because of its modular, topic-based approach and its ability to support content reuse.
This release of DITA comes in three parts, optimized for different audiences:

• Base Edition is designed for application developers and users who need only the most fundamental pieces of the DITA framework.
• Technical Content Edition includes specializations usually used by technical communicators.
• All Inclusive Edition is designed for implementers who want all OASIS-approved specializations, as well as users who develop learning and training materials."

 For the spec or to download the schemas, go to: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/os/

The latest version of the DITA Open Toolkit also has support for v1.3, and can be downloaded here:
http://www.dita-ot.org/download

Several XML Editors have also added support for DITA v1.3, including:

• oXygen XML Editor
• XMetaL

DITA 1.3 released for Public Review

DITA V1.3 will be released for 30 day Public Review, starting 09 July 2015 at 00:00 UTC and ends 07 August 2015 at 23:59 UTC.
This has been a long journey, but I'm pleased to have been a part of this work. Please see the following links:

• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part0-overview/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part0-overview.html
• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part1-base/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part1-base.html
• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part2-tech-content/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part2-tech-content.html
• http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/csprd01/part3-all-inclusive/dita-v1.3-csprd01-part3-all-inclusive.html

Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience

I'll be giving a webinar tomorrow through the DCL Learning Series on "Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience". There is still time to register: http://buff.ly/1J5iruk

Schema TRON

One of the members of our DITA Boot Camp this week kept referring to Schematron in an ominous voice because it looks at your actual writing content (as opposed to DTD or RNG that validates the structure). It became a bit of a joke, so I was inspired to create the following wallpaper. Since Tron is part of the name "Schematron", I used the Tron Legacy theme! And now for your enjoyment...

Highlights from the CMS/DITA NA 2015 Conference

The Content Management Strategies/DITA North America 2015 conference was held April 20-22 in Chicago, Illinois. Over 350 attendees learned best practices in four tracks: Information Design & Development, Technical Solutions, Management, and Emerging Technologies.

As a member of the CIDM staff, I was fortunate to host the Emerging Technologies track and got a chance to learn about a few new technologies, myself! If you missed it, I tried to Live Tweet the key points from each of the sessions here: #cmsconference #emergingtechnologies

Several "game changer" presentations included:

• DITA Glass: Perceive everything as DITA (Radu Coravu, SyncroSoft; George Bina, SyncroSoft
• The dynamic information model (Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services, Inc.; George Bina, SyncroSoft)
• Preparing for Augmented Reality (AR) in technical communications (Rhonda Truitt, Huawei Technologies; Farhad Patel, Huawei Technologies)
• Ipad applications using visual search and Augmented Reality (Pim Bekker, Etteplan)
• Various presentations on Dynamic rendering of DITA

So what was game changing?

The guys at oXygenXML have developed a series of pipeline transforms (Project DITA Glass) that let you, for example, use a topicref (with a special url) to an Excel spreadsheet directly. That URL is transformed on-the-fly directly to DITA, which can then be rendered directly in a table as part of your document! It also can round-trip, so any changes made in the DITA are written back into the Excel sheet.

This is important for those times when you need information from a subject matter expert, but don't want to teach them DITA or have to manually convert their content so you can use it. It's a one-stop shop! They are working on many more transforms. My hope is that they will create one for PowerPoint to DITA for all of the Learning and Training folks out there. Most course developers still work in PowerPoint, but it would be much more powerful to use the DITA publishing tool chains for various outputs while letting the developers still create in their familiar tool.

Another one-stop shop technology is the Dynamic Information Model. Comtech and oXygenXML have partnered together to create an XML-based Information Model, where a company can document their editorial and content structures, while also enabling the automatic enforcement and expression of that Model in the authoring environment! It basically generates the schematron rules and tool tips for authors from the Information Model itself. Very powerful!

A consistent theme in emerging technologies and technical solutions was the dynamic rendering of DITA content (server-side and client-side). There were several approaches presented, but they basically eliminate the DITA-OT publishing step by using CSS+XSL to render DITA content directly or on-demand.

