FAQ on W3C-Europe move to ERCIM

Contents:

• What is W3C-Europe?
• What is ERCIM?
• Why the move to ERCIM?
• When is scheduled the official move?
• Immediate consequences?
• Advantages
• Future Organization Principles and Cooperation Rules
• Communication challenges

What is W3C-Europe?

• W3C-Europe is the name used to identify the part of Consortium (staff, building, budget, etc) hosted by INRIA today, whose main funding comes from W3C European, African and Middle-East Members, and the European Commission (EC).
• W3C-Europe is actually the official name of an INRIA development project-team (in addition to 95 INRIA research project-teams), located in INRIA Sophia Antipolis. The W3C-Europe team is part of the W3C technical team worldwide.
• W3C-Europe is composed of 25 people (Sophia staff).

What is ERCIM?

Please refer to the ERCIM Annual Report 2001 for details.

• ERCIM is the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. Its aims is to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry.
• The founders of ERCIM, in 1989, were INRIA, GMD and CWI. The goals were:
  • to gather the European research community in Information Technology and ensure its legibility and visibility at an international level (e.g. foster collaborative work and provide a critical mass)
  • to make industry aware of strategic research results
  • to publish a quarterly newsletter (ERCIM News)
  • to facilitate the researchers mobility between the ERCIM institutes
• In 2002, the 16 members of ERCIM are leading research institutes from 16 European countries (one each), and are:
  • AARIT (Austrian Association for Research in Information Technology) - Austria
  • CLRC (Central Laboratory of the Research Councils) - UK [W3C Office]
  • CNR (Informatics and Applied Mathematics at the Italian National Research Council) - Italy [W3C Office]
  • CRCIM (Czech Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) - Czech Republic
  • CWI (Dutch Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science) - Netherlands [W3C Office]
  • FNR (Fond National de la Recherche) - Luxembourg
  • FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas Institute of Computer Science) - Greece [W3C Office]
  • FhG (Fraunhofer - Information and Technology Group) - Germany [W3C Office]
  • INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) - France
  • NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) - Norway
  • SARIT (The Swiss Association for Research in Information Technology) - Switzerland
  • SICS (The Swedish Institute of Computer Science) - Sweden [W3C Office]
  • SRCIM (The Slovak Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) - Slovakia
  • SZTAKI (Computer and Automation Research Institute Hungarian Academy of Sciences) - Hungary [W3C Office]
  • TCD (Trinity College Dublin) - Ireland
  • VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland) - Finland

[Note 1: GMD has been replaced by FhG in 2001]

[Note 2: Some European countries are not within the European Union (counting 15 countries nowadays), such as Hungary, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Norway, and Slovakia]

• INRIA is the Managing Institute of ERCIM, implying that Bernard Larrouturou, INRIA President, is the current ERCIM Director
• ERCIM Office activities are operated by a team of a staff of 4 persons as of today. ERCIM staff is physically hosted by INRIA in Sophia Antipolis, though Peter Kunz, ERCIM News editor, is located at INRIA Rocquencourt.
• The current President of ERCIM is Gerard Van Oortmerssen, also Director of CWI (Netherlands).
• ERCIM is controlled by a Board of Directors gathering all the ERCIM institute directors, which meet every 6 months (like our AC meeting: around May and November).
• The work of the ERCIM Office is to manage EC contracts on behalf of their members, organize working groups (12 in 2001), events, fellowship, etc. They produce a number of publications (such as the ERCIM News).
• ERCIM member institutes are active in at least 16 scientific fields of competence, from algebra to fluid dynamics, and theory of computation, to name a few. One of these fields is labeled 'Information and Communication Technology' which takes care of advanced ITC applications and technology (GRIDs, e-learning, mobile and wireless computing, etc.) and WWW (applications, future, etc.).

Why the move to ERCIM?

In 1995, just 6 months after the official date of creation of W3C, Tim Berners-Lee did succeed in quickly bringing an European host to the Consortium. It is time to have a stronger European host now, as maintaining and growing an European presence is crucial to W3C.

