The second of my two days at [1] Chicago’s InDesign Conference was the more intensive one, thanks to the strong XML half-day seminar I attended.

Large, half-day seminars at conferences like the InDesign Conference have a good and a bad side: you are given the opportunity to immerse yourself in a subject for several hours, but you miss out on all the other speakers and subjects—and there were a lot of good ones:

• Solutions for Successful Output by [2] Claudia McCue (who really impressed me with her production knowledge)
• Ain’t It Rich: Creating Interactive PDFs by [3] Sandee Cohen
• Advanced Color Management Issues by [4] Chris Murphy
• InDesign and World Languages by [5] Diane Burns

There were many more, but these stand out for their specialized focus and descriptions. I do have all their handouts and notes in the excellent binder every attendee received, I’ll share a few when I can.

I spent most of my day with Jim Maivald and [6] Cooking With XML, first at the hour-long Fundamentals of XML session and then at the half-day XML Workflow tutorial. They were both pretty good sessions; however, as with any weighty subject like XML, I found myself wanting to learn more. In my next article I’ll publish the top ten XML facts and myths—there’s a lot of misconceptions about XML, and changing our perspectives on XML is important now that it’s become such a major part of our technological landscape.