Sample Memo

To: Your manager

From: You

RE: Balisage: The Markup Conference

During these hard economic times, government and industry are increasingly turning to markup to become more efficient and effective.

Creating electronic medical records for all Americans by 2014, a scant five years from now, will require legions of markup specialists. The expansion of financial reporting by the Federal Reserve and the SEC, not to mention the growing ubiquity of standard business forms in EU, will also require suppliers who can meet those needs.

The Balisage markup conference is the conference where (insert company name) can talk to the leading theorists and practitioners of markup about our (insert project name or short description).

A small sampling of the talent that will be on hand and talking with the 135 or so attendees:

• XML Schema (what drives documents): W3C specification editors, developers of many public schemas, and well-know proponents and oppononents.

• UBL (business data): Standards editors and practitioners.

• XSLT (from one format to another): W3C editors, leading practitioners, and market-leading implementers.

• XQuery (searching XML documents): Standards committee members and cutting-edge tool vendors.

I have reviewed the conference agenda and think the following presentations are of particular interest:

• item (list one or two your manager will recognize as relevant)

• item

The conference fee is: $995.00. Taking into account travel and hotel I estimate the cost to be $xxxx.xx.

I believe attending this conference will have immediate benefits for (project name) and enable me to advance the interests of (company name) in the use of markup.

I appreciate your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

Your name