Tim (co-creator of XML):

- "I'm not sure if I'm happy to be here"

- "I'm from a different planet"

- "This is a different ecosystem than what I'm used to"

- "Alt? My Mac doesn't have an alt button!"

True, Tim, but it does have that weird button with the squiggly mark on it and an apple next to it that has to be pressed in conjunction with the option, control, and other fruit buttons to unfreeze Finder when it drops a load.

More quotes:

- "Right now, I believe RSS is the world's most popular XML application"

- "I think it would be a good idea for this community to take a beady-eyed look at RSS"

Tim is talking about ATOM now. Little bit of the RSS vs. ATOM argument going on here. Tim's not happy with the fact that there are about 6.2 trillion different versions of RSS out there. I'm down with that.

Tim:

- "Here's a universal feed parser by Mark Pilgrim - does .NET have one of these yet? No? Well, you guys should have one - why haven't you done it?"

Don Box (smiling):

- "Because it's just XML, Tim."

[Note: This is one of the things that I fondly remember from last year's DevCon - the back and forth between the speaker and audience is pretty damn good.]

More Tim:

- "Whenever people are complaining that a standard is too simple for their application, that's a good indication that the standard is going to be a hit" [Note: I like this one a lot]

Tim's currently picking apart WS-Eventing to demonstrate that adding features/bulk that isn't immediately needed might be a trouble source for your attempt at standardization of a process. Redundancies, ambiguities, and so on - Tim's bringing it all up.

He's just now noting that one thing about ATOM that pleases him is that the 0.3 version they're about to publish is smaller than the previous version.

I'm very down with that.

In the end, Tim's abrasive, but he's endearing.

His shoes, however, aren't anywhere near as cool as Rebecca's.

"Artist's" rendition of the speaker