Web services on the Thames (and the Cherwell)

Sean McGrath beat me to it, mentioning that he’ll be speaking in the Web Services and Service Architectures track that I chair at CSW’s XML Summer School.

I’m thrilled about the lineup, which in addition to Sean also includes Robin Wilton, Tony Coates, Marc Hadley, John Kemp, and Paul Madsen. Stay tuned for information on a guest lecturer as well. I can’t believe I conned convinced them all to sign on, some for a few years running, though admittedly there’s plenty of fun (pubs, punting, and lots more!) and education (an expanded curriculum, taught by great speakers!) to be had along with the duties at this event.

The plan is to present some cohesive lessons and demos across the two days of the track, showing what’s possible (and what trouble you can get into) when you connect user devices of various sorts into an environment where machines can communicate usefully with each other. We’re also putting an emphasis on securely conveying identity information in these scenarios for creating appropriately personalized, access-controlled user experiences.

John, by the way, has a book out shortly with Frederick Hirsch called Mobile Web Services. I’m looking forward to getting hold of it; Frederick tells me he hasn’t even been sent a hardcopy yet, though I heard a rumor that it was being handed out to some lucky folks at RSA. John’s Summer School lecture on advanced web services will touch on “challenges in handling web service messages in constrained environments, such as on a mobile phone client”, and looking at the book’s table of contents, he oughta know.