The conference was officially opened in the afternoon by Norman Scharpf, President of the GCA. Following an introduction to the conference by Tim Bray, the conference keynote was presented by Jim Sterken, President and CEO of ArborText: XML: What HTML wanted to be when it grew up.
Sterken noted that HTML runs out of steam when it comes to content searches, that the growing number of HTML pages is hard to manage, and that corporate and commercial publishers don't want to use format oriented markup as a central data store. He also noted the irony of customers being happy when an HTML release was late so that users would have a chance to catch up. XML, due to its ability to have more content-specific tags when needed, would enable better searching and smarter applications. An extensible infrastructure eliminates the 'moving target' problem. Sterken went on to detail how XML could improve SGML applications by providing a mechanism for universal access to SGML documents. He cited DTD-less documents as an XML benefit when it comes to rapid prototyping and ad hoc applications, but cautioned users to be away of the pitfalls, such as inconsistent usage across an organisation, etc.
When examining some of the financial benefits possible with XML, Sterken questioned if XML would mean cheaper software to which he answered 'well maybe'. However, he pointed out that he did think there would be higher functionality software at every price point. He put forward a few areas needed to make XML a reality:
Sterken closed by saying that the Web will continue to evolve - the only questions is whether that evolution occurs in small steps through future version of HTML. . . or in broad leaps enabled by XML.
His choice: "Let's Leap!!!"
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