DII Workshop: London, May 18

I’m pleased to announce that another DII workshop is coming soon.  The last two events took place in Brussels and Redmond, and this one will take place in London on Monday, May 18.

This is a free event that is part of the Document Interoperability Initiative (www.documentinteropinitiative.org), and the goal of the DII workshops is to share information with the developer community and solicit feedback on how we can work together to improve interoperability.  This particular workshop will include an emphasis on the IS29500 validator and document test library projects that are being led by Fraunhofer Fokus.  These projects were launched in response to community input at previous DII workshops, and at the London event Fraunhofer will be soliciting feedback on how these projects can best meet the needs of document format implementers.  Since both projects are in the initial planning and specification phases, this is an excellent opportunity for implementers and standards professionals to influence their future direction.

I won’t be able to attend this event myself, but Stephen Peront will be there representing our team, along with others from Redmond and our UK office.  We’re also expecting a variety of people representing other implementers, Fraunhofer Fokus, SC 34 WG4 (the working group responsible for maintenance of IS29500), and others.

We’re still working out the details of the agenda, but it will include presentations from Fraunhofer on the initial planning and structure of the validator and test library projects, as well as presentations from implementers and standards professionals on related aspects of document format interoperability and validation technologies.  And, as always at DII events, there will be significant time devoted to roundtable discussions of key topics.  If you have a topic you’d like to present, contact Stephen and he can help get you on the agenda if there’s still room.  This is a community event, and we'd like to see many voices and many perspectives involved.

The event will be an all-day affair on Monday, May 18, hosted at the Microsoft office on Cardinal Place in London, with a dinner afterward.  To register for the event, contact Stephen with your name, email, and company/organization, and he'll follow up with more details including hotel recommendations and related information.

Other upcoming DII events will take place in Berlin and Beijing, and we’ll have info on those in the weeks ahead.  Stephen and I will be sharing more info about the London event after we see who all may want to contribute and we get the agenda finalized, but I wanted to get this announcement out as soon as possible so that folks can make travel plans.  Any questions, please let me know.