Another particularly interesting theme was presenting technical information in an Augmented Reality environment. In fact, there is a new technical committee being formed at OASIS to address this very subject area! There are some tools available today for creating AR, including DAQRI 4d Studio, Metaio creator and SDK, Wikitude SDK, nGrain. The benefits of this technology include: reduce quality errors, contextual instructions at point of use, remote expert support, increased productivity. AR statistically has been proven to improve first time quality on assembly tasks, with fewer errors. AR can provide procedural steps, along with an overlay of task location, assembly info and more to assist in the completion of a task.

Did you know that by 2020, 103 million cars will be AR-enabled? Are you aware of AR devices, such as Google Glass, Microsoft Hololens, and DAQRI? Now is the time to start preparing your technical content for use with these types of devices. The future is so bright, we need to wear AR shades!

Talisman: Rome now available on Talisman Island

Several years ago, my friend Cameron Crawford and I developed a fan expansion for the board game, Talisman (2nd Edition) from Games Workshop.

I am a huge fan of ancient Rome and the Roman Army. Cam is a huge fan of Greek and Roman mythology. We decided to combine our interests and our love of the Talisman board game to create Talisman: Rome. Most of the artwork is lovingly borrowed, so we cannot sell our creation nor can others sell it.

Thanks to some templates provided by Jon New of Talisman Island, I recently updated Talisman: Rome for Talisman (4th Edition) from Fantasy Flight Games.

Both versions are available for free download from Talisman Island.

I also had the expansion printed by Print and Play Games. The results are terrific!

I hope others with similar interests in board games, Talisman or ancient Rome will appreciate this labor of love!

DocBook Version 5.1 now in Public Review

The OASIS DocBook TC [1] members have recently approved a Committee Specification Draft (CSD) and submitted it for 30-day public review:

DocBook Version 5.1

Committee Specification Draft 01 / Public Review Draft 01

11 Feb 2015

Overview:

DocBook is a general purpose [XML] schema particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications). 

The Version 5.1 release introduces assemblies for topic-oriented authoring. It also addresses a selection of bugs and feature requests. 

The Technical Committee provides the DocBook 5.1 schema in other schema languages, including W3C XML Schema and an XML DTD, but the RELAX NG Schema is the normative schema. 

TC Description: 

The DocBook Technical Committee maintains the DocBook family of schemas. 

Public Review Period:

The public review starts 23 March 2015 at 00:00 UTC and ends 21 April 2015 at 23:59 UTC. 

This is an open invitation to comment. OASIS solicits feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of its technical work.

Reviewers may provide comments directly from the comment-tag version of document. The file

docbook-v5.1-csprd01-COMMENT-TAGS.html

contains the HTML version of the draft with a “[comment?]” link next to each section heading. Clicking on this link will launch your email application and begin a message to docbook-comment@lists.oasis-open.org with the specific section number and title in the subject line. Simply enter your comment and click send.

Note that you must be subscribed to the comment mailing list before sending feedback. Instructions on how to subscribe can be found at https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=docbook.

URIs:

The prose specification document and related files are available here:

HTML (Authoritative):

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/docbook-v5.1-csprd01.html

HTML with inline tags for direct commenting:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/docbook-v5.1-csprd01-COMMENT-TAGS.html

Editable source: 

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/docbook-v5.1-csprd01.xml

PDF: 

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/docbook-v5.1-csprd01.pdf

RELAX NG Schemas: 

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/schemas/rng/

Schematron Schemas:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/schemas/sch/

XML Catalog:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/schemas/catalog.xml

NVDL Schema:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/schemas/docbook.nvdl

DocBook V4.x conversion tools:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/tools/

ZIP distribution file (complete):

For your convenience, OASIS provides a complete package of the prose document and related files in a ZIP distribution file. You can download the ZIP file here:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docbook/v5.1/csprd01/docbook-v5.1-csprd01.zip

Additional information about the specification and the OASIS DocBook TC can be found at the TC's public home page:

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook/

Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be used by following the instructions on the TC's "Send A Comment" page, or directly at:

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=docbook

Comments submitted by TC non-members for this work and for other work of this TC are publicly archived and can be viewed at:

https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-comment/

All comments submitted to OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures that the feedback you provide carries the same obligations at least as the obligations of the TC members. In connection with this public review of "DocBook V5.1", we call your attention to the OASIS IPR Policy [2] applicable especially [3] to the work of this technical committee. All members of the TC should be familiar with this document, which may create obligations regarding the disclosure and availability of a member's patent, copyright, trademark and license rights that read on an approved OASIS specification. 

