[xtm-wg] ANNOUNCE: New appointments for XTM

["Jason Markos" <jsm@empolis.co.uk>]

Hi

At the last meeting in Paris, some changes were made to the organisation of
the XTM team.  The press release below gives some background as to what has
happened and why.  Murray - could you put this on www.topicmaps.org

I think that these changes will help us get the standard delivered to, and
accepted by, the community quicker and therefore can only be good for us.

Thanks

jason

Press release from TopicMaps.Org:

XTM comes of age!
-----------------

TopicMaps.Org is pleased to announce the appointment of Steve
Pepper and Graham Moore as editorial chairmen for XTM, the XML
Topic Map specification. They take over from Steve Newcomb and
Michel Biezunski, who have led the XTM work since January 2000.

The change is seen as an indication of the maturity of the topic
map paradigm, which has achieved wide recognition during the
past twelve months as a potential enabling technology for the
Semantic Web.

The concept of topic maps was first formalised as an
international standard (ISO 13250) in January 2000. It describes
a model for representing the knowledge structures found in
information resources, with the goal of enabling easier and more
powerful navigation, searching, and information management.
TopicMaps.Org is an independent consortium of parties that seeks
to enhance the applicability of topic mapping to the World Wide
Web by leveraging the XML family of specifications. XTM, which
is now in the process of finalisation, will be the first
specification to come from this unit.

One symptom of the speed of XTM take-up has been the opening of
discussions with the W3C's RDF team. Tim Berners Lee stated at
the recent XML 2000 conference in Washington that convergence of
topic maps and RDF is a crucial part of making the Semantic Web
project happen.

"Topic mapping and RDF address the same problem - that of
findability in the Age of Infoglut - but come at it from
different angles. Our goal as editors will be to finalise XTM as
soon as possible and then move on to a rapid harmonisation with
RDF," said Steve Pepper. "Public support from the W3C will
accelerate the adoption of XTM as a mainstream technology, by
software vendors as well as users, providing benefits for all of
us."

"Bringing Graham and Steve in as the new editors reflects the
stage that XTM is now at: We needed to streamline and prioritise
our workload, the better to accelerate the pace of adoption in
the web community," said Steve Newcomb, the outgoing co-chair of
the XTM editorial team. "Michel and I are happy that they have
picked up the baton. We are confident that they will
successfully bring XTM through the final stages of delivery to
the market place."

Steve Newcomb and Michel Biezunski have been the undisputed
"Mister and Monsieur" (respectively) of topic mapping since its
inception almost a decade ago. TopicMaps.Org would like to take
this opportunity to thank them both for the enormity of their
contribution over the years. "Steve and Michel really deserve
the credit for XTM. Without them, it would not be what it is
today. We are looking forward to their continued support as we
prepare to release the complete specification in the next few
weeks."

For more information, please contact:

Jason Markos (jsm@empolis.co.uk)
Marketing Chair for TopicMaps.Org

http://www.topicmaps.org

Steve Pepper (pepper@ontopia.net) is the Founder and Chief
Technology Officer of Ontopia

Graham Moore (gdm@empolis.co.uk) is Vice President of Research
and Development at Empolis



Jason Markos
Director of Research and Development
empolis UK
tel: +44 7747 621353
email: jsm@empolis.co.uk


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