Introduction: G. Ken Holman of Crane Softwrights Ltd.

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

Good morning, everyone, my name is Ken.    (01)

At 01/10/11 01:25 -0700, Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
>(Hint, hint. :-)    (02)

Yeah, yeah ... you've been prodding me for a while.  :{)}  Apologies to be 
so late with this.    (03)

I was introduced to Doug's team almost exactly a year ago to the day.  I am 
a self-confessed standards junkie and have been involved in standardization 
committees since the late-1980's.  My first efforts way back when were in 
character sets (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2), and then videotex (anyone remember the 
old Prodigy access diskettes showing the clumpy graphics on the screen 
building up through alpha-geometric encoding of the images?  some of that 
code was mine) and office systems, which lead to SGML, which (naturally) 
led to XML.    (04)

Jon Bosak invited me into the "SGML on the Web" Special Interest Group at 
the W3C for the development of the specification of XML from SGML.    (05)

I have long been heavily involved with OASIS (the Organization for the 
Advancement of Structured Information Standards) [1], and was their first 
chairman for the XML Conformance technical committee.  As well I worked as 
an active member of the Process Advisory Committee of OASIS that Jon chaired.    (06)

My current duties are as chairman of the Canadian committee to 
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee ISO/IEC JTC 
1/SC 34 Document Description and Processing Languages (SGML/XML/etc.), and 
chairman of the OASIS XSLT/XPath Conformance technical committee.  I am 
still a member of a number of other committees.  I am just getting involved 
with ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 Information Technology for Learning, Education, 
and Training.    (07)

My wife, Kathryn, and I started Crane Softwrights Ltd. [2] in April 1997 as 
a consulting company focused on structured information standards, and moved 
slowly into training and education in this area.  This year less than 5% of 
revenues is consulting-based as I am being pulled in *every* direction 
around the world to repeat and expand my training offerings and 
materials.  All of my training work is authored and produced using XML and 
related Recommendations, so I try to live what I preach.  I'm sure we all 
know that training is not as lucrative as full-time consulting (I spent our 
first 41 months building up our little company by consulting to Boeing on 
aircraft maintenance manual production using SGML), but boy have I been 
having a *lot* of fun doing only training for the last two years (I guess I 
am a showman at heart).    (08)

Although I love to program (I am a second-generation programmer, having 
been raised on punch cards (anyone remember the IBM-026 keypunch?) and 
hexadecimal arithmetic), I don't see that as my best contribution to the 
project work.    (09)

I hope to bring to the OHS project my current training and standards 
experience, perhaps helping with some presentations or the development of 
training and education materials, or standards committee representation if 
appropriate (and hopefully funded in some way as the travel can be 
expensive).  I have some training partners [3] who are asking me how they 
can help me help the OHS project, so I'd like to be able to show them where 
and how.    (010)

Given how occupied I am, it helps me to receive targeted requests for 
assistance where the team thinks I can contribute.    (011)

Thanks again, Eugene, for the prodding ... it would have just sit there 
longer had you not pushed me once again.    (012)

..................... Ken [4]    (013)

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org
[2] http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/b/
[3] http://www.Online-Learning.com
[4] http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/b/bio-gkholman.htm    (014)


--
G. Ken Holman                      mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
Crane Softwrights Ltd.               http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/b/
Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0     +1(613)489-0999   (Fax:-0995)
Web site:     XSL/XML/DSSSL/SGML/OmniMark services, training, products.
Book:  Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath ISBN 1-894049-06-3
Article: What is XSLT? http://www.xml.com/pub/2000/08/holman/index.html
Next public instructor-led training:      2001-10-11,10-22,11-01,11-02,
-                                               11-05,11-19,12-09,12-10    (015)