Strategic reasons for W3C:

• ERCIM already exists: legally, ERCIM is an European Economic Interest Group, or EEIG, which is the only legal entity with a real European status, though operating under the French legal system. ERCIM is viewed as a stable and reliable European organization among its peers, and the European Commission acknowledges that credibility.
• ERCIM is also a kind of meta-INRIA in Europe, so a natural evolution for W3C-Europe, which expects to be more 'European'.
• Most W3C Offices in Europe are ERCIM institutes (CWI, RAL, FORTH, SZTAKI, SICS, FhG, CNR), and most of ERCIM institutes participate in our technical activities through their research staff.
• The ERCIM Office people are expert in EC project management (in 2001, ERCIM has been involved in 9 projects supported by the European Commission), and a good synergy is naturally expected.
• W3C need to make connection with vendor neutral organizations, and ERCIM is giving W3C this opportunity
• Bernard Larrouturou, president of INRIA, is also the legal Manager of the ERCIMOffice

Strategic reasons from INRIA/ERCIM's point-of-view:

• In INRIA's view, a major new step in INRIA's long-term efforts to strengthen relations within the European scientific and industrial IT community is to increase synergy between W3C-Europe and ERCIM. Such synergy already exists as most ERCIM institutes are hosting W3C European Offices.
• in ERCIM's view, hosting W3C will not only improve its worldwide visibility, but also allow to get closer to W3C technical groups and the other W3C hosts (MIT and University of Keio). Overall, it is also expected a better synergy between W3C groups, staff, and the European research community at the technical level.

When is scheduled the official move?

• The discussions about the transfer have started about a year ago, in the summer 2001, with the perspective of having the transition happened beg. of 2003. The official decision will be taken at the ERCIM Board in November 2002 - 8 th Nov. to be exact. - (in Sophia) and the news made public on the 27th of November.
• In January 2003, all W3C-Europe INRIA employees will become ERCIM employees.
• The W3C Sophia team and the ERCIMOffice team have already moved to a new building in INRIA Sophia Antipolis, called after Emmy Noëther.

Advantages

• New host has a small structure: ERCIM Office is 4 people, however ERCIM organization is 9000 people approx.
• Opening wider routes to Europe:
  • Easier involvement in new European projects: within the 6Th Framework (2002-2006) and the following frameworks, etc.
  • Earlier involvement in drafting such projects

Future Organization Principles and Cooperation Rules

Our relationship to ERCIM will be similar to the one we have with INRIA today: a hosting relationship. The W3C process will of course be unaffected by this chance.

• W3C will be treated as a department of ERCIM, parallel to today's ERCIM Office, with today's W3C-Europe Deputy Director - Daniel Dardailler - leading it.
• ERCIM will continue to work with its research institutes as it does now: fostering cooperation and work among its members. In ERCIM's research projects, ERCIM institutes and their partners carry out the research while the ERCIM Office takes care of the administrative tasks.
• W3C will be able to engage in European activities (grant, presentations, etc) independently of what the ERCIM Office or the ERCIM institutes do, and vice versa, while keeping a good spirit of cooperation and coordination.
• W3M will keep its management role, and work processes have been defined with S. Bratt and B. Larrouturou. As an example, we will circulate the information within ERCIM institutes when we need to hire a new person (but no obligation to hire someone from an ERCIM institute).

Communication challenges

• Pushing clear messages for both ERCIM and W3C communications
  • INRIA is very pleased to see ERCIM reaching its goals, and to see that W3C is now an international recognized organization, with 450 members approx
  • With ERCIM, W3C will better accelerate and promote W3C technologies at a European level, and increase the participation of European industry in developing Web technologies
  • With W3C, ERCIM will prove its ability to bring worldwide projects at an European level
  • Along the building process of a strong Europe, it is logical to have W3C hosted by a truly European host
• Take advantage of new channels of communication/publication (through ERCIM News) for W3C.
• Investigate and promote a better interaction with communication departments within ERCIM institutes (press and misc. contacts).
• Ways of taking advantage of conference/workshop meeting places at ERCIM institutes.
• Ways to recruit more members through an adapted membership recruitment process.

W3C Communications Team

Last updated: 28 October 2002.