Chris Anderson at Applied XML Developer's Conference

Chris had a hard act to follow.  Tim Bray gave a really good talk, provocative and very personal (not corporate).  The room loved him.

Chris then got up and gave a talk titled "Developers hate XML".   At an XML conference.  Just to make it interesting, his good buddy Don Box decided to heckle Chris during his talk.  Most of us would have melted down somewhere along the line, but Chris handled the situation with humor and aplomb (I'm not just saying that because I'm borrowing his laptop). 

Chris's point was the flip-side of Tim's.  He (correctly) sees XML as deep plumbing that nobody wants to see or think about.  His second slide "XML is cardboard" made the comparison with cardboard as a wrapper for shipping packages in the real world...but it is the content, not the package that is important at the end of the day. 

The end of his talk was a brief description of XAML as an attempt to use cardboard (XML) to contain CLR objects.  Should lead into some interesting conversations over the next couple of days...especially since the Xamlon team and others are here.