JEFFREY JAFFE: The objective of the W3C
is to bring the Web to its full potential,
which means that the Web is the open mechanism for people
to share information, to use for commerce and for entertainment.
W3C gets its authority to be the driver of technical standards
from the Web, I would say, from three sources.
First and foremost,
it was founded by the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee,
who created an open architecture
and asked the industry, through W3C,
to continue to develop and enhance an open architecture.
Our second source of authority is from our membership.
With well over 300 members,
we have most of the key participants in the IT industry,
in the Web industry,
participating in the conversations already.
And I think the third source of authority
is a track record of success.
There was a recent Boston Globe article
of the 150 most important things that MIT has ever developed
for the world.
W3C was listed as the most important of the 150.
I believe standards is the only solution.
Because only standards bring us good balance
of cooperation and competition.
They’re the shepherds of the specifications.
Standards are only good if there are many participants.
W3C is like an open place
where people can really work together on open standards
that everybody can use.
Meeting different parties and different interests
to see what kind of ideas they have.
There is enormous value for companies to participate,
to provide their use cases, their requirements,
and to make sure that they’re also learning from W3C
what is the next generation’s standard,
so that way they could be at the forefront
of implementing that for their customers.
W3C helps us in getting time to market
because it opens up the innovation
for applications and services.
JAFFE: The way that we make it happen is as a convener.
We bring the different industries together.
We make sure they’re having the right technical conversations,
and based on that we’ll set up working groups which will define
the technical standards that are necessary
to provide the best possible experience.
SILVIA PFEIFFER: Web and TV convergence
is happening right now.
This workshop that I’m attending right now is actually telling me
that for the first time, TV and Web people are getting together
and actually actively trying
to resolve the differences in technologies.
I think HTML5 is just one way to go forward, to move forward,
and maybe W3C with this working group will just set the standard
for the TV, bringing HTML5 also into the entertainment sector.
You really have to keep your ears open the whole time
because very important things could pop up at any minute.
By understanding what’s important to other people,
then you can work out what the path forward is
that works well for everybody.
SREE KOTAY: We think that the role of the W3C
really is to help the ecosystem.
Lacking some group like the W3C
to help provide a pan-industry application platform,
we think what will happen is you’ll see fragmentation
in the space.
JAFFE: When you consider how much companies invest
in R and D, the small investment to be part of the conversation
at W3C usually is justified.
Because every time there is a new standard,
which comes from a big organization like the W3C,
it means less specific development from followers.
So every time we can contribute to a standard,
actually we save money down the road.
The key is working in partnership with W3C,
with the requirements that are coming from this interest group.
The more we can have lots of different content providers,
lots of different content, lots of different services,
we think the more valuable an aggregator becomes,
and you need a platform,
like the work that W3C provides with HTML
and the related standards,
to have that broad ecosystem be healthy.
Who will actively join this convergence
will have a chance, opportunity to win.
But who will not join this activity will lose.
PFEIFFER: You can never be sure that all of your requirements
will be satisfied
unless you actually become involved yourself.
W3C has been very, very successful
in creating one of the most important standards ever, so...
the Web.
So one of the beauties of W3C, that everybody can be involved,
everybody can contribute to shape the future
of Web technologies.
As much as the Web has transformed
every single industry over the past 20 years,
the new Open Web Platform that we’re creating,
based on HTML5, with rich multimedia
and accessibility by all sorts of devices,
will transform every single industry once again.