IST-2000-28767 QUESTION-HOW Project
Final Report
September 2003.
Daniel Dardailler, Project Manager.
Executive Summary:
QUESTION-HOW stands for "Quality Engineering Solutions
via Tools, Information and Outreach for the New Highly-enriched Offerings
from W3C".
It was a two-year Accompanying Measure, from Sept 2001 to Sept 2003, for
1950KEuros (half of that going to W3C offices in the form of subcontracts),
with two different facets:
- Technical developments, aimed at showing the W3C technologies at
work
- European Outreach, and additional W3C European offices coverage
QH is now over and it was a successful project. The main outcomes are a
series of state of art demonstrators of stable and emerging W3C technologies,
the creation or extension of W3C offices and added awareness of W3C in
Europe.
The World Wide Web and its infrastructure, the Internet, plays the key
role in the development of the Information Society. The
mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to "lead the web to its full potential"
by evolving the Web as a "robust, scaleable, adaptive infrastructure". W3C's
main deliverables are its Recommendations (specifications) that evolve the
Web protocols plus timely conversion tools, validation systems and
checklists.
The arrival of vertical XML applications, the ability to enhance
information with metadata, the ability to negotiate content with the device
and a richer interaction model at the client leaves the industry with complex
decisions as to how to evolve their company by providing quality solutions.
As the web recommendations are used in handling core business processes, the
need for correct integrated future-proof solutions are a major challenge.
The W3C has expressed and received support from the European
Commission IST Program (FP5) to improve the quality of its
Recommendations as the number and complexity increases and the need to
interwork becomes more important. This was addressed by the QUESTION-HOW project by the developments of:
- Validators for Correct Usage: validators for both CSS and HTML, are provided that check both
for conformance and also good practice. However, further work is
necessary to cover a wide range of recommendations
- Translators: W3C's tidy is
a good example of a tool that both checks a HTML document for correctness
but also has the ability to translate that document into XHTML. Similar tools are to be developed, and this
project will contribute to this aim.
- Benchmarks: the new SVG (scalable
vector graphics) Recommendation is producing a suite of test documents
that illustrate correct usage and also act as a base for developers to
check their implementations against. The same is needed for other W3C
specifications.
- Demonstrators: W3C Recommendations spell out in detail what
the constraints are on their usage. In general, the actual use that it is
applied to is for the application to decide. Providing demonstrators,
particularly if they use facilities in an unusual way, help to broaden
the applicability of a Recommendation and offer potential users an
insight into the richness of the Recommendation, the breadth of its
applicability and how that recommendation may impact their business.
The project has also contributed to an extended outreach of W3C. The
current set of Offices cover about 75% of
the European Union population. To make a more complete coverage of the
existing European Union in terms of first line support, there will be the
need to open new Offices and/or widen the area covered by existing Offices.
This has been done by:
- A regionalization programme, whereby existing offices will go beyond
their national barrier, and will be acting as regional representations of
W3C
- By the creation of new offices to cover those areas that cannot be
addressed through regionalization
Finally, the outreach of W3C has been improved through:
- Developments of various materials like primers, handouts,
demonstrations, etc
- By the organization of two conference tours throughout Europe during
the project
- INRIA, as the European Host of W3C (main contractor) til end of 2003, started the
project.
- ERCIM, as the new European Host of
W3C, finished it.
- Subcontractors:
- Free resources: W3C worldwide staff and Working Group participants.
As of end of August 2003, the project is now finished. Major achievements
include:
- completed the technical work defined for the first phase of the project
(WP01),
- completed the technical deliverables for the second phase of the
project (WP02),
- implemented the regionalization of 3 existing offices, and the creation
of 3 new offices (WP03 and WP04)
- produced various dissemination materials related to the project
(WP05)
- ran a successful W3C Interop tour (WP06) in 4 different cities in
Europe and an even more successful Semantic Web Tour in June 2003 in 5
cities.
- transferred the W3C Europe QH staff from INRIA to ERCIM and associated
reports.
- ran a successful annual review with the representatives of the European
Commission in September 2002, in Sophia Antipolis and planning our final
review in Brussells in September 2003.
Following are some more details about the work done, workpackage by
workpackage.
WP01 and WP02 were a series of technical sub-projects,
defined and executed by W3C staff or office technical staff (as
subcontractors).
WP01 gave the emphasis on stable technologies (CSS, XML,
I18N, XSLT) and the work was mostly done house by W3C staff.
Several demonstrators were developed, among which:
- CSS3 and MathML validator and test suite
- A tool to annotate pictures with metadata in RDF
- A collaborative batch web editing tool
- Enhancement of the Amaya Web browser/editor for Internationalization
and XML
- An XSLT and an SVG showcase
WP02 gave the emphasis on more recent technologies (XHTML
QA, Metadata, Multimedia, Mobile) and was done mostly by office technical
staff.
