XForms Briefing Speaker Details and Useful Links

Origo was launched by sixteen of the UK's leading life assurance companies in June 1989 to facilitate the development of electronic trading between principals and agents for Life, Pensions and Collective Investment business.

Origo's main purpose is to drive forward the adoption of e-business in the financial services sector by creating a standards based, competitive and secure trading environment in which industry goals are being met. Using proven expertise Origo has focused its business on developing XML and other Standards to support business processing as well as developing UNIPASS, digital certificates that secure the online trading environment.

Origo is an open forum that provides the catalyst for bringing different industry groups together, including product providers, financial advisers, portals and software companies to address non-competitive issues.

Paul has Board responsibility for all of Origo's Standards, including strategic financial and operational activities. Paul has a business background of nearly 20 years in the Industry, and set up Origo's Standards operations in 1998. He was elected to the Origo Board of Directors in November 1998, and his current focus is to ensure that the whole industry exploits e-commerce in an economic and viable way.

On a more personal note, Paul is married with four children, and still manages to find time to pursue his keen interest in golf.

Mark Seaborne works for Origo as a Standards Architect. He represents Origo on the XForms Working Group. Mark has ten years experience working on various aspects of b-to-b messaging applications. He has been working with XML since 1998.

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with more than 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate.

David Boloker is a Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Officer for the Emerging Internet Technologies, Software Group in the IBM Corporation. Previously, he held the position of Chief Technical Officer for Java Technologies in Software Group where he worked within the industry and IBM to advance Java based technologies. David is recognized in and outside IBM as a technical leader in the Internet software space guiding IBM's investments as well as internal product development in the Internet space David's responsibilities include building IBM's technical e-Business strategy, working with internal IBMers to develop the appropriate products for the Internet space, researching new areas in software design as well as guiding a group of researchers working in Software Group. Previous to joining Software Group, David worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and the Cambridge Scientific Center doing research in the area of remote distribution and control of mainframe hardware and software systems, dynamic I/O configuration of mainframe operating systems and secure internet gateways.

David has been recognized by IBM with numerous Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards in the areas of Java, Secure Internet Gateways, Dynamic I/O Configuration and the Remote Distribution and Control of S/370, 4300, S/390 and AS/400 Architecture processors.

David earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Mathematics from Boston University.

Andrew is involved with many different aspects of web technology. He has helped IBM develop W3C standards, such as, XHTML 1.0 and 1.1, SVG 1.0. Furthermore, he was IBM's early representative to the XForms working group and recruited T.V. Raman and Roland Merrick of IBM to develop and edit XForms with the W3C. He has been exploring web application models for almost as long. He formulated the basic ideas behind the Weblet/DirectDOM project that integrated Java into the W3C DOM on both IE and Mozilla. Lately, he has been involved with web services and devices by jointly developing web service discovery technologies and working to align the UPnP standards with basic web services.

Andrew was born in Houston, Texas 43 years ago. He has a BS with Special Honors in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Jackie, and his daughter, Lauren.

Roland Merrick is a member of IBM's Ease of Use Strategy team and has responsibility for determining how emerging technologies can enable new solutions to problems and making the users experience of using computers simpler, more productive and less error prone. Additional responsibilities involve working with directly with key projects in IBM to help them solve specific Ease of Use objectives.

Since 1995 this has involved work with Internet and Web technologies which reach the end user. He has worked with a number of IBM product development groups in deploying these technologies as well as working as part of the IBM team responsible for the Nagano Olympic Internet and Intranet sites. Since 1998 the work has focused on enabling multi-modal access to the Internet based on XML technology for describing an abstract representation of a users interaction with a system. He also represents IBM on the W3C XForms Working Group and the Device Independence Working Group

David is a Chartered Engineer with over 20 years experience in the successful implementation of software projects for customers, using a range of technologies from the leading edge e-business and Artificial Intelligence to more conventional such as integration to legacy backend database systems.

