Rule-Breakers

In this episode of Rule Breakers, Sean McGrath sits down with Eve Maler, a pioneer in digital identity and a long standing member of the XML community who was influential in shaping XML itself, based on her expertise in its predecessor SGML.Eve has accumulated decades of experience shaping the digital identity landscape, from her role in developing the XML-based SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)  to today’s User Managed Access (UMA) OAuth extensions.Eve shares insights into why authorization—not identity—is now the frontier of innovation, and how emerging models empower users to define and manage access to their own data online.This episode is both a historical journey and glimpse into the frontier of digital identity where traditional person/role-centric authentication/authorisation meets fast moving world of autonomous Agentic AI.

In this episode of Rule Breakers, we’re joined by author and software developer Jon Udell, a longtime explorer of the tools that shape how we write, publish, and work with knowledge. From the early days of SGML and semi-structured content to the modern web and today’s AI-powered knowledge management workflows, Jon shares a sweeping perspective over the  last forty years of knowledge management innovations.

In this episode, we speak with Steven Pemberton, a pioneer of the early web, the first user in Europe to connect to the open internet, and a long-time contributor to standards at the W3C including CSS and XHTML. He also worked on the ABC programming language that heavily influenced Python.Steven traces the origins of the web from Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of a connected information system to the standards that followed, reflecting on how ease of use is sometimes in tension with ease of implementation.Steven talks about one of his recent projects - Invisible XML – which rethinks markup from a schema inference perspective. Steven also talks about HTML5 and framework-driven web design application design.

Dive into an in-depth conversation with Rick Jelliffe, one of the most influential figures in the world of markup languages and structured data.Rick's contributions to markup and markup standards span from SGML in the 1980s, XML in the Nineties, up to the present day. He brought his extensive expertise in character encoding to the work on the XML standard.  This was a pivotal feature of XML, ensuring that multilingualism was baked right into the XML standard itself taking advantage of the Unicode standard.He is perhaps best known as the inventor of the Schematron XML validation language, ingeniously utilizing XPaths to greatly extend what structures/constraints can be automatically validated in XML documents.

The latest episode of Rule-Breakers features Liam Quin a pioneering figure in the world of electronic publishing and generalized markup. In this conversation, we learn about Liam’s journey from a childhood fascination with typesetting that started with the fonts used in his copy of The Lord of the Rings, to a lifelong passion for digital documents that included working at the W3C on the XML standard.Liam and Sean explore the early days of structured content, the massive buzz that surrounded the emergence of the Web, the early Mosaic web browser, the world’s first HTML editor (HoTMetaL) and much more.

Join Rule-breakers host, Sean McGrath and our latest guest, Anthony Coates, for a deep dive into the history and necessity of structured content. Drawing on his experience at Reuters and his work on major financial standards such as FPML, Tony recounts the various factors that allowed XML to break out and become successful, how FPML played a role in encouraging XML tool vendors to fully support W3C XML Schema language standard. In this wide ranging episode, other topics include Tony's thoughts on literate programming and vibe coding for AI.

Ever wonder how websites and apps are built to look organized and work the way they do? In the latest episode of Rule-breakers, Sean talks to James Clark, a true pioneer who helped create the hidden rules and structure that make the modern web possible. James talks about his incredible journey from the early days of computers and typesetting to becoming a central figure in shaping foundational technologies like XML. He shares how he helped simplify complex coding languages to create a common 'blueprint' that everyone could use, influencing everything from how you browse articles to how data is shared across the internet. This is the story of a quiet innovator, whose work laid the groundwork for the web's biggest breakthroughs — even those you don't see. 

Sean talks to Tim Bray, a true pioneer in the world of digital documents and computing. Tim talks about his early work, including the groundbreaking Oxford English Dictionary (OED) project at the University of Waterloo. Tim went on to co-create the foundational XML standard that powers so much of the web today. Exploring the surprising prevalence of XML in places like WhatsApp, Tim offers his perspective on the growing importance of Markdown in an AI-driven world and its bright future for entry-level text styling. 

In this episode of Rule-breakers, Sean talks to Thomas Bruce about his remarkable career. From his days as a master electrician for the Yale Rep to touring with music legends, Thomas developed the Cello web browser, one of the internet's first graphical web browsers for Windows. He also co-founded the Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell in the early nineties when only fragments of legal information could be found on the internet. Discover Thomas' unique insights into early web development, the evolution of legal tech, and the surprising connections he finds between all his passions. 

In this episode, content engineering pioneer Eliot Kimber shares key lessons from his career on managing complexity in content systems. Author of DITA for Practitioners Volume 1: Architecture and Technology, Eliot explores the value of structured content, the challenges of legacy systems, and preparing for an AI-powered future. This conversation offers a look at what it takes to build intelligent knowledge frameworks that are ready for the next generation of delivery. 

Simon St.Laurent offers an insider's perspective on the evolution of structured content and markup technologies at O'Reilly and throughout his career, emphasizing how tools like DocBook, Framemaker, and SGML laid the groundwork for today's componentized publishing models. In this podcast, Simon discusses the enduring value of structured data formats and how early practices are proving essential in the age of AI. 

In this episode of Rule-breakers, Sean talks to Peter Flynn, an expert in markup languages and typesetting. With a background in traditional printing and computer typesetting, Peter transitioned into academia at UCC, where he became involved in early web development. He met Tim Berners-Lee while serving on a European Community committee, witnessing the demonstration of the nascent World Wide Web. Inspired, Peter downloaded the source code and launched Ireland's first website, subsequently contributing to discussions on HTML standardization.

In this episode, Sean and John talk about 25 years of technological change, focusing on AI's impact on legislation and regulation. They highlight the shift to natural language interfaces and the need for responsible AI adoption, emphasizing data quality and human oversight. While excited about AI's potential, they caution against its unbridled use and the dangers of treating it as a human persona.