It included:
- A P3P Preference Manager
- Simultaneous Visual and Audio Communication on the Web
- Automatic inclusion of RDF annotation in SMIL 2.0
- A CC/PP module for Apache
- XML/RDF Digital Library
- Using RDF to query multiple SQL Databases
- Mapping of complex Forms
These demonstrators are available across a range of Web locations and are
not held together in one project site, although they are all linked to from
the following project
page. This has the advantage of embedding the demonstrators in Web
navigation routes that users requiring them will use, thereby increasing
their impact.
WP03 and WP04 were concerned with extending the W3C
Offices program.
WP03 was concerned with a series of regionalization of
existing offices:
- United Kingdom and Ireland Office
The current office host (RAL) has already good contacts with the
academic circles in Ireland (e.g, at the Trinity College), which is a
good basis for start. Discussions with the representatives of Irish W3C
members showed a great interest for such an extension of the UK
office.
- Office for Germany and Austria
The contacts between the German and Austrian technological and
industrial communities are traditionally good, and various professional
societies, like for example the German GI (Gesellschaft fur Informatik)
have regularly meetings with their Austrian colleagues. In view of the
linguistic facilities, creation of a joined German and Austrian office
was the best solution.
- Benelux Office
That there was a need for a presence in Belgium was clear from the
statistics, and the closeness of the Dutch office leads to the obvious
choice for regionalization in the area.
WP04 with the creation of 3 new offices:
- a Finnish Office, at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT)
Although a relatively small county in term of population, Finland is
clearly an important player in the Internet area. Linguistically
"isolated", it is not feasible to include Finland into a regional office
of some kind, e.g, a Scandinavian office. Hence the establishment a
separate office there.
- a Hungarian Office, at the Computer and Automation Institute in
Budapest,
As shown by the statistics, this is one of the strong countries in the
area, with a stable W3C member that has already expressed its interest in
establishing an office. Similarly to Finland, the linguistic isolation of
the country makes it difficult to include Hungary in any larger regional
office.
- a Spanish Office, at FICYT, in Oviedo, Asturias.
This country was clearly underrepresented in the W3C community. The
first discussions with local contacts had revealed that linguistic issues
played an important role in this, insofar as the local community is not
fluent enough in English to closely participate in the usage and the
dissemination of W3C technologies. A Spanish office will play a very
important role for W3C and the Web, with an effect in the whole
Latin-American community, too.
With these plans now implemented, a close to 100% "coverage" of today's
European Union, as well as some of the new members possibly joining the union
in 2004, has been achieved.
WP05 and WP06 was focused on Outreach: 2 conference tours
and a support materials were developed for outreach to be used in our
tours.
WP05 consisted in a series of one day events across
Europe.
In the first year of the project, in 2002, the purpose was twofold:
- promote W3C interoperable technologies,
- launch the regionalization of three European W3C Offices (see WP3
deliverables).
The schedule of the events has been the following:
- 21
May: Paris - FRANCE and official launch of the W3C Interop
Tour
- 28
May: Vienna - AUSTRIA with the launch of the W3C
German-Austrian Office
- 30
May: Dublin - IRELAND with the launch of the W3C UK-Ireland
Office
- 3
June: Brussels - BELGIUM with the launch of the W3C Benelux
Office
A public Web page has been published in April 2002 presenting the tour at:
http://www.w3.org/2002/03/interoptour.html
A press release has been issued on 21 May and is available at: http://www.w3.org/2002/03/interoptour-pressrelease
(translations in French,
German
and Dutch)
In 2003, the W3C has organized a second series of one day events across
Europe, which purpose was to promote the W3C Semantic Web technologies.
Representatives of W3C Member organizations and the W3C Team explained how
Semantic Web technologies help to create richer, more usable data on the
existing Web.
The schedule of the events was the following:
All events were open to the public and free of charge.
A public Web
page was published in March 2003 presenting the tour.
The tour was advertised on the W3C home page in the first days of April,
and stayed as a top news for 2 weeks. Again, it made the top news during the
period covering all the events. Moreover, in each country, Offices were able
to announce their own local event many on-line publications' agendas.
A press
release was issued on 10 June 2003, and translated into 5 languages (Dutch,
English,
French,
German,
Greek,
Italian
and Japanese).
