First of all, people should know that I am not a programmer - not even close (in fact, the people that work with me are reading this and laughing at the fact that my name now appears in the same paragraph as the word “programmer”). But, being the IT-Geek-Person-That-People-Think-Knows-A-Lot (guess I got ya all fooled, I do ), I am often asked to try to explain things I know only a little about. When I explain I don't really know much about some subject, for some reason most of the people I associate with tend to look at me like I am simply avoiding the conversation. They must assume I just don't want to talk about work-related stuff outside of work (and they are right, but still - the real problem is that I often don't know jack beyond the simple basics of what they want me to explain).

For example, take XML. Sure, I have a basic rudimentary understanding of XML, how to write it, how to work with it, etc. It's not exactly rocket science, after all, and I have to know the entry-level basics in order to hold a “meaningful” conversation with many of my colleagues. Plus the new Office System 2003 applications I am spending a lot of time with make use of XML in ways past versions could not, which is cool. But, that just means I need to learn more about it.

SideNote: Back in - get this - 1996 or so, I was a sweat-equity partner in a company that was building an online service for small businesses to respond to requests for quotes put out by the federal government. That was my first exposure to XML, back in the day, when it was pretty much brand new. I remember one of my friends, John Turner, back then telling me this XML thing was the way of the future, and I should just wait and see if I didn't believe him. JT was always right.

I have two main resources I can leverage to learn about geeky things like XML. One resource is the people I work with, and Travis and Scott from work are awfully good about humoring me and teaching me the salient details of what I need to know in order to be able to understand what the heck they're talking about on a daily basis. And for this I am grateful.

The other place I find the information is by scouring the web, RSS feeds, and other resources for good links to useful information. In this case, it was on the MSDN web site, in the Office Developer Center: The article, which ends up discussing XML in the context of the Office tools, actually spends most of its time introducing the reader to XML data, schemas and trasforms in general.

For those of us who yearn for someone to explain things on our level, this is an XML gem, and Bill Coan (the author) gets my vote. Anyone can understand this stuff (even me), and Coan does a pretty darn good job of showing the reader how XML is structured. So, if you're one of those people who are always asking me about this-technology-or-that, and if you have always wondered what the heck this XML stuff is, take a few minutes to read up, and you'll know almost as much as I do.