Markup your Strategy

No this is no advice for consultants how to bill their activities to customers (you know that "Share your knowledge and I tell you what you know" type of activities). This is about the wonderous world of XML Schema. While XPath (together with XSLT) separates men from boys, knowledge of the various available Schemata and their use separates the knowing from the clueless. There are Schemata (I'm using the proper plural, you might find others referring to them as Schemas) for almost everything. Of course being the real world there are overlapping and competing specifications everywhere (e.g. OOXML vs. ODF for Office documents). There is even a definition in XML for your emotions.
A very interesting Schema is the Strategic Markup Language ( StratML). From the definition: " The StratML standard defines an XML vocabulary and schema for the core elements of strategic plans. It formalizes practice that is commonly accepted but often implemented inconsistently. StratML will facilitate the sharing, referencing, indexing, discovery, linking, reuse, and analyses of the elements of strategic plans, including goal and objective statements as well as the names and descriptions of stakeholder groups and any other content commonly included in strategic plans. It should enable the concept of "strategic alignment" to be realized in literal linkages among goal and objective statements and all other records created by organizations in the routine course of their business processes. StratML will facilitate the discovery of potential performance partners who share common goals and objectives and/or either produce inputs needed or require outputs produced by the organization compiling the strategic plan, and facilitate stakeholder feedback on strategic goals and objectives."
To put StratML to a test it has been used to render the agenda of the incoming US government. Seems we are looking at a new level of transparency?