2010 Advisory Forum Agenda and
Presentations
Note: Session titles or participant names are hyper-linked to presentation files. Some sessions were facilitated
discussions so did not have presentations, and some presenters did not make their presentations available.
Tuesday,
April 27, 2010
Getting Started with OpenTravel
Targeted at application
developers, analysts and partnership managers
that are new to or interested in OpenTravel, this breakfast session will
visually present the OpenTravel body of work and associated processes,
OpenTravel schema basics (from namespaces to common payload attributes),
and how you can get involved in OpenTravel.
Chairman's Welcome and
Opening Remarks
John Lambe, Chair, OpenTravel Board of
Directors and CTO, OpenJaw Technologies
Keynote
Cloud Thinking
Powers Merchandising in The New Decade
Timothy O'Neil-Dunne, Managing Partner, T2Impact Ltd.
The
challenge for the industry is to take advantage of real time
information and content services combining it with the smooth unimpeded
performance that users have come to expect from sellers and
intermediaries alike. Cloud computing is changing our approach to travel
services provision, moving the travel industry away from the
traditional monolithic model and replacing it with mashup merchandising
content generated from multiple sources.
Chairman's Panel
Moderated by Timothy O'Neil-Dunne
Participants:
- John
Lambe, CTO OpenJaw Technologies
- John Turato, VP Technology, Avis
Budget Group
- Jim Young, Airline Distribution Expert
Led
by Timothy O'Neil-Dunne, a panel of current and past members of the
OpenTravel Board of Directors will discuss the future of travel
distribution, including the value of standards and standards bodies to
the travel industry. Do changing business models and shifting
distribution strategies make standards more or less useful? Is the need
greater for emerging strategies and regions than for the more mature
segments and regions? Will newer and cheaper technologies make
standards irrelevant?
The Impact of Structured Data on Search Results
Moderated by Robert Cole, Founder,
RockCheetah Consulting
Participants:
- Stephane Donze, VP Technology,
Exalead
- Dan Pritchett,
Chief Platform Architect, Rearden Commerce
As
both the web and search continue to evolve – local, real-time,
personalized, semantic, image, video and universal search have emerged
as distinct entities that have complicated traditional organic and paid
search results. Structured data is transforming the internet from the
current document-centric model to the data-centric model envisioned by
Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web. The travel industry needs
to prepare for exciting, but potentially disruptive changes in the way
individuals seek, access and consume information to make trip planning
and destination experience decisions.
Distribution in the Long Tail
Moderated by Dennis Schaal, North
American Editor Tnooz
Participants:
- Stephen Joyce, CEO RezGo
- Aaron
Nissen, Director e-strategies, TravelAlberta
- Ted Miller, COO Instant
Software
Some of the hottest segments in distribution
include tours and activities, vacation/holiday/villa rentals and
destination management organizations. Characterized by extensive online
shopping but substantial offline booking, how can the
transaction-oriented GDS' and OTAs support these segments? What would
ideal distribution channels for these segments look like and how can
standards enable the electronic distribution of appropriate travel
information for these segments?
OpenTravel 2.0 - SPEAK-CODE-THINK OpenTravel
Presenters:
- David Morley, Systems Architect,
Marriott International
- Dave Hollander, SOA Architect,
Sabre Holdings
Within the Architecture
Work Group, a discussion has been ongoing about shifting the focus of
OpenTravel from XML messages to a language for business that can be
shared by both technical and non-technical individuals. This could be
accomplished through well defined namespaces to identify the OpenTravel
intellectual property, a data dictionary to rationalize the content and a
new mechanism for creating types from business concepts.
Members
of the work group will present these initiatives so everyone can
SPEAK-CODE-THINK OpenTravel!
Ideas Market
Moderated
by Lisa Fues, Director of Reservations, Inventory and Distribution,
Marriott International
Do you ever
feel that the best part of a conference happens between sessions in
casual discussions? Attend this Idea Market where Conversation Leaders
and Facilitators stir up lively discourse with attendees on a variety of
topics in a highly interactive, fluid session. Share your experiences,
or just listen in.
Click here for the notes from this session.
Using OpenTravel
Tools
Presenters:
- Ken Kuhn,
Senior Business Analyst, Marriott International
- Bonnie Lowell,
Specification Manager, OpenTravel
The best way
to realize the value of an OpenTravel membership is to understand the
variety of resources OpenTravel has to offer. See a demonstration of
each of these tools at this breakfast meeting and see how they can
assist you with your implementations.
Work
Group Updates and New Projects Discussion
This session will review
all projects across all verticals which were published in recent
releases, and projects underway. In addition, future potential projects
will be discussed and evaluated.
Attacking
High Look-to-Book Ratios
Moderated
by Timothy O'Neil-Dunne
Analysts
and distributors are all reporting a spike in the look-to-book ratio
for travel search and buy as consumers look for deals in the current
economic downturn. The increased number of lookers puts a burden on
every link in the electronic distribution supply chain, but smart
companies are figuring out ways manage the burden without knocking over
inventory control applications or negatively affecting customer service.
Integrating
OpenTravel into Your SDLC
Presented
by Bonnie Lowell, Specification Manager, OpenTravel
Targeted
at application developers, analysts and partnership managers, this
session will discuss how OpenTravel can be integrated into the common
stages of a company’s software development lifecycle (SDLC), including
planning, requirements definition, development, integration, and test
and maintenance and support.
Innovation
in Consumer-Facing Travel Sites and Apps
Presented
by Scott Gillespie, Author of Gillespie's Guide to Travel Procurement
Has
there really been much innovation in the travel industry recently? What
should the proliferation of mobile travel apps tell us? What
travel-related tasks are begging for innovative solutions? Delivered by
Scott Gillespie, a travel industry veteran and patented inventor, this
provocative session will cause you to question your answers and change
the way you look at innovation.
Modernizing the
IT Enterprise Without Sacrificing Competitive
Advantage
Presented by Sean Parker,
Executive IT Architect, IBM
The travel
industry is pressured to provide today's sophisticated travelers the
pace of innovation that they expect – however, maintaining existing
applications absorbs a significant amount of the available IT investment
budget. See and discuss examples of how leading companies address the
biggest challenges inherent in this difficult endeavor: quantifying
investment decisions, managing risk, decomposing existing applications,
appropriately leveraging standards such as OpenTravel, and finally some
key considerations for new applications to maximize maintainability.
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