He has architected and developed e-business systems using IBM Websphere and JAVA products in areas such as Internet online shopping systems, web-based applications for call centre operations, XML-based electronic forms applications and eMarkets based on Web Services. He was involved in the architectural design of the XForms and Web Services aspects of the POLARIS iMarket system for the Insurance Industry.

Currently he is working as a Web Services architect and developer, building Web Services for integration to the POLARIS iMarket.

He is co-author of an IBM Academy Study on Internet Transactions, and an IBM Technical Staff Member.

Focus Solutions Group is a specialist provider of customer management and XML solutions for the financial services industry. Focus has been a key contributor to the ISML standards since their inception and have supported these through goal:technology since 1999. goal:technology is used by 100% of the top 10 UK Life and Pension companies and leading portals.

Focus has also recently launched XFormation, the world's first XForms Integrated Development Environment (IDE) incorporating formsPlayer version 1.0, a leading XForms processor. XFormation provides the ability to rapidly design, develop, manage and debug XForms.

Carol's role is to help develop propositions that utilise the goal:technology product suite helping customers to understand how the technology can best be applied to help solve their business problems. Within this role, she acts as the Product Manager contributing to the future strategy for the product and coordinating requirements for both goal:technology and XFormation representing the customer views and requirements.

Prior to joining Focus, Carol worked for Intuitive Systems, a specialist provider to the UK Life and Pensions market, managing their Business Consultancy and Product Management team. Before that, Carol worked for Fame Computers, the suppliers of FormLink and POS systems, undertaking a series of roles including managing their Marketing and Training teams.

Rhydian Morris joined Focus 4 years ago as a Technical Architect and has participated in the ISML working groups as well as providing expertise on the XForms standard. This gives him a unique position of understanding the technology deployed today and that planned for the future.

Rhydian has played a key role in the design and management of Focus's XForms product XFormation and provided technical consultancy on XForms, XML Schema Design and Rules Based Systems to other areas of the business.

Prior to joining Focus, Rhydian worked for a large Life and Pensions product provider, and has experience with a number of Financial Services Software Houses both in the UK and abroad, so he has first hand experience of the type of challenges faced by the industry.

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) is a leading provider of information solutions that deliver secure identity management (Novell Nsure), Web application development (Novell exteNd*) and cross-platform networking services (Novell Nterprise*), all supported by strategic consulting and professional services (Novell NgageSM). Active in the open source community with its Ximian® and SUSE® LINUX brands, Novell provides a full range of Linux products and services for the enterprise, from the desktop to the server. Novell's vision of one Net - a world without information boundaries - helps customers realize the value of their information securely and economically.

Chris has more than six years experience in eBusiness applications, specialising in Java, J2EE, Web services and integration technologies. Having worked for SilverStream Software for three years before the acquisition by Novell in 2002, Chris has been involved in providing solutions for many enterprise-class organisations including Norwich Union, Deutsche Bank, The Rural Payments Agency, DEFRA, and Wincanton.

Chris would provide an end-to-end technical relationship with your company - from presales technical services and delivery of Proof of Concept, to ongoing technical account management.

Point Solutions use a combination of products and services to help organisations take maximum business advantage of the latest technologies and IT initiatives.

We have achieved high-quality business solutions at a competitive price for major UK financial organisations through the combination of extensive business knowledge, project management skills and leading-edge technical expertise. Our Acuo product suite, based around ISML technology, enables the rapid development of data capture routines.

Point Solutions are continuing to further develop Acuo to support current industry investment in ISML and believe interoperability is the key to ISML and XForms going forwards. We take an ongoing view of new technologies and the potential use by financial services organisations which is why we are committed to working with Origo, the Product Providers, and Representative Groups to help define the future of XForms and ISML interoperability.

David has been involved in the Financial Services IT industry since 1987, working with Blue Chip companies including Commercial Union, NPI, Barclays Life, Woolwich, and Norwich Union. Since 1994, he has operated as an independent consultant within the sector, working with a number of major software suppliers to the industry. David provides the strategic direction and vision to Point Solutions, through a thorough understanding of the dynamics of the business environment and drivers behind electronic trading.

