Tim's up there now, with his beautiful head and songbird voice, trying to cheer us up.

Yesterday, we heard a lot of talks about how XML is broken, about how the way we use it is broken, and about how pretty much everything else is broken (including "broken" itself).

Tim started his talk on a completely different foot. Rather than focusing on what's broken about stuffing crap inside of angle brackets, he's talking about how the people in the trenches are making this stuff work.

It's refreshingly not academic.

Tim:

- "I mean, eBay is this incredibly huge company, and they can say, 'This is how you have to do it," and that's it!"

- "If what I offer someone provides benefit, if the cost is low enough, then people will say 'that's good.' With XML over HTTP, value has been provided at a low cost, and that's good."

- "Did it ship and do what it was supposed to do? Yes - and that's what matters."

- "Someone told me once, 'Make it easy for your customers to pay you.'"

Tim has spoken up a few times since yesterday, and one of the themes he seems to be driving home is, "It's not that hard!"

With the chewy topics from yesterday, and with a bit of doomly forecasting, I'm digging this talk.

Tim sounds like someone who's been frustrated by people taking technology and making it more complicated than it needs to be. I don't know Tim, so I don't want to speak for him, but that's my impression this morning.

I'm not even going to try to draw Tim's head.
You're just going to have to see it for yourself sometime.