The mission of W3C Offices can be summarized as follows: "To promote adoption of W3C recommendations among developers, application builders, and standards setters, and to encourage inclusion of stakeholder organizations in the creation of future recommendations by joining W3C." http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/ 2009-10-26 2009-10-20: Laurent Lefort, interim manager of the W3C Australia Office , chose a creative approach for a preliminary report about the W3C Track at Web Directions South. He made a quick summary using some photos and the twitter posts about the talks. The result is entertaining, humorous and informative. Laurent was inspired by Doug Shepers' talk (details see report). http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Oct20 2009-10-20 2009-10-09: The W3C Spain Office and the Fundación CTIC organize a workshop on WCAG 2.0, which will be held on 21th October 200, in Madrid. This event will be presented by staff of W3C Spain Office and Fundación CTIC. The target audience is composed by Web developers, designers, and managers, with basic skills on web development (HTML, CSS, and Javascript). Learn more about the agenda, venue, and other details in the page of the event. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#oct09 2009-10-09 2009-10-08: On September 15th 2009, the W3C Germany and Austria Office organized the "W3C Tag" (W3C-day) in Berlin, hosted by the Xinnovations. The event welcomed around 30 participants mostly from the region of Berlin, but also from other areas of Germany. Topics like the German translation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, new development in Semantic Web (SKOS, RIF) or HTML5 gathered a wide range of interest. Esp. the relation between the Semantic Web and the Web of humans (HTML5) was a concern of the participants, who are very interested in key technologies like RDFa and their support in HTML5. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#oct08a 2009-10-08 2009-10-08: José Manuel Alonso was manager of the W3C Spain Office before he decided to Join the W3C team as fellow of the Fundación CTIC. After working more than 3 years to establish W3C's eGovernment activity he now returns to CTIC as a researcher. In addition to this Josema will act as senior advisor to the W3C Spain Office. A cordial "welcome back" to someone who wasn't really away. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Oct08 2009-10-08 2009-09-26: The Hypermedia Laboratory at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and the W3C Finland Office will organize a Mindtreck seminar on Social Network Analysis (SNA) which focuses on patterns of relations between and among people, organisations, states and other actors. The main target of analysis is to describe network actor relations as fully as possible and, moreover, find the prominent patterns in such networks. This seminar "Working with Social Networks", on Wednesday 30 September, addresses the topics of SNA methods, tools, and applications in Webised application areas, and outlines the related areas of standardisation. The keynote speaker of the event is Dr. Martha Russell from Stanford University. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Sep27 2009-09-26 2009-09-22: As reported before the W3C Germany and Austria Office was moved from Fraunhofer-IAIS to the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam. The re-opening will be celebrated with a conference "Teaching the Web" on October 15th. What does "my community" need to know about the web? Is knowledge about web architecture as important as XML or Semantic Web technologies, or can we expect that sooner or later all details will be hidden beneath nice user interfaces? The event invites people people who normally do not meet: web technology developers and "users" from a great variety of communities. Felix Sasaki, the manager of the W3C Germany and Austria Office, said: "We aim to consider goals of education about the web, and how to ensure that the web will persist at the most important place - in our minds." http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#sep22 2009-09-22 2009-09-21: After more than 10 years in operation at the Institute of Computer Science (ICS) of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), the W3C Greece Office celebrated its 10th anniversary on Sept. 16th. The W3C Greece Office was among the first five Offices that W3C launched in 1998 with help from the European Community. The event took place in the context of the ENISA-FORTH Summer School, co-organized by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) and FORTH. The goal of the celebration was to strengthen the ties between the W3C Members in Greece, the W3C Office and FORTH, as well as to exchange views on current, crucial matters regarding the World Wide Web. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#sep21 2009-09-21 2009-09-02: The W3C Australia Office in partnership with Web Directions and with support from CSIRO and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) organized a series of talks by Australian and international speakers at Web Direction South Conference 2009, Oct 6-9, Sydney Australia. Laurent Lefort, interim manager of the W3C Australia Office said: "This W3C track is a unique opportunity to catch up with the latest developments in web standards and semantic technologies as it will cover work done by W3C staff, members and invited experts in developing open standards and guidelines for Web languages and protocols and work done in fostering innovative ideas for specifications, guidelines, and applications that are not (or not yet) clear candidates as Web standards." Topics covered are: W3C and Web standards big picture, Semantic Web standards and mainstream web standards, Semantics & Sensors, Opening up Social Networks, the Open Web Education Alliance (OWEA) XG. Details about the W3C track can be found on the Web Direction South Conference 2009 page and in the W3C Australia Office News. A discounted rate is offered to W3C members for the Web Directions South conference. Conference tickets are available at a price of $795 ($200 off) until September 9th, and then $895 ($100 off) until the conference starts. