On Wed, 2011-03-09 at 18:03 +0100, Abel Braaksma wrote:

> I'd be interested to know what the coverage of the XSLT community will 
> be in either of these conferences and the interest from an XSLT/XPath 
> point of view. I will attend XML Prague and I'm contemplating on 
> attending the Balisage as well, but am uncertain of the surplus value of 
> visiting them both. Are they complementary, or is there a large overlap, 
> generally speaking? In a way, it seems that the Balisage is the "larger 
> brother" of XML Prague.

They have a very different feel I think (last year was the first time I
was at XML Prague).

Balisage explores a lot more theoretical and philosophical issues, and
perhaps XML Prague is a little more down to earth :) Which is not to say
Balisage is not practical (there's nothing so practical as a good
theory, they say) nor that there are no philosophers in Bohemia.

However, they are both fabulous.  At Balisage last year a number of
people were sitting at tables with copies of Mike Kay's book on XSLT and
XPath 2 (I think someone asked Mike to sign a copy), and the Good Doctor
gave a presentation on streaming XSLT with Saxon, processing multiple
gigabytes of XML, I think from openstreetmaps, in XSLT.

Of course, I urge you to go to both conferences, to bathe in attributes
and to clothe yourself in elements, to breathe the relig... er... I
mean, they're both really good and full of positive energy.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
The barefoot typographer