Information, Please
Alan Karben has been a mediaholic since he published his first scoop in
his high school newspaper. (He discovered that a commercial
filmed in one of the science classes -- billed as being for a healthcare product
-- was actually for the Today Contraceptive Sponge.)
Alan has also long had a passion for science and technology, and is grateful
that the Web started coming into bloom just as he was choosing his career path.
After college and graduate school years filled with projects on the
technical, editorial, economic, and public policy angles of the
information industries, Alan joined Dow Jones as a founding member
of The Wall
Street Journal Online.
Six years at WSJ.com was followed by three and a half at information application
developer
Pinnacor (formerly ScreamingMedia).
While pioneering the use of XML (originally SGML) at Dow Jones, the Journal,
and Pinnacor, Alan has been very active in the IPTC, an association of leading global media companies charged with building standards for the exchange of
content amongst publishers. Alan was an original committee chairman of NewsML, and currently serves as chairman of the
News Industry Text Format (the most widely
used XML news vocabulary) and SportsML,
the recently launched standard for sports data.
Alan has now joined several associates to form a boutique content-processing
technology firm called XML Team Solutions.
The mission of XML Team Solutions is to help publishers of sports data take advantage of XML standards in order to raise the quality of dynamic data applications offered
online, and lower their development and maintenance costs.
Alan and his family live in New York City.
More information on his past and present is available online.
