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Ludo van Vooren is, from what I understand, the wonder boy of the SGML world. At around 16, he was well-known in markup circles. He presented a short closing keynote on the things he’s learned in his years in the industry, titled “Gullible’s Travels”. He broke the lesson into three parts:

The Technology Sweet Spot

Technology moves much faster than the users can. It’s best to be in the “sweet spot”: where the users are just starting to occupy, and the developers already are.

Economic Drivers

It takes a leap of faith to invest in technology, “and that’s what makes our job so difficult.” It’s very hard to prove return on investment up front. Two examples:

Inter-company Connections

Companies aren’t going to argue on implementing compatibility layers, “they’re going to argue over who will pay for it.” Even though things may not be difficult technically, there are still economics that are holding things back.

Web Services Fees

Web Services work well for free services and public services. But transactional models don’t work for business, because if you do a transaction model, users can’t budget for it, or control costs. (Which is actually why providers are in love with the transaction model.) He says not to underestimate security and authentication issues. “You have to kiss the frog sometimes”: don’t just do the cool stuff, cover the stuff that pays the bills.

Extending the Vision

The complexity of SGML came out of reducing the number of keystrokes for the developer. This was an artifact of the era, where bandwidth was costly. They were developing for their constraints. The goal is to think of what you’re going to need tomorrow.

The upshot is, remember where the money comes from, and where you’re going, then be conscious of where you are.