Entries marked with this background color and a "*)" were supported by the W3C Offices Activity Fund.
2010-12-07: On november 24 the second semantic meetup with the W3C Benelux Office took place in Amsterdam. This time it was located at Mediamatic. Among the speakers was Ivan Herman who presented "Some of the newest SW technologies at W3C: RDFa1.1 and R2ML". Other topics were about careers, practical use of Semantic Web technology in publishing and legal information retrieval. After the presentations there was time for informal discussions supported by food and drinks. The participants enjoyed the easy athmosphere of the event and the discussions as documented by a quote from a participant: "meetups are fun, but informal meetups are even more fun."
2010-11-26: The W3C India Office has published a report on the "W3C India Workshop on Internationalization of E-governance Applications" held in August 2010. The event was organized in cooperation with Opera software. The event addressed topics specific to India an many other developing countries like the problem of last mile connectivity and reaching the larger section of society due to limited availability of web based services with local language support. One building stone in resolving such problems are the W3C internationalization best practices coupled with other W3C standards. Because of last mile problem mobile technologies play also an important role when trying to reach the citizens with e-government services. Also see news item.
2010-10-22: The W3C Office Hungary is organizing a one-day event on HTML5 on 28th October 2010. Invited guest speaker is Michael Smith from W3C Keio host. People are invited to deliver a lecture or presentation, in case they have an interesting topic or project related to either HTML5 or other W3C technologies. Participation is free, but needs advance registration. Conference languages are Hungarian and English.
2010-10-21: As reported before the W3C Brasil Office held the second edition of W3C Brazil Web Conference, on October 5 and 6, in Belo Horizonte. About 200 attendees had the opportunity of talking about the future of the Web with W3C special guests. Paul Cooton, co-chair of W3C HTML Working Group and Microsoft Partner Group manager, addressed the future of HTML 5. His presence was timely perfect to clarify the great repercussion on news headlines to not deploy HTML 5. Noshir Contractor, professor at Northeastern University, USA, addressed the researches on the social network lificycle. Fernanda Viegas, a Brazilian researcher at Google, in Cambridge, USA, gave a a vibrant talk on the Web.
The Web Conference has more than 30 speakers that covered themes like Web and goverment, Web and community, Web and business. For the first time, this conference of colocated with the Brazilian Society of Computing Science Conferences which provided great synergy to particiants of both events. All presentation will be available on video and slides in the W3C Brasil web site.
2010-10-21: In the tradition of its Café com Browser the W3C Brasil Office opened the Café Semântico on October 15th. Speaker was Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity lead. 30 participants gathered in th eCafé and more than 120 participated remotely on the Web. Participants were very actively commented and raised questions on twitter (@w3cbrasil, #cafecombrowser, #cafewithbrowser, #cafesemantico) and in the live chat. Ivan herman presented the basic concepts of Semantic Web, examples and the technologies behind and under them. This presentation will be available in video in the W3C Brazil Office web site. Slides are already available.
2010-10-13: Under the title "Dimensions and characteristics of the Brazilian Web, a study by the gov.br" the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the Network Information Center – NIC.br published a study about the size, technology and use of the Brazil Web. The study was conducted by the W3C Brazil Office in cooperation with the Center of Study and Research in Network Technology and Operations (CEPTRO.br).
Vagner Diniz, manager of the W3C Brazil Offices describes the in his introduction the goal and scope of the study as follows: "This study shall contribute to answering several questions, complementing and functioning as starting point for further initiatives. Examples of these questions are: How many websites are there in the Web.br? How big is the Web.br and how does it grow? What types of technologies are used? Where are websites hosted? Are they hosted in Brazil or abroad? Are websites compliant with Web standards, such as HTML and CSS? Are websites accessible? Do they provide IPv6 support? Which technologies are used by server, pages, images, documents, videos, etc.? Are servers synchronized with the Brazilian legal time?" There is a plan to continue and extend the study in the coming years.
2010-10-06: W3C welcomes Armin Haller as new manager of the W3C Australia Office. Armin is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Information Engineering Laboratory in the ICT Centre of CSIRO , Australia. He received a PhD from the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research interests are in workflow management, Web services and the Semantic Web.
Laurent Lefort who acted as interim Office manager will continue with the Office as deputy manager. W3C welcomes Armin and thanks Laurent for his work as interim manager and for staying with the Office.
2010-10-06: The W3C Australia Office organizes a track named W3C South on the upcoming Web Directions South 2010 conference. W3C South will be held on Oct 14-15 in Sydney. Topics will be Web development, Widgets, HTML 5, accessibility, RDFa, and Linked Open Government data. See program for information on details and speakers.
On October 12 there will be a Semantic Web Meetup organized by the W3C Australia Office. Gordon Grace will be talking about government data online. It will be a sneak-preview to his talk at the W3C South track.