OASIS invites any persons who know of any such claims to disclose these if they may be essential to the implementation of the above specification, so that notice of them may be posted to the notice page for this TC's work.

========== Additional references:

[1] OASIS DocBook TC

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook/

[2] http://www.oasis-open.org/who/intellectualproperty.php

[3] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees//ipr.php

https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/ipr#s10.2.3

RF on Limited Terms 

Browser Power plug

Come to the CIDM 2015 CMS/DITA North America conference! I'll be presenting on:

Browser Power: Client-side rendering of DocBook and DITA

What do Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Vivaldi, and Internet Explorer all have in common? Today’s modern browsers can dynamically render DITA and DocBook. Why use a separate rendering step in the publishing process, when the XML can be delivered directly from the server and rendered in any modern browser, including mobile? In this session, you will learn how to customize the browser presentation layer and some of the caveats for the content.

Join CIDM in Chicago, Illinois, April 20-22, 2015 for the 2015 CMS/DITA North America conference, the premier content management event of the year. Meet with your colleagues and build new friendships and relationships.

At 2015 CMS/DITA North America, you'll find a superb line-up of more than 75 presentations and an Exhibition Hall bursting at the seams with the latest technology and product innovations. Each exhibitor offers technologies that help you create content, manage your content store, produce attractive and effective publications, and ensure the quality of what you deliver to customers. Remember, they are anxious to learn about your needs as well. 

Come for the community, experience new insights, and leave with a wealth of new ideas that help you reap the benefits of managing content in your organization. In its 17th successful year, CMS/DITA North America is the premier conference for everyone who manages technical and business content in both small departments and huge global enterprises.

For more information: http://www.cm-strategies.com

My latest article: Standards within a Standard http://t.co/kJSIBauWqF
— Scott Hudson (@shudson310) March 10, 2015

A new chapter

I can't believe my last post was back in 2011! The advent of social media has definitely affected my available blog time. If you need to catch up on my recent activity, check out my FaceBook or Twitter.

They say the best time to leave a job is on your own terms and timing. That is also true in this case. I was contacted by a member of one of my XML standards committees about an opportunity to consult in my area of expertise. I will be providing information design and XML content management consulting with Comtech Services, Inc. I will also continue to be active in the OASIS DITA and OASIS DocBook standards, but sadly, not ONVIF.

My first ONVIF meeting was in Zug, Switzerland at Siemens, and it turns out my last meeting was at Pelco in Fort Collins, Colorado. I touched a lot of areas in ONVIF, including:

• Application Programmers Guide
• Storage, Profile G
• Device Test Tool, Maintenance
• Profile Q specification
• Client Test Tool
• Enhancement WG
• ONVIF Conformance Process
• ONVIF Profile Policy
• ONVIF Interface Guide
• WSDL documentation format
• ONVIF booth at IFSEC 2013, ISC West 2014
• Tourism WG (started in Hangzhou, China!)
• Karaoke WG (Nuremberg, Singapore)

I truly consider my time with ONVIF to be one of the major accomplishments of my career.

I also had a lot of successes at Pelco. I managed the Pelco Developer Network (PDN) site, including information architecture, administration and content creation. I optimized the process for creating the Pelco SDK documentation using oXygen XML editor, schematron and DITA. I implemented the WSDL documentation format for the Pelco APIs.

Considering that I was entirely new to the video surveillance industry, I think I made a decent impact over almost 5 years! I was able to bring best practices in XML documentation to Pelco and to the ONVIF standard, and met many unforgettable people and places along the way.

Our first ONVIF compliant product!

I've been representing Pelco by Schneider-Electric on the ONVIF standard since last July. Not only have we been involved in several key Working Groups, but also hosted the December Face-2-Face meetings at our corporate headquarters in Clovis, CA.

