Microsoft's 'MR XML' meets the Register

The Register's Peter Abrahams caught up with Jean Poali last week in London. Jean is an XML legend - co-creator of XML and a significant player in the worldwide XML and SGML community since 1985, now senior director of XML architecture at Microsoft.

According to Bill Gates, "Jean helped lead the movement to make XML a core component of many Microsoft products, such as Office and Windows, as well as the foundation for integration between systems with XML-based Web services"

Jean tells a little of his story at the Register, decribing how he originally joined Microsoft to develop IE 4.0 and went on become Microsoft's MR XML.

"The amazing thing about this story is the speed at which it happened; less than two years from a standards committee being set up, to product coming out in the market, is unusual. This happened because the requirement was well understood and Bill Gates recognised its importance and gave it his backing."

Worth seeing these two videos where Jean gives his vision of XML in an interview with Channel 9's Charles Torre and Robert Scoble: 'Co-creator of XML', Part II and Part II.