2010-11-20: Update: Both events went very well. On the Canberra Semantic Web Meetup just two days before the Web Directions South Conference, Gordon Grace gave a talk about "More than 'raw': foundations of linked government data online" which was a dry run of his talk at our W3C South track at Web Directions. We had mainly government folk participating at the meetup. W3C south Track at Web Directions South attracted significant numbers (up to 120) of participants and the comments on Twitter and in personal talks suggest that it was a highly successful program. The talks of the speakers are online at. A short wrap up of the Web Directions South conference is also available.
2010-10-05: For the second time W3C Brasil Office organizes the W3C Web.br 2010 Conference. The conference takes place in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in October, 5 and 6. Talks on the impact of the web on business, on government, and on community are scheduled for the first day of the Conference. On the second day, the W3C Brazil Office will launch the English version of the “Dimensions and Characteristics of the Brazilian Web: a study of the gov.br”, the first outcomes of Web Census Project. Keynotes will be by Paul Cotton, co-chair of W3C HTML Working Group and Microsoft Canada representative on "The future of the web and HTML 5", Noshir Contractor, a member of The Web Science Trust and director of research group in Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) at Northwestern University, USA, will speak about "Web Science and the study of social networks", Sergio Amadeu, associate professor at the Federal University of ABC will address "The Future of Internet and the communication ecosystem". Demi Getschko, NIC.br's CEO, will speak on "The Future of Internet in Brazil and in the world" and the closing session will bring computing designer Fernanda Viégas, one of the leaders of Google's Big Picture project. The W3C Web Conference seeks to offer to the audience an annual forum for discussion and debate on the evolution of the Web, the standardization of its technology and its impact on society and culture. More information on the agenda can be found at the conference Web site.
2010-10-01: W3C announces that the W3C UK and Ireland Office has a new home. STFC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) that hosted the eldest W3C Office since 1997 hands over to Nominet. W3C would like to thank STFC and the Office Manager Michael Wilson for all the years of their great support. Nominet runs the Internet registry for .uk domain names. This is one of the world’s largest Internet registries with over eight million domain names.
W3C welcomes Phil Kingsland, Director of Marketing and Communications at Nominet, who will be the new Office manager. Phil joined Nominet in March 2006. He has over 15 years' experience in marketing and sales for high technology companies. Prior to joining Nominet, Phil spent 7 years with a management and technology consultancy where he was Head of Marketing, working with a range of blue chip clients. Prior to this role, he spent time leading the sales and marketing of a London-based 3D scanner company. Phil has a joint Masters in Mechanical Engineering and Management from Birmingham University.
2010-09-17: The W3C Germany and Austria Office held its W3Cday 2010 at the Xinnovations event on Sept. 15th 2010 in Berlin. The Office had managed to engaged some dedicated speakers on some hot subjects. Jens Grochtdreis from Webkrauts gave the view of a Webdeveloper on W3C work. In his talk "Knockin' on heaven's door - Die Praxis zu Besuch beim W3C" he emphasized that he loves open standards from W3C - but he would appreciate them to be published more timely. He thinks that HTML5 and CSS3 are urgently needed. Unfortunately the talk of Patrick Lauke from Opera on HTML5 had to be cancelled because the speaker had fallen ill. Benjamin Adrian from DFKI and the W3C RDFa WG introduced the audience to new features of RDFa followed by Klaus Birkenbihl, W3C Offices coordinator, who gave an overview on how RDFa is used today by big players like Facebook, Google and Yahoo.
Two talks about Semantic Web use for Libraries were presented by Günther Neher from FH Potsdam and Alexander Haffner from the German national library. Christian Lieske from SAP introduced people to the W3C Internationalization Tag Set(ITS) and its purpose. Philipp Slusallek from DFKI introduced XML3D a 3D graphics language that similar as SVG can easily be integrated with HTML5 and CSS3. Martin Kurze from Telekom's T-Lab finally gave his view on HTML5 and mobile Web. 30 participants of the W3Cday engaged in lively discussions led by Felix Sasaki, manager of the W3C Germany and Austria Office.
2010-09-02: W3help.org, the Website of China Web Standards Promotion Community was officially launched on Google DevFest event, Sep 2nd 2010 in Beijing. Prof. Dianfu Ma, Dean of School of computer Science and engineering, gave an opening speech to share his thoughts on the future of web and web standards on behalf of W3C China Office. He said: "I'm happy to wish the community success and I expect, that with all the effort and support we can build a better Web in China, based on open standards." The China Web Standards Promotion Community, formerly known as W3C China Community, is a joint effort of the industry, standards bodies, research institutes, volunteer communities or other organizations bodies who care about web standards in China and the W3C China Office. W3help.org focuses on the promotion and application of web standards by way of providing standards related technical reports, cross-browser development and compatibility resources, Chinese translations, online courses and local news.
