The Balisage 2008 program committee met this week, and we now have a preliminary program. (As I write, the schedule-at-a-glance isn’t up yet, but it really should be up any moment now.)

We’ve got a good range of topics, with talks on resource-oriented architectures and a framework for managing constraints and how markup relates to the philosophical problem of universals and how to handle overlap in a format that makes good use of the non-overlapping properties of XML. And a parallel algorithm for XML parsing and validation that exploits multiple-core machines, and an XML Exchange for messaging that uses XQuery to route messages, and structural metadata as a socio-technological problem and using the Atom Publishing Protocol to build dynamic applications.

The day before Balisage begins, there will be a one-day symposium on versioning issues, which has also shaped up very nicely. (More on that in another post.)

Great topics, great people (I’ve heard a lot of these speakers, and I know they’re good), and Montreal in August. What more could you want?

So think hard about being in Montreal the week of 11-15 August, for the versioning symposium and for Balisage 2008. I look forward to seeing people there!