We just achieved another big milestone this week: Pelco has just validated our first ONVIF-compliant product: DigitalSentry NVS!

Details about the release are here.

When Hudson went to China

I recently went on a business trip to Hangzhou, China. Following is a log of my trip. You can view the pictures here.

First, I made the mistake of staying awake the entire flight to get on “China time”. Should have slept the whole trip to be rested and recover more easily.

BTW, Hangzhou is correctly pronounced “Haw-ng-Joe”

Monday: Got to tour the Lingyan Temple (4 different temples, 1 giant budda, building built like a swastika filled with 500 statues of disciples of budda, lots of incense, other huge statues that people were bowing and praying to. I had the famous Lingyin green tea in a tea garden at the monastery, served with peanuts, cherry tomatoes, lychee (new and interesting to me!), cumquats, sunflower seeds, oranges. Then went to the Leifeng Pagoda, which was on the West Lake. Very beautiful! Had famous noodle bowl at a restaurant with eel strips.

Tuesday: after meetings our host, Tony, took us all to a big sit-down dinner at a nice restaurant near the Leifeng Pagoda – beautifully lit up at night! Large lazy susan on the table and had at least 20 different specialty courses such as: Beggar’s Chicken, Vinegar Fish, bbq pork, lotus stems, dumplings, soup, flattened-sweet sticky rice (tasted like toasted marshmallow, but looked like pork fat).

Wednesday: after meetings, Tony took us to two famous outdoor markets. You had to haggle. Got Dawn a Louis Vitton ipad purse, 2 jade necklaces, 2 disney watches, all for 440 RMB = $66.91 USD! Found some nice chopsticks, but they weren’t willing to negotiate. I was afraid to buy silk pyjamas, for fear of size - the chinese are much smaller people! Will have to wait for airport to get the boys shirts and hats and my hat pin. I am also hoping to get a jade jewelry box or some silk paintings. Learned the phrase: Tai gui le = too expensive!

Thursday: after meetings, Tony ftook us to a very famous local show called Impressions of West Lake, which was created and directed by Zhang Yimou (creator of the Bejing Olympics opening). The stage was under about 4” of water on the lake, so the people were all dancing on the water! It was a very well done show. All for $150 RMB, too!

On a side note, KFC is huge here! I’ve seen several of them in various places. Another chain I have seen is Subway. I haven’t seen McDonalds or other major chains though.

Friday: for lunch today, had a very spicy yellow soup, but good! Also, apparently, I ate dog. It was very salty and mixed with rice and some kind of pink sausage. I was more afraid of the sausage. Of course, I wasn’t told it was dog until afterwards... Tonight, Stuart was tired of eating vegetables, since he couldn’t eat much with a peanut allergy in China. We went to a French restaurant. I tried a French Bordeaux wine and Beef tenderloin with bacon and fried duck liver.

Saturday: I wanted to go to the The Six Harmonies (Liuhe) Pagoda and the Dreaming of Tiger Spring at Hupao Valley(虎跑泉). It was raining, so instead, we took the high speed train to Shanghai and went to the black market above the Science and Technology Center, then to the Bund area by the river and then to the Jin Mao tower for drinks/lunch. Unfortunately, they gave Stuart something with peanuts, so he had a bad reaction. We got out of there quick and back to the train station. Was hoping to go on the Mag Lev they have, but we had no time. Instead, when we got back to Hangzhou, Lei took me to see the Six Harmonies Pagoda, but we got there just after it closed.

Best in Show!

This past Friday I was honored by the Colorado State University Department of Technical Journalism as part of the 2nd annual Alumni Media Festival.

Out of about 150 entries, about 25 "Cammy Award of Excellence", 10 "Cammy Grande" awards, and 4 Best of Festival awards were given out. Entries spanned Broadcast, Newswriting, Public Relations an Technical Writing. Each entry was judged on a 0 to 100 point scale.

At the last minute, I decided to enter the specification for the DocBook Schema for Publishers, which finally achieved OASIS Committee Specification status this past August. The entry scored 100 points and was awarded a "Best of Festival" award!