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#sep02 2009-09-02 2009-08-17: "Café with Browser" is a very successful event series etablished by the W3C Brazil Office which is hosted by the Brazilian Network Information Center – NIC.br. The Idea is to provide a forum for free talks with developers, researchers and the browser industry developers teams. The first edition (May 15th) brought Charles McCathieNeville, Opera's standards director. Then (June 19th), Mozilla Firefox was the next to have a sit. Chris Hofmann, Mozilla Foundation's director of engineering and special projects and Marcio Galli, consultant and active in the Mozilla community talked with the participants. “This Office initiative is an opportunity to check how much the browser industry is committed to web standards and to know what they are planning for the future in a short term. On the other hand it is also an opportunity to talk to the browser industry about expectations and needs of the user community”, says Vagner Diniz, W3C Brazil Office manager. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#aug17 2009-08-17 2009-06-05: Amit Parashar who managed the W3C Office Australia left CSIRO by end of May to accept another job offer. Amit joined the Office in July 2007 and soon took over from Ross Ackland as Office manager. Amit played a very active role in connecting the WWW community Australia with W3C. He launched or participated in a lot of tours and events on W3C technologies around the continent. He was also intrumental in launching the W3C Sensor Network Incubator Group. W3C likes to thank him for all his effort and for playing a leading role within the W3C Offices and wishes him every success for the future. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#jun05 2009-06-05 2009-05-26: W3C announces today the launch of the W3C Senegal Office, hosted by the Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP), attached to the UCAD (Université Cheikh Anta Diop), in Dakar, Senegal. The opening ceremony will be held on 27 May 2009. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#may26 2009-05-26 2009-05-16: W3C Morocco Office partners Morocco Internet Society (MISOC) for the 10th Internet Day in Morocco, entitled "Internet Governance: Issues and challenges for Morocco", Thursday 26 May 2009,  Rabat, Morocco. The main topics to be discussed will be around the global governance of the Internet, the digital divide, the ongoing international negotiations on the management of domain names and on Standards, Technical Services and future of the Internet. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#May16 2009-05-16 2009-05-08: As in previous years, during the first half of the year, the W3C Spanish Members are gathered together to discuss about W3C and its standards. The event has been organized by the W3C Spain Office and its host, the Fundación CTIC. This year, the Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council) has taken part in the organization, collaborating with logistics, providing the room and lunches. All the W3C Members with presence in Spain were invited to take part in the event. They were offered to give a talk (or participate in a panel) about use cases, failures, and successes using W3C technologies. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#May09 2009-05-08 2009-05-08: The Israeli Internet Association (ISOC-IL), the host of the W3C Israel Office, has appointed Yesha Sivan as new Office manager. Yesha is member of the board of ISOC-IL and a senior lecturer at the Department of Software Engineering, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. Yesha received his doctorate from Harvard University, and is a research affiliate in Harvard's Program on Information Resources Policy. He is also the founder of Metaverse Labs (MVL) which focuses on linking virtual and real worlds. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#May08 2009-05-08 http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Apr21 2009-04-21 2009-04-17: The W3C Greece Office participated in the WebSci'09: Society On-Line Conference, held from March 18th to March 20th, 2009 in Athens, Greece. The Conference was organized by the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW). http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Apr17 2009-04-17 2009-04-10: After 12 years of successfull work at Fraunhofer (or former GMD) the W3C Germany and Austria Office moves from Sankt Augustin (near Bonn) to Postdam (near Berlin). New local host of the Office will be the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam (FHP). An official hand-over ceremony is planned for September 2009. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Apr10 2009-04-10 2009-04-08: The W3C Greece Office has published a bilingual leaflet on W3C. In Greek and English it outlines the work of W3C and the W3C Greece office. The leaflet is available online in PDF format. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Apr08a 2009-04-08 2009-04-07: W3C Offices held their annual face to face meeting on March 25th at MIT Cambridge MA. Adjacent to the recent W3C Advisory Committee Meeting that took place in March 23/24th W3C Offices discussed about their future role role in W3C. Exchange of plans and ideas, better co-operation between Offices especially in the same region, communication with relevant local communities where part of the agenda. 11 of the 16 W3C Offices participated in the event. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Apr07 2009-04-07 2009-03-12: The Mozilla-project will organize a number of MozCamps in Europe, the kick-off will be in Utrecht on March 6. The MozCamp-meetings are meant to offer ample room for discussions, hands-on demo's and merging minds to come up with and implement activities to preserve the open and participative character of the Internet. Together with other organizations that promote open standards, software and Internet the W3C Belelux Office helps to arrange the event. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Mar12 2009-03-12