W3C and W3C Offices - an overview

Potsdam, Germany 2009-09-16Klaus Birkenbihl, W3Cthis talk at http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

1

Introducing W3C

W3C http://www.w3.org/ the home of (X)HTML, XML, CSS, RDF, the Web and Semantic Web...~400 members (the usual suspects, SMEs, users, grasroots ...) http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List65 groups doing the work http://www.w3.org/Consortium/activities18 world offices all over the world http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/a team of ~55 individuals - working and living distributed around the globe - coordinated by 3hosts

MIT, US http://www.csail.mit.edu/

ERCIM, Europe http://www.ercim.org/

Keio University, Japan http://www.keio.ac.jp/

director: WWW inventor Tim Berners Lee http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

2

W3C Offices

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

3

W3C Offices - the Start

W3C-LA

BRUSSELS -- 24 November, 1997 -- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today announced the launch of

W3C-LA, a new initiative to promote W3C developments to leverage the Web for European industry. W3C-LA(Leveraging Action) is one of the European Commission's "Leveraging Actions for Software Technologies",sponsored by the Esprit programme.

...

W3C Offices

To enhance the communication between W3C and the Web community, W3C will open W3C Offices covering

specific geographical areas. W3C Offices will be the first point of contact between the Consortium and its

membership, as well as the general public in their corresponding region. CLRC-RAL has been established asthe first W3C Office, covering the United Kingdom. Other Offices to be launched during the first quarter of 1998include GMD (Forschungszentrum informationstechnik) in Germany, CWI (Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica) inthe Netherlands, SICS (Swedish Institute of Computer Science) in Sweden, and FORTH (Foundation Of Researchand Technology) in Greece.

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

4

W3C World Offices

1997 - EU and W3C decide to leverage W3C in Europe (W3C-LA)regional offices are part of the program recognizing that the outreach of the French host(INRIA at that time) faced language barrierspromotion and establishment was by Jean François Abramatic and Bob Hopgoodoffices are located at research institutes and universities

neutral

rather knowledge than sales

the offices program soon was exported to Asia and Australiatoday 18 international Offices

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

5

W3C World Offices today

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

6

W3C World Offices today

Australia (CSIRO) Benelux (CWI) Brazil (NIC.br) China (Beihang University) Finland (TU Tampere)

Germany and Austria (FH Potsdam) Greece (FORTH-ICS) Hungary (SZTAKI) India (MIT-DIT) Italy (CNR)

Israel (ISOC-IL) Korea (ETRI) Morocco (EMI) Southern Africa (Meraka Institute) Senegal (ESP)

Spain (CTIC) Sweden (SICS) UK and Ireland (STFC RAL) more to come ... more to come ...

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

7

Was it a success?

One succes criterion for Offices is the membership development in their region

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

8

Evidence for Offices impact?

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

9

Today

All countries mentioned in this list - except Switzerland and Canada - have an W3C Office or W3C Host presencetoday

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

10

Offices roles

Recruit stake-holders in the region

Provide support for existing W3C Members in the region.Provide feedback to W3C on regional issues (for example, in support of W3C's Internationalization Activity).

Promote the adoption of W3C Recommendations with a particular attention to the local languages and

cultures.Initiate translations and help others translate W3C materials and promote their dissemination.

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

11

Sounds a bit boring?

Technology that rocks!

International environment!

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

12

Room for creativity

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

13

Offices creativity

the Semantic Web Tour in 2003annual W3C dayssymposia on W3C topics to discuss with local communitiesco-organisation of international conferencesthe W3C bus (Spain 2004)

W3C Standards Tour

stopped of one or two days in various university cities in Spain

established contact with researchers at Universities

the W3C books <edition W3C.de> (Germany 2002)W3C Standards in German commented by the translators

two nice books (sold out)XML & Co: Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 (4. Februar 2004), Document

Object Model (DOM) Level 3 XPath Spezifikation (31. März 2003), Extensible Markup

Language (XML) 1.1, Candidate Recommendation (15. Oktober 2002), Extensible

Markup Language (XML) 1.0, Zweite Auflage (6. Oktober 2000), Extensible Markup

Language (XML) 1.0 (10. Februar 1998), XML-Schema Teil 0: Einführung (2. Mai

2001), XML-Schema Teil 1: Strukturen (2. Mai 2001), XML-Schema Teil 2: Datentypen

(2. Mai 2001), XSL-Transformationen (XSLT) 1.0 (16. November 1999), XML Path

Language (XPath) Version 1.0 (16. November 1999), Namensräume in XML (14.

Januar 1999), XML Information Set (24. Oktober 2001), XML Base (27. Juni 2001), XLink 1.0 (27. Juni 2001) and Verknüpfen von Style Sheets mit

XML-Dokumenten Version 1.0 (29. Juni 1999).

XHTML, CSS & Co: XHTML+MathML+SVG, Working Draft (9. August 2002), XFrames, Working Draft (6. August 2002), XHTML 1, Zweite

Auflage (1. August 2002), XHTML 1.1 (31. Mai 2001), Modularisierung von XHTML (10. April 2001), XHTML Basic (19. Dezember 2000),

HTML 4.01 (24. Dezember 1999) and Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (12. Mai 1998).

complete text available on the Web

Café with Browser (Brazil 2009)forum for free talks with developers, researchers and the browser industry

Opera, Mozilla, Microsoft have already been there

videos and slides online

actively involved in research on the technologies

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

14

Challenges

better synergies with hostsacquisition of local projects

better use of branding

identifying common topics

cooperation in research and development

closer contact with local communitiesharvest of voluntary work

acknowledgement and coordination of voluntary work

joint events while maintaining neutrality

cooperation with other Internet organizations

Offices in developing countriesdifferent needs and priorities in technologies

usually less resources and other Office host requirements

better global coveragesome big countries are still missing

Offices managementbetter cooperation between Offices to avoid double work

how to manage 40+ Offices

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

15

Welcome W3C.de/at

at Fachhochschule Potsdam

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

16

Move of the W3C Germany and Austria Office

Welcome (back), Felix SasakiLet's do great work together, Fachhochschule PotsdamThank you, Thomas Tikwinski and Fraunhofer IAIS

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

17

Closing remark

Being W3C.de/at Office staff does not require a specific hairstyle ...

Klaus Birkenbihl Henning Fischer Thomas Tikwinski Felix Sasaki

http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/1015Potsdam-KB/Slides.html#(1)

18