Department Chair Greg Luft presenting me with the award

A proud Ram and his awards

Best of Festival Award

Another beginning's end

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Seneca

After 5+ years in content management consulting at Flatirons Solutions, I've decided to move on to new opportunities.

I've had a great experience with colleagues and clients and had some very cool travel opportunities! In fact, I've achieved a few of my life goals and grown professionally and personally as a result. It has been a good run.

Some of my most favorite/memorable projects include:

• Boeing Delta LPD
• John Wiley and Sons HECMS - Oxford, India, NYC
• McGraw-Hill Create
• Jeppesen
• Fidelity Investments
• Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
• Cerner
• McData
• Informa
• McGraw-Hill Digital Asset Library
• Harvard Business School Press

I've also had the privilege of speaking at several conferences, including:

• XML 2006
• DITA 2007 West
• OASIS Symposium 2007
• XML 2009

In fact, many of my travels can be attributed to my work at Flatirons.

I've also taken a significant role in standards as Flatirons' Standards Coordinator. I helped to create:

• DITA 1.1
• DocBook v5.0
• DITA Learning Content specialization
• DITA for the Web
• DocBook Publishers schema
• DocBook eLearning schema

I hope to continue my involvement in DocBook and standards at my new company, including a new (for me) standard: ONVIF

I'm going to be an API Architect for Pelco (http://www.pelco.com). Pelco makes high-end security cameras and systems, so I'm sure I'll be monitoring your activities soon. ;-)

To all of my former colleagues both at Sun/Oracle and Flatirons, as well as my former clients and the folks on the various standards committees: I have been honored to work along side you and get to know you. Please stay tuned here or on FaceBook to monitor my activities! Let's stay in touch!

DocBook for eLearning

I'm very happy to announce the formation of the DocBook Subcommittee for eLearning! The DocBook Technical Committee approved the subcommittee and following charter on 21 Oct 2009:

Background

For more than a decade, DocBook has provided a structured markup vocabulary for hardware and software documentation. DocBook is now widely used in both commercial and Open Source environments. DocBook has a very broad element set, and applies to much more than just technical documentation. The DocBook TC is engaged in evolving the suite of DocBook specifications. The community benefits from having a standard, open, interchangeable vocabulary in which to write structured content. DocBook has been, and will continue to be, designed to satisfy this requirement.

The OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for eLearning is chartered to develop and maintain official variants of DocBook in support of the eLearning industry. Specifically, the subcommittee will focus on schema and stylesheet customizations to support:

1. Develop and design a DocBook-based method for creating reusable learning objects, and the learning content types needed to support them. Some specifics of the design for learning content include:
   1. learning types, including assessments and exercises
   2. a content assembly for structuring, sequencing and managing the learning types as reusable learning objects
   3. linking and relationships between learning objects
   4. interactions
2. Establish guidelines that promote best practices for applying DocBook markup to learning content

Scope of Work

This subcommittee will submit additional enhancements back to the full DocBook standard as appropriate. The scope of this DocBook subcommittee is eLearning content. Broadly, this includes online learning, instructor-led training and other related educational materials.

This effort will deliver on the following goals:

• Build official DocBook variants, based against the DocBook v5.0 schemas.
• Address issues and enhancement requests that have arisen from experience with real-world DocBook and eLearning implementations.
• Add support for features specific to the eLearning industry.

We already have 5 members, who are very eager to get started! If you are an OASIS member and would like to participate, please let me know!

Incredible India!

I had the incredible opportunity to travel to India last week on business. It was hectic, so I didn't keep a regular blog for each day. Instead, I kept a brief log of my travels which I'm posting below. I also posted pictures to: http://picasaweb.google.com/shudson310/India2009.

4:30a local time, 23 Aug 2009

I'm in India! As I've only seen the airport and darkened roads at night to the hotel, I have to say it reminds me a little of Mexico -- the people look different, and the roadside adverts are in a different foreign language, but there are some strong similarities. On the plus side, almost everyone speaks very good English (except my driver) and are very friendly.

