Notes from the first two days:

The short version, 140 participants from major companies, countries and organizations are here at the meeting in san Jose. Two great panels yesterday, one with Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Ariba, CommerceOne and Oracle talking about their vision/products but openly sharing their desire and willingness to work towards a single and global XML solution for electronic business (ebXML). Second panel were users with no product or XML solutions, outlining their view on what ebXML should be. The afternoon was used to start the discussion on deliverables and project teams, it was a good discussion that did identify at the end a terminology issue of some commonly used terms such as DTD, framework and specifications. This was resolved today. In the morning we had some more presentations. The afternoon was used to conclude the discussion on the project teams. The participants agreed to the following 8 teams:

The rest the afternoon evening was/is used for the groups to meet in order to get to know each other as well as create a short document that will outline their team's scope, short and long-term goals, issues to be addressed and a list of current efforts underway by other groups and organizations. Further, each group will appoint their Project Team Leader and Project Editor. Tomorrow, the groups will present their document to the plenary (all participants) for discussion and approval. After that we will have some more presentation. Project team work is expected to start ASAP via list servers and WEB tools, with the next ebXML meeting being in Orlando, FL in early February. Other meetings for 2000 are currently considered by the executive committee for May in Europe, August - USA and November in Japan.

All in all, the meeting has been very productive and the participants are more than willing to take on the work, some feel they can do this faster than the 15-18 month time frame proposed.

Here is my private report about the last day of the ebXML meeting held last week:

The third (last) day started in the morning with the project teams starting very early to finalize their document and prepare a short presentation with their results. Each team used about 15 minutes to present their document to the plenary (all participants) for discussion and approval. Surprising to all was the level of details all groups had prepared, especially since this was the first time that most participants met, and lets not forget the fact that there were EDI'ers and XML'ers which never before had worked together in such a forum :-) Overall, the group did better than expected, there was a feeling expressed by most that this is the only chance to work out global XML solution for electronic business/commerce that will have the co-operation by the big players as well as the smaller ones. When asked (in private or small groups by me) "Why?", most mention the fact that the UN was behind this effort.

The rest of the day was used for more presentation. Project team work is expected to start ASAP via list servers and WEB tools, with the next ebXML meeting being in Orlando, FL. The dates and location for the meetings in 2000 are:

31 January-4 February, USA - Orlando
8-12 May, Europe - Brussels
7-11 August, USA - TBD
6-11 November, Japan - Tokyo

All in all, the meeting has been very productive and the participants are more than willing to take on the work, some feel they can do this faster than the 15-18 month time frame proposed.

Most of the 1st meeting was about expressing different views via presentations and allowing open unhindered and unlimited exchange. The discussion were very civilized with both sides learning about each other. It was very helpful to have had Jon Bosak as a participant, he gave one of the best XML introduction presentations, a view shared with by everyone, including XML'ers.