European press reported on the tour, specifically in each visited country
(see below), but it is worth noted that this tour was also advertised in
other publications, such as this Japanese one:
- @IT:
XML & Web Services [20 May]
- "W3C/XML Watch - May 2003", Emie
Kayama, W3C, MathML 2.0, XKMS, VoiceXML, I18N, SVG 1.2, WCAG 2.0,
WSCI, Amaya 8.0, W3C Semantic Tour (in Japanese)
- E-Marketing [13 June]
- "Le
W3C organise une tournée européenne sur le Web sémantique"
, W3C, Semantic Web, HTML, Semantic Web, RDF, OWL, XML, W3C
Semantic Tour
- ZDNet UK - CNET [8 April]
- "W3C
advances Semantic Web drafts" , Paul Festa, W3C, OWL,
RDF, Semantic Tour, Eric Miller
- Démocratie
Electronique [10 June]
- "Tournée
sémantique du W3C" , W3C Semantic Tour
- Sophianet.com [10 June]
- "W3C
: une tournée européenne pour le Web Sémantique" ,
Jean-Pierre Largillet, W3C, Semantic Tour, RDF, OWL, XML, Daniel
Dardailler, Philipp Hoschka
Both tours have been extremely well received, the attendance in all stops
was very good and quite enthusiastic. The panels were very successful and
fully attended, even if scheduled at the end of each day.
Most of the attendees were already acknowledgeable of W3C work, at all
levels of understanding. A good number of industrials were present, and
judging by the quality of numerous questions, all the attendants were
satisfied with the level of interaction provided. At the London event, a
participant expressed its great satisfaction by rating the event as the best
self-funded development day he ever attended.
Finally, the theme of the Semantic tour was more attractive, as it is
regarded as a new short term challenge in the IT sector. Last year's Interop
Tour was less successful in respect. The press attendance was remarkably high
in average, thus leading to a very good presence of W3C's work in either the
public press or the technical one.
WP06 was concerned with establishing what dissemination
aids needed for the tools developed in WP1 and WP2, establishing what was
needed to promote the new W3C Recommendations using experience from W3C-LA
and allocate the PR material to one or more of the categories (presentations,
handouts, stand decoration, demonstrations).
The deliverables fell in 4 different categories:
- Presentations
Within the Question How project, for the purposes of both the two
tours of presentation events and for other presentation a further large
number of presentations have been produced which have added to this
archive of material. This activity acted as a spur to both W3C staff and
member organisations to address the presentation of internationalisation
which has improved considerably during the timescale of the Question How
project. A second issue addressed by both these presentation slides and
the posters produced as materials for booths at exhibitions within this
workpackage has been to present the W3C membership in a graphic display
showing the international spread. This has resulted in both presentation
slides, and poster materials in SVG based on plotting membership on a
world map.
- Handouts
The existing handouts W3C usually distributes serve a purpose for a
technically centered audience, but they do not present the work of W3C to
a general audience who wish to know what W3C can do for their industry,
business or market sector. To fill this gap, within the Question How
project, W3C has analysed the standard industrial market sectors and the
technologies that it recommends for web usage, concluding which
technologies are most significant to each sector, as shown in the deliverable page.
- Stand Decoration
Several stand decorations were designed to promote W3C web technology
at events and exhibitions organised by W3C or the national and regional
offices of W3C. Within this project we have chosen to design re-usable
poster templates that can present different aspects of W3C, and which can
persist beyond the duration of the project itself.
- Demonstrator package
This deliverable was concerned with gathering all the technical
demonstrators done in WP01 and WP02 and making sure that they were all
usable by people external to the project.
Lessons Learned, Impact.
The overall goal expressed in the Technical Annex was:
"QUESTION-HOW is aimed at providing the environment necessary for
European companies to make mission critical decisions of quality with regard
to the emerging Web specifications from W3C."
And it was associated to three sub-goals:
- Aid the development of mission critical solutions via a range of
tools
- Improve outreach and communication channels through an enlarged set of
European Offices
- Informing Europe of emerging changes and technologies
At the end of the project, W3C and its offices have developed a complete
set of tools that can, and are already, used by European industry to make
quality decisions with regard to their positioning in the new economy.
As an active dissemination programme, the QH project has made aware the
industry and the academic world in Europe of those tools and of the work of
W3C in general.
The creation of stable and effective additional W3C offices in Europe will
show its effect over time, as the project was mostly concerned by planting
the seeds of such a relay service. Our Spanish office for
instance, is already generating of lots of new interest in the country for
W3C activities such as Semantic Web and QA.
One of the lesson learned concerns the reality of seeding the W3C message
only in places that provide a ground able to sustain with the industry needs.
We realized during our attempts to find a new office in Central Europe, in
addition to the new office we opened in Hungary, that it did not make sense
to force the establishment of an Office just to satisfy the QH project
requirements. The risk of failing in the long terms due to lack of a strong
will to pass the W3C message was too high.
We think we have achieved all these goals, through the series of state of
art demonstrators developed, the creation and extension of W3C offices and
the two European conference tours, and we look forward to more cooperation
with the EC and the industry in Europe in leading the Web to its full
potential.
The Web industry needs a solid base for growing beyond its current base.
We think the QH project has contributed a lot in terms of making this
base open and universal through its W3C
involvment.
Public Web Resources
Daniel Dardailler (danield@w3.org) Last
revised: $Date: 2003/10/10 13:20:17 $