Favorite trip moments (so far):

• Flying over Ireland when I was awake! It truly is the Emerald Isle!
• Lime Pickles on the flight from London to Chennai. No, it didn't taste like lime OR pickles, but it was still very tangy and tasty!

I basically stayed up for 24 hours straight, since I worked early on Friday and then stayed awakefor the Denver-London leg. Sleeping on a plane is never great, but did get some rest from London-Chennai!

I'm a little bushed still, so am going to take a cat nap. We are going to see the sights at 8am!

6:15p, 23 Aug 2009

Just got back from a day of sightseeing in Chennai.

Our host, Abel, was very gracious throughout the day. We tried tender coconut, saw Mamallapuram and the Shore Temple, and ate at a wonderful place on the beach called Fisherman's Cove.

Unfortunately, I thought I was also pickpocketed for $5USD and 500INR. I thought I had left it in my pocket when I wanted to get some change. When I went to use it, I couldn't find it and thought the worst as I searched my pockets. Thought a bunch of street vendors that were very persistent had taken it. My host felt very bad, as did I (although I thought it was a $15 lesson to me...).

Turns out I outsmarted my jet-lagged self and moved it to a hidden zipper pocket on my pants!

Didn't find it until I was going through all my pockets at bedtime. Will issue an apology to my host when I see him again!

There are motorcycles everywhere! Tons of them. It's the easiest way to get around. It's funny to see ladies in sarees riding sidesaddle behind a guy riding the motorbike.

We then went shopping for sarees. Got some very beautiful ones, that I hope the girls will like.

Also jet lagging very bad now. Almost fell asleep in my food at dinner! Time to go to bed, methinks!

24 Aug 2009

Met with a vendor today. Very nice office, and very smart people. They are most gracious hosts.

They took us shopping for saree tops at the famous Nalli and Porthy shops. Must be a million sarees in there as they each had about 5 floors worth! Then they took us to dinner at the Pergola restaurant atop the Accord Metropolitan hotel. Very modern, top-floor restaurant overlooking Chennai. I told them it was the Rainbow Room of Chennai!

25 Aug 2009

Met with a new vendor today. It was quite a bit further and we got stuck in traffic. We started a bit late. The working conditions seemed much more "rustic". They also work multiple shifts, so they are open round the clock. Training went OK. John and I had dinner at the hotel at the Peshawari restaurant. It was very good, Tandoori grill. They had amazing, different ice cream, too. I also tried "filter coffee" today. It apparently is slow brewed with chicory root. I liked it.

26 Aug 2009

Met with another vendor today. Nice facilities, and another sharp group. They were also kind enough to take us to see St. Thomas Mount on the way to the airport, where it is said that the Apostle Thomas was martyred, and a bone fragment has been retained as a relic. Interesting history, and nice view of the city from up there.

Our flight was delayed about 2 hours, so we didn't get to Delhi until 1am. Didn't get to the hotel until 2am, unpacked until 3am. Had to get up at 7am to get breakfast before going to the client site.

The hotel, BTW, is outstanding! I can see why several Presidents have stayed here! If my room is this nice, I wonder what the Presidential Suite looks like?!

27 Aug 2009

Traffic was really bad, so we still started an hour late! More smart folks, and a really nice facility! They have 5 floors, too.

Ate dinner at Buhkara. It's world famous and right in the ITC Maurya, New Delhi. Very good food!

The dessert was interesting. Tasted like rose water flavored noodles alongside pistachio ice cream. Yum!

28 Aug 2009

Great day. Wonderful folks, and very smart. On the way to take John to the airport, we stopped and saw Qutb Minar - built in 200-300 A.D.! Incredible detail and design. Quite beautiful. Traffic was a mess at 7pm. After getting John to the airport, we had dinner at an amazing restaurant at the Shangri-La hotel. Beautiful hotel lobby, and then great food! The palatte cleanser was served in this teapot-looking thing, that was spewing forth vapors. It looked like it would burn you, but was actually dry ice! it was a yummy tamarind ice cream. very good company, food and dessert.

