Speaking at Basilage next Wednesday: Looking for TC input

Below is what they suggested that I cover. I'd be very interested in hearing folks' suggestions and ideas about what I should cover. Keith, I'm probably going to ask if you have slide decks that you can share with me that contain information about the extent of DITA adoption and usage.

- Who is responsible for DITA upgrades and support?
I know that DITA came from IBM, was given to an OASIS TC, andâ?
What happens now? Is there still a TC, Standing Committee, or similar
making decisions concerning what changes should be made to base DITA?
Where does the funding come from? Are tools part of their charter?

- And, speaking of tools, I know about the original OASIS Toolkit, and
that much has changed and grown. What facilities are now available to help
new users? Experienced users? What other tools, APIS, stylesheets, frameworks,
shared process chains, discussion lists, Schematron rulesets, or whatever
are available to support DITA? How do new ones get added? Are such things
typically home grown, sponsored, open source, github community, how?
How much could one just go out and buy/acquire?

- I know DITA has conferences (big ones). Who sponsors and how? Are the
conferences for newbies, experienced users, or both?

- There are also bound to be DITA classes, online tutorials, checklists,
Âbooks (like Eliotâs)...?

In short, we'd like to hear a brief description of the DITA ecosystem

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Speaker invitation to Balisage 2018 Symposium in July
Date:	Fri, 18 May 2018 17:00:02 -0400
From:	dal <dalapeyre@mulberrytech.com>
To:	kris@eberleinconsulting.com

Hello Kris Eberleinâ

You were commended to me by Eliot Kimber as:

- the chair of the OASIS DITA TC, 
- co-editor of the DITA spec, and (most importantly)
- the DITA person most likely to be able to come to the 2018  
  Balisage pre-conference Symposium on Markup Vocabulary Ecosystems
     (http://www.balisage.net/VocabEco/index.html)
  to tell us about the DITA ecosystem.

The Symposium is a one-day event taking place on July 31st in 
Rockville Maryland (just north of DC), the day before Balisage:
The Markup Conference. Our symposium topic this year is: 
'Markup Vocabulary Ecosystems'. 

Please take this as an invitation to speak at the Symposium.
We hope to get speakers knowledgeable about several different vocabularies 
to speak for about 30 minutes each, discussing some of the infrastructure
aspects of the vocabulary.

Ideally, we would like you (or someone you may suggest) to speak on aspects 
of the DITA ecosystem, such as:

- Who is responsible for DITA upgrades and support? 
I know that DITA came from IBM, was given to an OASIS TC, andâ? 
What happens now? Is there still a TC, Standing Committee, or similar 
making decisions concerning what changes should be made to base DITA? 
Where does the funding come from? Are tools part of their charter? 

- And, speaking of tools, I know about the original OASIS Toolkit, and 
that much has changed and grown. What facilities are now available to help 
new users? Experienced users? What other tools, APIS, stylesheets, frameworks, 
shared process chains, discussion lists, Schematron rulesets, or whatever 
are available to support DITA? How do new ones get added? Are such things 
typically home grown, sponsored, open source, github community, how? 
How much could one just go out and buy/acquire?

- I know DITA has conferences (big ones). Who sponsors and how? Are the
conferences for newbies, experienced users, or both?

- There are also bound to be DITA classes, online tutorials, checklists, 
 books (like Eliotâs)...? 

In short, we'd like to hear a brief description of the DITA ecosystem

Sadly, we are a volunteer-run conference and cannot offer a speakerâs
fee or travel reimbursement. Breakfast and lunch will be provided
on Monday and you will have the opportunity to hang around with some
markup geeks we find interesting and hope you will enjoy.

Can I interest you in spreading the word on DITA in our Symposium?
(Other vocabularies discussed are likely to be TEI, NISO STS, JATS,
etc.) 

Thanks

âDebbie Lapeyre

The original Call for Participation is below:

=======================================================

Call for Participation: Symposium on Markup Vocabulary Ecosystems

Successful shared markup vocabularies (tag sets, document types, schemas, call them what you will), far from being just lists of tags, are the centers of complex ecosystems that support production and documentation activities while drawing support from both user communities and vendors. A complex ecosystem supports and is supported by these vocabularies. People spend significant time, energy, and money to create, adapt, adopt, specialize, modify, maintain, and promulgate the tag set. Users buy and customize tools to create and use content tagged to it and change their processes and tune their requirements to the (often only implied) world view behind the tag set. Vendors specialize in it.

Each vocabulary ecosystem is different, and yet they seem to have common features:

 de jure version(s) created by a formal organization
 de facto version(s) from other sources
 multiple sources of enriched or targeted documentation and examples
 pressure to conform (from peers, business partners, laws, or funders)
 shared process chains (at least in part)
 discussion lists, shared information resources, and conferences
 rules and enforcements beyond the grammatical
 shared tools and tool customizations (code on github, code and 
 services for sale, etc.)

Our focus is on the ways in which we create and support shared vocabularies, not on any particular tag set, so examples from DITA, DocBook, NIEM, HTML, JATS, HL7, OOXML, PRISM, UBL, TEI, or any of the other thousands of public or private shared markup vocabularies are in scope for this discussion.

================================================================
Deborah A Lapeyre              mailto:dalapeyre@mulberrytech.com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.      http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street         Phone: 301-315-9631 (USA)
Suite 207                        Fax:   301-315-8385
Rockville, MD 20850
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Mulberry Technologies: Consultancy for XML, XSLT, and Schematron
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