In the spirit of the Open Data track at XTech 2005, I'm making the conference timetable available in source form.

My hope is that interested developers will pick up the data and use it as the basis of a demo for the conference. Whether it's social software, SVG, the semantic web, XHTML, text messaging or whatever, there's lots that could be done to enhance the conference experience.

I'm always having corridor conversations with other developers who say "you know, we could have done this really cool thing if we had the data". So now's the chance to get it done!

Without further ado, here's a link to the data file: grid.xml. This file will always be at this URL, and will be updated periodically. Applications should check they have the latest version.

To get things started, I've created an XSLT and accompanying CSS stylesheet that provide a simple transformation into HTML: grid.xsl and grid.css.

You should be able to figure out most things about the XML by looking at it, but here are some notes on the format for the less obvious fields:

• mbox_sha1sum -- this is a SHA1 hash of a presenter's email address. It's intended to be used in a similar way to the FOAF mbox_sha1sum property.
• prescode -- this is the code for the presentation in the organizer's database. As soon as the proceedings are online, this can be used as the basis of a hyperlink into them.
• plenary -- will enclose multiple talk items. Expect these to be added soon.
• track -- CT = core technologies, AP = applications, OD = open data, BT = browser technology, LBS = late breaking session

A few entries in the timetable lack all the relevant information, but they'll be filled in soon.

I'm happy to answer questions and send email of updates and alterations to anybody using this data. Just send me an email to let me know you're working with the data and want updates or support. You can also add to the remix page on the conference wiki. I'll be keeping it up to date with news.

I'd like this to be a living document, so I'm happy to add extra data in to support the activity of those using it. For instance, one thing that occurred to me was to create a page per session in the conference wiki.

If there's a good response, we'll link the results in from the conference web page and publicise them to attendees. Now's the time to provide your technology's the coolest!