There are several people blogging about the content at XML 2006; unfortunately, as chair, I’m not able to do that, because I don’t actually get to see much of any presentation aside from the keynotes.

I was nervous coming into the first talk, Roger Bamford’s opening keynote, but that evaporated when I saw the huge crowd spilling out into the foyer (and staying, standing outside, for the whole talk). It’s been a great opening day, with no speaker no-shows, only one technical crisis, and huge enthusiasm from the attendees; with luck, the next two days will go as smoothly.

One experience that stood out for me today was Michael Smith’s PechaKucha this evening: we brought a lot of vendors and service providers into one room and gave each one exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds to use 20 slides to tell us what they had to say. In many cases, with a lot of creativity, they managed to convey as much information in 400 seconds as they normally would in a 45-minute presentation, so it’s an astoundingly efficient way to get information. I have to admit, though, that after a while the sheer pace becomes overwhelming. Next year, we’re thinking of trying PechaKucha for standards-committee updates, so that you can get updates from 10 working groups in just over an hour — stay tuned.

It’s to bed for me soon, so that I can get up early tomorrow and go for a run outside before the conference starts again. If you’re here in Boston, don’t forget the free breakfast in Back Bay C tomorrow morning at 8:00 am, then Darin McBeath’s keynote at 9:00 am.