W3C: QH Annual Review
Bruxelles, September 16th 2003
Daniel Dardailler, W3C Director for Europe, QH Project
Manager
W3C?
Standardization for Web Technologies.
- Neutral, International, Consensus, Liaisons, Outreach
- ~400 members, ~70 staff.
- 3 hosts: MIT/ERCIM/Keio, + 14 offices (Europe, Africa, Asia, etc)
- 4 domains: Architecture, Interaction, Technology & Society,
Accessibility, + QA and Comm
See our home page at http://www.w3.org
How does W3C work?
- Identify need for a new area of standardization: workshops,
submissions
- Activity proposal submitted to membership
- Creation of working groups
- Development of specifications, tools, support materials
- Process:
W3C Web Technologies and Activities
QUESTION-HOW background
(Quality Engineering Solutions via Tools, Information and Outreach for
the New Highly-enriched Offerings from W3C: Evolving the Web in
Europe)
- Continuous support from the EC since 1995: WebCore, W3C-LA, now QH
- Accompanying Measure: started in Sept 2001, 2 years, 1950KEuros
2 facets:
- Technical developments, aimed at showing the W3C technologies at
work
- European Outreach, and additional W3C European offices coverage
QH Participants
- W3C European technical and comm staff (hosted at INRIA and then
ERCIM)
- W3C European offices staff (technical and comm):
- Free resources: W3C worldwide staff and Working Group participants.
Major achievements
The project is now finished.
- 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 successfull W3C Interop tour (WP06, in 2002) in 4 different
cities in Europe and an even more successul Semantic Tour in June 2003 in
5 cities.
- transfered the W3C Europe QH staff from INRIA to ERCIM and associated
reports.
Overall workpackage status (1)
- WP01 and WP02: Series of technical sub-projects,
defined and executed by W3C staff or office technical staff (as
subcontractors).
- WP01: Subcontract delays with INRIA, so work was late
last year, OK now.
Emphasis on stable technologies (CSS, XML, I18N, XSLT)
Work done mostly in house by W3C staff.
- WP02: Emphasis on more recent technologies (XHTML QA,
Metadata, Multimedia, Mobile)
Work done mostly by office technical staff.
Overall workpackage status (2)
- WP03 and WP04: W3C Offices program extension.
Regionalization:
- United Kingdom and Ireland Office
- Office for Germany and Austria
- Benelux Office
New offices:
- Finnish Office, at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT)
- Hungarian Office, at the Computer and Automation Institute in
Budapest
- Spanish Office, FICYT, Oviedo
Overall workpackage status (3)
Reaction to the Annual Review comments
Two main comments were received last year:
- Limited impact due to the choice of W3C platform of development for
demonstrators
- Our reaction: 2nd phase technical deliverables standalone or
integrated with major Open Source project (Apache, Tomcat).
- Dissemination needed to be done more outside the W3C
- Semantic Tour plus lots of public appearances in major
conferences (Unicode Conf, Evolve Conf, SVG Open, Web Services Conf,
XML Europe, CHI 2003, Fete de l'Internet Paris, etc)
Lessons Learned, Impact.
From the TA:
"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."
- 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
Public Web Resources