Interview With Jim Whitehead - General Chair Hypertext 2004
- Simon Harper:
- Welcome and thanks for sparing the time to talk with us. As General Chair of the Hypertext '04 conference in August, can you tell us why you think Santa Cruz is a good location for the conference?
- Jim Whitehead:
- Sure! Santa Cruz is located about 45 minutes south of Silicon Valley, with its concentration of research labs and software firms, making it easy for the many people there with an interest in hypertext to attend the conference. We're also close to San Francisco and San Jose airports, making it easy for more distant travelers to attend.
The conference itself is being held on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, among the most visually stunning college campuses in the world. While I'm admittedly biased here, people attending the conference will be treated to soaring redwood trees, grazing deer, panoramic ocean views over Monterey Bay, and contemplative walkways through the forest. I find this setting to be inspiring, and I trust conference attendees will as well. - Simon:
- Who am I likely to meet at the conference? What sort of people come to the Hypertext conference? Are there any people who may come to this Conference who have not previously come to a Hypertext conference?
- Jim:
- At the conference, you'll meet a range of researchers, authors, and practitioners who share a fascination with the possibilities of hypertext and the Web. The hypertext community derives considerable strength from the juxtaposition of first-class computer science research with insightful literary and rhetorical analysis of hypertext writing and link structures. The interplay of participants from the sciences and the humanities creates a rich fugue of ideas that has led to many innovative research results.
Developers and designers attending the conference appreciate learning about new technologies and approaches for the Web and innovative extentsions of hypertext ideas. The conference also provides excellent access to influential participants in important Web standards committees, such as XML, XLink, SMIL, RDF, and WebDAV. - Simon:
- What tutorials are on offer at this year's conference? Are there any new ones that haven't appeared at a Hypertext conference before?
- Jim:
- We have eight really excellent tutorials on tap for this year's conference, many of them brand new for this year. Let me tell you about a few. We have Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Matt Webb, and Mark Bernstein presenting a tutorial on blogging, which is ideal for people who want to get involved in this fascinating new social phenomenon. These three presenters are simply excellent, with a deep knowledge of Web logs from technical, social, and standardization viewpoints.
Also new for this year is a tutorial on developing hypermedia systems with Mozilla, presented by Andy Edmonds. It's not well appreciated just how powerful Mozilla currently is as a development platform for innovative hypermedia applications. This was brought home to me personally when a senior level undergraduate team in one of my classes was able to develop a feature-rich Xanadu-like compound document viewer/annotator/editor in just a 10 week quarter using the Mozilla environment. Andy Edmonds has been working on Mozilla for over three years, and has developed two separate browser plug-ins, so he brings deep knowledge to the tutorial.
Other tutorials focus on Web application cost estimation, effective use of standards in Web applications, Semantic Web, Adaptive Hypermedia, SMIL and SVG, and WebDAV. All of these tutorials are presented by world-class experts in their fields.
One final note -- compared to an O'Reilly conference, or an ApacheCon, these tutorials are of equal or higher quality, and less expensive as well. Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of another venue where you can find such quality speakers at such a reasonable cost. - Simon:
- What about workshops?
- Jim:
- I'm super excited about this year's workshop program. In addition to repeats of last year's successful Spatial Hypertext and Scholarly Hypertext workshops, we have several new ones. The Music and Hypertext workshop will examine how hypertext navigation and structure can be added to musical experience. Since this area hasn't received much attention in the past, the workshop is geared towards newcomers, people who have an interest in the topic, but who may not have a deep musical (or hypertextual) background.
In a similar vein of extending hypertext capabilities to new media, the Geospatial Hypertext workshop will look at issues of extending hypertext into the real world, and being able to follow and author links in-situ.
I'm also excited about the Open Source Content Management (OSCOM) "Hackathon" workshop. Unlike many workshops that are mini-conferences, the hackathon has an explicit focus on bringing people together to write code to extend the capabilities of open source content management systems. By gathering experts on these systems together, the group is able to make significant progress in a short time, since questions can be quickly answered, and problems swiftly overcome. - Simon:
- What social events have you got planned for us?
- Jim:
- There are two fun events in the works. The first is a ride on the Roaring Camp Railroad, a logging train that does an hour long loop through an old growth redwood forest. I've taken this ride before, and it's just awesome to lean back and look up into the forest canopy 150 feet (~50m) above your head.
The following night, we'll attend an performance by the Shakespeare Santa Cruz troupe, who perform in a beautiful outdoors theater on the UCSC campus. Current plans are to have a wine and cheese reception in late afternoon, giving people a lot of time to view demonstrations and tutorials. Following, we'll have a buffet dinner, then walk over to the performance. Shakespeare Santa Cruz does modern, whimsical adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, and I've found that even non-native English speakers have a lot of fun at the performances. - Simon:
- Some of us might want to stay a little longer in Santa Cruz after the conference. Do you have any suggestions for places to visit?
- Jim:
- This is a great idea. In Santa Cruz itself, the beach boardwalk has a fun wooden roller coaster, and many other rides. There are several excellent beaches in the Santa Cruz area, as well as some good surfing spots. Nearby is Wilder Ranch State Park, Henry Cowell State Park, and Big Basin State Park, with a wide range of hiking and bicycling trails, and places to camp. Monterey is an hour away, with its amazing aquarium, and Cannery Row.
A little further afield, Santa Cruz is close to San Francisco (2hrs), Napa and Sonoma Valley wine country (3hrs), Yosemite National Park (4.5hrs), and Lake Tahoe (5hrs). As well, the most stunning sections of the Pacific Coast Highway begin just south of Monterey, in Big Sur. If you can spare the time, I heartily recommend adding some vacation time before or after your trip. - Simon:
- Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about the conference?
- Jim:
- Yes! Unlike some recent Hypertext conferences, you won't be needing your umbrella this year. It just doesn't rain in Santa Cruz from about July through October, and once the occasional morning fog burns off, you have brilliant sunshine for the rest of the day. If this sounds good to you, I hope you'll make time to attend the Hypertext 2004 conference.
Jim Whitehead is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he performs research in the fields of software configuration management, remote collaborative authoring, hypertext, hypertext versioning, and Internet information systems. Jim is also Chair of the WebDAV Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which is developing interoperability standards for remote collaborative authoring of content on the Web.
M: S Harper on 05 Feb 2004
C: S Harper on 27 Nov 2003
C: S Harper on 27 Nov 2003