Project acronym: QUESTION-HOW
Project Full Title: Quality Engineering Solutions via Tools,
Information and Outreach for the New Highly-enriched Offerings from W3C:
Evolving the Web in Europe
Project/Contract No. IST-2000-28767
Work package 4, Deliverables D4.1 and D4.2
Project Manager: Daniel Dardailler
<danield@w3.org>
Author of this document: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>
Date: Thu, Aug 22, 2002.
An earlier report on W3C Office Coverage ("Analysis of W3C Office Coverage in Europe") gave an overview of the Internet presence as well as the presence of W3C in the European Union countries. That paper also outlined the plans for regionalization and for new W3C Offices. The present document reports on the new offices established in 2002; an accompanying report, for deliverables 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4, reports on regionalization.
According to plans, W3C establishes two offices in 2002, namely:
After several solicitation, two firm bids arrived to W3C for an Office in Finland:
The usual procedure in this case is that the W3C Head of Offices judges both bids, pays a visit to Finland, and submits a proposal to the management of W3C for a final decision. This is what happened in this case, too.
Tampere is one of the major Finnish cities to the north-west of Helsinki. The locals claim that Tampere is the fastest-growing city of the country, and that the boom is largely due to high-tech industry established in the area. It has two universities (the University of Technology we visited and another, more 'scientifically-oriented' university), it is home to one of the biggest research centres of Nokia, it has a local subsidiary of VTT, and a number of other high-tech firms.
The Digital Media Institute is the research arm within the department of Information Technology. TUT itself is one of the two large Universities of Technologies in the country. The commitment of DMI toward external outreach, courses, etc, is also very important.
TIEKE is in Helsinki, so there is no need of adding any further information for the surroundings.
TIEKE is a non-profit, member-based organisation, whose goal is the advancement of IT technology. TIEKE itself has a small staff (around 40 persons), and their work is on organising and coordinating collaboration projects involving various branches of IT industry, of users, and also public institutions like universities. Due to its profile, TIEKE has a large network of IT related companies, and also has the practise in organising all sorts of events, tutorials, etc.
After some discussions, the W3C Management has decided to offer the W3C Office to the Tampere team. The decision has been made in May 2002, the contract has already been signed between the Office and W3C.
The advancement of the Office was interrupted by the vacation period which puts Finland into a virtual standstill. The University has followed a number of job interviews which seems to have led to a success; a new person will be hired by the university whose job will be to act as an office coordinator. His or her first job will be to set up the proper web site for the office and run the everyday affairs. The date of the opening event has already been set for the 11th of October, probably in Tampere. Several W3C team members will make presentations during the opening ceremony; it can be expected that by the time of the Question-How project review the official announcement will have been made.
The Finnish Office has not been announced officially yet, because the existence of a local Web site is a prerequisite to do so. This can be expected in early September. An official press release in English, French, Japanese, and Finnish will be issued on the day of the Office Opening event, ie, on the 11th of October.
There has been only one bid from Hungary, so the situation was simpler in that case. The bid came from the Computer and Automation Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (SZTAKI). SZTAKI is among the very first W3C members, and their role in the development of networking, Internet, and Web Technologies in Hungary has always been very important (the institute hosted the very first Web site in the country back in the early nineties). The Institute has a wide network of contacts throughout the Hungarian industry, and it is also the organiser of the upcoming WWW2003 Conference in May 2003. SZTAKI was obviously a perfect choice for hosting an Office.
The bid of SZTAKI was accepted by the management of W3C in March 2002. The new Office assigned the role of coordinator to one of its employee, who set up a Web site very soon. The Office was officially announced on the home page of W3C and the Offices' home page. The Office has been, since then, integrated into the office network of W3C, the contracts have been signed in May.
The official Opening Event of the Office will take place in Budapest on the 24th of September, 2002, with the participation of several W3C team members. A press release is already in preparation, and will be released in English, French, Japanese, and Hungarian on that day.
At the time of writing this report, the list of Finnish members is:
At the time of writing this report, there is only one Hungarian member, namely SZTAKI.
The only thing worth mentioning is the typo in the Technical Annex: the third new office is not planned for the first year but for the second (2 new offices each year). Instead of Month 10, D4.3 should be marked as Month 18.