2010-09-01: On August 5th and 6th the W3C India Office held a Workshop on Internationalization of e-Governance Applications. The objective and focus of the workshop was to create awareness and provide training. The audience were developers and users of e-Governance applications and all associated stake holders interested in using W3C web standards especially in the perspective of internationalization. The workshop also aimed at capturing the requirements for Indian languages implementation of e-Governance solutions. It also covered hands-on examples and training to develop e-Governance solutions in Indian languages using W3C standards.
Around 100 participants participated in the workshop. There were around 55 senior officials from NIC (National Informatics Centre) from various State Governments. The rest of the participants came from major industries like Microsoft, IBM, HP, Yahoo, Accenture, TCS, Opera and Samsung who are involved in the development of multilingual e-governance solutions. Most of the participants appreciated the contents covered and quality of the workshop and asked for similar workshops to be held at regular intervals to promote wide proliferation of W3C standards. During the Workshop Internationalization requirements, Evolution and Importance of W3C Standards and guidelines, Semantic Markup and Unobtrusive JavaScript, Browser Testing, Unicode&CLDR, Mobile Web Development Best Practices, X-forms, HTML5, CSS3, SVG, W3C Validators topics were covered. The Workshop was supported by Opera Software.
2010-08-31: W3C China Office cooperated with Tsinghua University to host "the 4th Chinese Semantic Web Symposium, CSWS 2010"from August 19th to 21st 2010 in Beijing. To maintain the tradition of the CSWS series, the 2010 Symposium provided effective opportunities for the researchers of Semantic Web technology and related areas, especially young scholars, to communicate and do some academic exchanges.
The event was made up of tutorials and main symposiums. About 100 attendees gathered on this occasion and enjoyed the topics of Semantics and Future Web, Ontology and Reasoning, Semantic Web Mining, and Semantic Web Service and Ontology Mapping, etc. More speakers from the industry showed up this year. This indicates a broadening interest in applications of semantic web technology.
2010-08-13: The W3C Korea Office held a Korean Member Workshop in Seoul on 21 July 2010. Participants were from the Korean membership as well as from the regional W3C host in Keio University, Tokyo. It was an opportunity to have a face to face membership gathering, and also to share interests and discuss plans for Web standardization activities among the members. The program started with talks on trends of new Web technologies including HTML5 and Augmented Reality on the web. Michael Smith and Kazuyuki Ashimura from W3C team, Keio, presented new features of HTML5 and HTML5 IG activities in Japan. Augmented Reality on the web and some issues to be resolved by standardization were introduced by W3C Korea Office.
The new W3C member, LG Electronics, who joined W3C membership in July 2010, shared their interests and future plans for W3C activities. There was also a session to introduce roles of AC Reps. presented by W3C Korea Office. W3C Korea Office also talked about its future plans and asked for members’ input and suggestions for its efficient operation.
The detailed discussion throughout the workshop can be found from the Korea Office website.
2010-08-12: On June 29 the First Amsterdamse Semantic Meetup took place in the ‘Tuinzaal’ of the Brakke Grond in the center of Amsterdam. The focus of the Meetup was on bridging academic research to business applications. The meetup were joined by 27 participants. Contributions were by 5 speakers: Sam Coppens, Multimedia Lab University Ghent, 'Deep Archiving...a Provenance Story'; Bastiaan Deblieck, TenForce, 'Using SKOS and Semantic Technologies to support smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe' (pitch of the SemTech2010 talk); Lieve Janssen, Explore+ 'Summer of Code - Bridging the gap between academy and industry'; Balthasar Schopman, VU Amsterdam - Computer Science - Web & Media, 'Serendipitous search on the Web of Data' and Orri Erling from OpenLink Software. The event was supported by the W3C Benelux Office.
2010-07-17: Targeted at Web developers that want to promote and use advanced Web technologies, W3C China Office and WebReBuild.org had invited to the symposion "W3C day - WebRebuild 2010". More than 250 participants enjoyed a day filled with various topics related to Website development. The symposion was well organized and offered the audience many ways of participation and some entertainment. Participants could send their comments on the talks diretly to a second screen using a micro blogging service, provided by one of the biggest local online protal providers. A lottery amongst the microbloggers encouraged comments and offered entertainment.
The programm started with a talk by W3C Offices Coordinator Klaus Birkenbihl about "Data on the Web". It showed how Web developers can use RDFa to open the data withing their Web pages and gave examples how this data is used by Social Networks and Search Engines. The event covered topics related to good Web design, Web development in groups, and HTML5 and CSS3. Speakers were Jiang Dingyu (D-Link Taiwan), Cheah ZiBin from (Opera), Junhao Fan (Tencent), Zhang Ke-Jun (DouBan) anf JingBiao Liang (Tencent).
