B. Tommie Usdin
Hello.
My name is Tommie Usdin, and this is my personal web page. Please wander
around, have a look, and drop
me a line if you want to say hello.
I want to talk about several topics:
-
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. (a consultancy specializing in SGML and XML)
-
Sasparilla (the royal poodle who lives with me)
- Conferences, and in specific Balisage: The Markup Conference.
As is conventional, I also include a brief description of my professional
capabilities and experience (Tommie's Quals).
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. entered the world on April 1, 1996, and I have
served as President since then. Mulberry started business in my
house, then moved to a largely-abandonned office building, and now has
offices in a cozy old building in historic Rockville Maryland.
Mulberry is a consultancy specializing in XML and SGML, in
particular with respect to text or prose documents. You can read more
about Mulberry at: www.mulberrytech.com.
Sasparilla
Sasparilla is a royal poodle. When she was 6 weeks old she
left her mother and came to live with me. Sassy spends many afternoons
in my office. There are few pictures of her on Sassy's
page.
Conferences
I like conferences. I like the occassion to step back from day to day business and getting projects done and think about the bigger picture. I like meeting a lot of people who do more or less the same things I do, or at least understand the world in which I work. I like writing conference presentations, because it forces me to articulate what I am thinking on some topic for people who may have a different point of view, and I love giving conference presentations where an informed audience questions my assumptions and conclusions.
Perhaps because I like conferences so much, I have been involved with managing several conferences over the years. I co-chaired and later chaired GCA's SGML conferences from 1991 through 1997, and then "Markup Technologies" and then "Extreme Markup Langauges" conferences through 2007. I have spoken and taught at ... conferences as varied as Seybold, ACH, Xplor, Association of American Publishers Annual Medical Publishing Practicum, Tri-XML, XML 'XX, XML Dev Con, Java Developers, and the BioMed Central Freedom of Information Conference.
Now, I am excited to be launching a new conference series, called Balisage: The Markup Conference. Balisage will be a forum for discussion of all things markup. XML, SGML, overlapping structures, XSL, RDF, Topic Maps; the whole constilation of markup-related specifications and standards, their use and abuse; the theory of marked-up documents and the theory of marking-up documents; practical aspects of creating, managing, manipulating, and archiving marked-up content.
Photos
There are a few pictures of me at Tommie Pictures.
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