As you head off for the WSEC workshop...

Welcome to the workshop!

After a slow start, we really seem to be gaining some momentum.  With  
some late papers this week from Boeing, Westinghouse Rail  
(Australia), and Pete Lacey from Burton Group, it looks like we have  
the makings of a great discussion.  The position paper links have  
been updated at http://www.w3.org/2007/01/wos-ec- 
program.html#positions as well as the zip file with all the papers.

We have time allocated for introductions at the beginning of the  
first day, but we wanted to send along a few thoughts in advance.

As we’re sure you know, we want to encourage discussion that includes  
multiple views, and we have encouraged the variety of submissions  
that you no doubt have seen.

We are however just a bit concerned that the discussion could become  
bogged down if it gets caught in nothing more than the "REST vs SOAP"  
swamp. That is not our purpose in organizing this workshop and not  
what we intend to accomplish.

There is a real lack of leadership in the industry today around  
improving enterprise software (in particular, its standardization).   
You can easily point to the Web and say what a great success it is,  
but it is not so easy to point to something that has been equally  
successful in the enterprise. Some of the things that were omitted  
from HTTP to make the Web successful are typically the same things  
enterprise IT environments depend upon.  Are we stuck?

We say there is a lack of industry leadership to address this -- is  
this a forum to start providing that missing leadership?  We may  
decide there is nothing we can do to improve the situation, but let  
us at least make an effort to explore the alternatives and try.

So we expect a lively discussion with different views and maybe  
different conclusions.  The trick will be to keep it positive, and  
focused on requirements and ideas for potential solutions.  The  
purpose of the workshop is not to debate what has or has not been  
done wrong in the past.  It's to accept where we are - for whatever  
reasons - and try to figure out where to go next.

It should be an interesting two days and we’re glad to have you all  
aboard.

See you next Tuesday!

Eric, Philippe, and Ken


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Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305     phone:  703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive                        fax:        703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508