Their bags are packed, their flights are booked. The powers that be are heading for the February 20th, Atlanta NAR Standards Conference. And I do mean all the powers that be. 500 plus powers that be.

Not since the heroic days of Bill Chee and the brilliantly conceived but disastrously executed RIN project have the Information elite of the industry been so aroused. And dare I say it? The herd of Info Execs looks positively enthused.

While the rest of the world, including many of their own member brokerages and agents, are writing them off, the MLS's of the nation, (and good mother NAR), are thinking otherwise. When in doubt about the future the best advice might just be that of the great Animal House philosopher Otter, when he said, "And what do we do when all is hopelessly lost? .... Road Trip!".

With still a week to go the industry's info execs are behaving like this meeting was some kind of rugby scrum. The buzz is incredible and attendance beyond all expectations. NAR has tossed in a ball that everyone seems to be kicking and scratching to get at. When they tossed the ball into the scrum it was called "standards".

But before the ball hit the ground everyone was calling it "XML".

The object of the game seems to be, grab the XML ball and run. Like some sudden death overtime, there is this unmistakable sense that first to score wins it all, takes it all.

Our once so parochially local MLS's are now wanting to play in the global marketplace of real estate information. And with XML methodology, no one seems to fear the once and mighty powerful property portals. Realtor.com, Microsoft, and Yahoo move over. The locals have come to play.

But let's be honest here. XML may be a universal method for working with and making sense of many data standards, but it's not the atomic bomb. Somehow the industry has gone from an attitude of "the web is just another marketing media" to, "this is how we can do the entire transaction process". And if it's anything, the MLS's are an information repository hosting critical data needed to start the transactions, process them, and push them to conclusion.

XML may be the best translation and exchange method ever envisioned. But it was really conceived so that the many standards and data formats that are inherently incompatible could remain so. The magic is in the rapid translation from database to document, to database to database and document and back.

Which is to say that having a standards meeting in an XML driven world is much different now than it was during the heady days of RIN. The difference is that with XML no one has to change their data standards. All they need do is agree to participate in the global marketplace where universal access and exchange demand rapid translation and machine readable format.

Yes, it would be nice if the XML translation layer had a standard core. In fact, John Petit, Director of 4thWorld Telecom, co-author of the RELML DTD for real estate will be speaking at the NAR Conference. John Petit and Doug Greenwood of OpenMLS wrote the RELML specification.

RELML stands for "Real Estate Listing Markup Language". DTD stands for "Document Type Definition". XML stands for "Extensible Markup Language". Yes, it's possible to make many many vertical industry XML specifications. If they're public, they can universally exchange with and be incorporated by any interested data player. If the spec is private, that's okay too. Access and use is limited to those with "access rights".

However, just so this doesn't get to sounding too simple, it is quite possible for an XML document to be both public and private at different levels, at the same time. Each element in an XML merged data/doc can have encrypted access rights, some public and some specific to licensed individuals. (See "Holographic Documents")

The key to universal XML exchange is the DTD, the Data Dictionary Document.

Think of this as a foreign language translation dictionary, like an English - Spanish dictionary. Except that, instead of translating one language to another, the DTD can manage thousands of data dialects. A modern day Esperanto for data and document exchange. Esperanto: Date: 1892
: an artificial international language based as far as possible on words common to the chief European languages

So one question the NAR Standards Conference will answer is whether or not the industry Info Execs are thinking in terms of global data exchange using XML, or, are they still locked onto the archaic EDI style methods of a common data format, the costly concept that doomed RIN?

And then there is the problem of scrambling industry Info Execs. John Petit will be speaking about OpenMLS, the first real estate provider of XML based tools and systems.

He will also speak about the XML performance trials now under way with the giant regional Information Services provider, MRIS.

MRIS executives Dale Ross and Gregg Petch have grabbed the XML ball are running down field at break neck speed. Performance trials using the OpenMLS system are now underway. Stress testing covers data translations ranging from Virginia to Northern Michigan, to the North Shores of Lake Tahoe, and into the San Francisco Bay Area. Testing for video streaming and the multicasting of media rich visual data via VSAT Satellite broadcast looms near. Which is to say, if XML can pass the MRIS performance test, it really is the silver bullet the industry has been looking for.

In hot pursuit is HomeSeekers, feverishly working to get an XML based "MLS 2000" system out the door. Regardless of what the NAR Standards Committee does, a more important issue for Info Execs might be whether or not HomeSeekers becomes the second XML System provider to embrace the RELML DTD.

MRIS may have the XML ball at the moment, breaking from the scrum before it even hit the ground. But the Atlanta meeting shouts that the chase has just begun.

Info Execs of America, Get REady to Rumble!