"I have met with a philosophical work in which the utility of salt has been made the theme of an eloquent discourse; and many other like things have had a like honour bestowed upon them."

— Plato's as translated by Benjamin Jowett

Most conferences serve a particular community. For instance, the attendees at Content Management Strategies are all on the same wavelength. ("We want reuse!")  Not so at the OASIS Symposium, where attendees have a common means (XML standards) for a multitude of goals. The diversity of human endeavor can be a bit mind boggling. NIST naming and design rules, SAML swimlanes, Business Process messaging -- who knew?  Which has a less delightful dark side: who could know it all?  And without a know-it-all, does this important work end up constructing an acronymic Tower of Babel?  Does a standard that solves a specific problem in isolation creates integration problems elsewhere?  That question came to the front more than once.

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