29 Aug 2009

Saw all kinds of things today: Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb, lunch at the Monsoon restaurant at Le Meridien. The water wall was very cool, and the best ginger ale ever! After lunch, went shopping at Connaught Place, then Akshardham Temple, then sunset at India Gate. Got a flower chain made of Chameli (Jasmine) blossoms - the Indian girls wear them in their hair for the flower's potent perfume scent. I also learned "BHAJSA" - the sequence of the Mughal Emperors: Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan (builder of Taj Mahal), Aurangzeb Alamgir.

30 Aug 2009

Today is my birthday! We tried to get an early start at 6am, but it was raining, so traffic was horrible. They didn't get to the hotel until about 6:40am. Then it was about a 5 hour drive to Agra. It was worth it, because the rain cleared so the Taj Mahal was beautiful! Momentous occassion to see one of the 7 Wonders of the World on my birthday! After the Taj, we had lunch at the ITC Agra hotel. They had delicious Moong Dal Ka Halwa - a sweet pudding made from lentils.

Then we went to Agra Fort. It's amazing how much inlay was done in both Taj and Agra Fort! Then we made our way back to the Intercontinental Hotel for dinner - they had made a birthday cake for me and requested the live band sing Happy Birthday to me!

31 Aug 2009

Traveling home today. It was a great trip, but I miss my family and look forward to seeing them!

Got a surprise upgrade from Delhi to London, so I was able to rest on this leg. Need to stay awake from London to Denver to get back on Colorado time.

Overall, I had a wonderful first trip to India! The people, places and food were all absolutely incredible. I hope to return again soon.

FLL 2009 begins!

We held our FIRST Lego League team kickoff tonight! We have more than doubled the size of our team this year, and have maxed out the team size allowance.

Our team this year will be the "Jumping Jelly Beans". We look forward to a wonderful season of fun and learning.

Below are a few pics, trying out our Robot Mats General Training Mat. Our new bot was tasked with following the big curvy black line. It wasn't perfect, but demonstrated the task well considering it was programmed in a day!

Presenting at XML-in-Practice 2009!

I've just been accepted to present at XML-in-Practice 2009, September 30 - October 1, 2009 at the Arlington Hilton near Washington DC!

My presentation entitled, Professional Publishing on a Shoestring Budget, will discuss how to optimize your multi-channel publishing processes using the latest approved DocBook v5.0 schema and the DocBook Publishers schema.

Details on the conference are available at the XML-in-Practice website.

I hope to see you there!

DocBook Publishers Schema Version 1.0 now available for public review

Well, we finally got all the i's dotted and the t's crossed! The DocBook Publishers schema is available for public review. This is an effort I chaired to support the needs we've seen in the publishing industry.

Many publishers spend considerable amounts of time and money developing and maintaining their own custom schemas and output rendering. This standard tries to address the unique needs of publishers, while building upon a standards-based platform to reduce cost and ensure consistency. Key publishers involved in this effort have included: O'Reilly, John Wiley and Sons, and Penguin UK, so this was not developed in a vacuum either!

Here's the notice from OASIS:

The OASIS DocBook TC has recently [January 2009] approved the following specification as a Committee Draft and approved the package for public review:

The DocBook Publishers Schema Version 1.0

The public review starts today, 2 July 2009, and ends 31 August 2009. This is an open invitation to comment. We strongly encourage feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of OASIS work. Please feel free to distribute this announcement within your organization and to other appropriate mail lists.

More non-normative information about the specification and the technical committee may be found at the public home page of the TC at: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=docbook. Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be located via the button marked "Send A Comment" at the top of that page, or directly at: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=docbook .

Submitted comments (for this work as well as other works of that TC) are publicly archived and can be viewed at: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-comment/. All comments submitted to OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures that the feedback you provide carries the same obligations at least as the obligations of the TC members.

The specification document and related files are available here:

Editable Source:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/publishers-1.0-spec-cd-01.xml

PDF:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/publishers-1.0-spec-cd-01.pdf

HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/publishers-1.0-spec-cd-01.html

Schema:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/rng/publishers/publishers.rnc

OASIS and the DocBook TC welcome your comments.

You can also take a look at all of our content samples on SourceForge here:
http://docbook.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/docbook/trunk/docbook/relaxng/publishers