Dominic's role at Point Solutions uses his wide-ranging technical expertise to design and deliver product solutions and help clients with the challenges of system integration. Dominic's career prior to Point Solutions was at Royal Sun Alliance, as Technical Architect on the 'More Than' e-commerce project. Dominic is technically brilliant and a contributing factor in evolving our vision of our Acuo product suite to include interoperability with XForms. He is an expert in the field of e-commerce, systems integration and object-orientated design. He holds a range of technical qualifications, including IBM and Sun certifications, and is a published author of several technical articles.

Polaris is owned and controlled by the UK general insurance industry and focuses on improving the efficiency and reducing the costs of transacting business involving insurers and intermediaries. The company seeks to facilitate the introduction of an electronic marketplace in UK retail insurance products by:

1. Working with the market to develop business process models for both point of sale (i.e. simpler business which can underwritten on an automated basis) and complex business (i.e. where an underwriter must analyse the risk).

2. Developing standards as appropriate to support these methods of working and emerging new technologies to ensure that the benefits of e-commerce can be realised.

Polaris have just launched their imarket industry portal which is a secure electronic trading infrastructure that allows insurance brokers, insurers and potentially other future participants within the UK retail general insurance market, to increase self-service and reduce costs through the provision of simple and cost-effective access to insurer products and services. It has been built by IBM and is also hosted by them. imarket uses XForms in the process of deploying Polaris standards to its users.

Craig is Polaris's technical architect and works closely with IBM and the insurers in the development of the imarket system. Specific to XForms, Craig was heavily involved in imarket's adoption of XForms, working with David Mott of IBM to provide an end to end process that would support an efficient mechanism for delivering standards compliant data capture to imarket's users.

Practiv is a specialist in business transformation programmes for the insurance sector through the provision of Consultancy, Marketing and IT/IS services. Practiv is an Anglo New Zealand company completely self-funded and managed by its founders, all of whom are financial services, insurance and IT specialists. Practiv brings together eminent, experienced and respected practitioners from the insurance sector and combines them with our clients' own unique and skilled people. The result is a proven track record, delivering a quantum change in business evolution.

In his current role as a Product Manager for Practiv, Wai Lok is responsible for the development and delivery of the In-Site product suite. Wai Lok manages a team of skilled senior developers and architects delivering the latest technology, allowing the insurance industry effectively to address the challenges of improving customer satisfaction and increasing efficiency of product distribution and delivery.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. W3C has around 400 Member organizations from all over the world and has earned international recognition for its contributions to the growth of the Web.

CWI, founded in 1946, is the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands. CWI performs frontier research in mathematics and computer science and transfers new knowledge in these fields to society in general and trade and industry in particular.

Steven Pemberton is a senior researcher at the CWI, Amsterdam, the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science. He has been involved with the Web from the beginning, organising two workshops at the first WWW conference in 1994, and chairing the first Style Sheets Workshop in 1995. He is chair of the HTML and Forms Working Groups, and co-author of amongst others HTML, CSS, XHTML and XForms. He is editor-in-chief of ACM/interactions.

x-port is an XForms house, specialists in this new and important standard. We don't work in any one vertical market, but rather aim to provide those who do with the products and services they need to get the most from XForms.

Mark is the founding director of x-port. He has over 20 years experience in software development, and has contributed to and written many articles and books on XML and Standards. He is an invited Expert on both the XForms and HTML W3C Working Groups.

Links to the XForms Specifications, news and details of current activity. A list of XForms implementations is also available.

An introduction to XForms

A one page summary of some of the key business benefits to implementing XForms, within an Enterprise.

An article by Micah Dubinko, giving an overview of some XForms implementations.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and XForms are two blossoming technologies that handle what may appear to be two different facets of electronic document publishing. This primer provides an overview of the two technologies and highlights the potential synergies between them.

LegalXML recently decided to use XHTML2 for their markup. Now they are talking about using XForms.