Anqi (Angel) Li representing the W3C China Office said: "The W3C China Office is happy to have the support of WebReBuild and the W3C China Community to promote advanced Web technologies and standards within China. This helps a lot to free the Chinese Web from being locked-in by outdated browsers."
2010-06-18: W3C Office Senegal announces a Bootcamp to celebrate the first anniversary of the Office. Semantic Web Technologies and Wolof on the Web are the main topics. The event is sponsored by the Population Council. The event takes place on Saturday June 19th in the Abdul Aziz Amphitheatre WANE of the Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP) Université Cheikh Anta DIOP (UCAD) de Dakar University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) of Dakar.
2010-05-12: During April 6-9 2010, Saragossa (Zaragoza) (Spain) hosted TECNIMAP 2010, the 11th Conference on Information Technology for the Modernization of Public Administration. The event attracted 6,200 attendees from Spain and the EU Member States, around three hundred participating businesses and more than a hundred members of the media to give life to the Panels, Workshops and a large exhibition area served as a platform for discussing topics of common interest regarding information technologies and electronic administration, as well as the presentation and practical demonstration of related services, equipment and cutting-edge systems in this area.
Taking the opportunity to interact with the organizations involved in this congress, the W3C Spain Office, and CTIC-CT, in collaboration with Tecnimap, organized the 'Día W3C en la Administración Pública' (the W3C Day in the Public Administration), a conference framed within TECNIMAP.
The W3C Day in the Public Administration was held in April 8. This W3C event was focused on topics related to eGovernment using Web standards and attracted more than 200 people.
2010-05-12: On February 3 the W3C Israel Office had its first developers forums meetup . The meetup topic was Semantic Web Technologies. An introduction to the semantic web was given by Eyal Sela of the Israeli W3C office. Then, udi Udi bouman Bouman of Tikal Knowledge presented a live coding session where he had displayed how to develop a semantic data consuming application. Lastly, Lisa Seeman, a W3C invited expert, gave a talk about RDF in use in ARIA - How to use RDF ontologies for better Web interoperability adaptability and accessibility. Some 60 participants took part in the event. Some of the meetup lectures and presentations are available.
Two meetups were held in April. The second meetup in of the W3C Israel Office developers forum with 60 participants presented Mobile Web Application Best Practices. Some of the presentation handouts are available. The third meetup of the Israeli W3C developers forum about CSS Based Web Design had 72 participants. Some of the presentation handouts (2 in English) are available.
2010-05-07: With the presence of the Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Shri Sachin Pilot and W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe the new W3C India Office was launched yesterday. The launch ceremony and the subsequent conference focused mostly on the use of Web and Web technology to promote India's development. Key technologies in this context are internationalization, mobile Web, voice Web and WAI. W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe outlined the future of the Web and stressed the importance of having Indian organizations on board. More than 500 participants visited the very successful event. Beside Jeff Jaffe W3C team was represented by Phil Archer, Klaus Birkenbihl and Richard Ishida at the event.
2010-08-02: Update: A conference report is available now.
2010-03-25: Fourteen W3C Offices met face to face for two days at MIT in Cambridge to discuss topics of regional W3C work and exchange on recent projects and experiences. Especially the cooperation with regional communities, the impact of social networks on Offices work and new approaches to do W3C outreach were on the agenda.
Participants of the meeting enjoyed the opportunity to meet with team members, the new W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe, to have lunch with the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) and W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee.
2010-01-29: Already in December last year the W3C Benelux Office organized together with the Foundation Accessibility and ISOC.nl a seminar on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. The event took place in the Royal Library The Hague. Michiel Leenaars (Director ISOC.nl and member of the board of Accessibility) chaired the event. Speakers were Eric Velleman (Foundation Accessibility), Paul Timmers (Head of Unit for ICT for Inclusion in the European Commission), Imke Arts - Vrijling (Ministery BZK), Raph de Rooij (ICTU), Robert Jan Verkade (EEND) and Shadi Abou Zahra (W3C). 73 people attended the seminar. More than half of them were from the government.
2010-01-29: On January 14th the W3C Benelux Office and many local internet and ICT-related organizations jointly organized a new years event in Amsterdam to celebrate the start of the new year. The event took place at NEMO (a Science Museum), Oosterdok 2 in Amsterdam. After a buffet at 18:00 the event started at 19:00 accompanied by a lot of parallel talks and activities. While the main space was reserved for drinks and conversation only there were a lot of interesting 'lightning talks' in the lecture hall. A highlight was the "Chairman's debate" with Olaf Kolkman (NLnet Labs), Erik Huizer (IPv6 Forum), Jan Willem Broekema (ISOC), Peter-Paul Koch (Fronteers), Cees de Laat (Gridforum), Rob Blokzijl (RIPE) and Bert Bakker (OpenDoc Society).
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