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/ 2009-06-05 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. Daniel Dardailler gives a talk on behalf of the Morocco Office entitled "Improving Society through Better Use of Web Standards ", and Najib Tounsi will participate to a panel on the Future of Internet and speak about the role of W3C membership. 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 2009-03-04: W3C announces that the W3C Office India at CDAC is closed. CDAC is helping W3C in finding a new host for an Office in India. W3C would like to thank VN Shukla from CDAC for serving as W3C Office manager since 2006 and for his help in establishing a new W3C India Office. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Mar03 2009-03-04 2009-03-02: After working nearly 5 years for one of the most active W3C Offices Encarna Queseda left CTIC and the W3C Spain Office. Encarna joined the Office in April 2004 as a Trainee. January 2007 she followed José Manuel Alonso as Office manager, after José had joined the W3C Team . W3C has to thank Encarna for a lot of outreach and members support. W3C owes Encarna many well organized and recognized events, a lot of W3C promotional material and a series of excellent ideas. Encarna is starting-up a private company in the area of Internationalisation services. W3C wishes her health and success. W3C welcomes Martín Álvarez as new W3C Spain Office manager. Martín joined the Office in 2005. Martín has a degree in Informatics Engineering and is well known by many talks on W3C technologies he gave on behalf of the W3C Spain Office. He is also creator of the new W3C Spain Office Web site which is the first Office page organized as a Blog. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Mar02 2009-03-02 2009-02-06: Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, founder and director of W3C , visited together with Rosemary Leith, Web Science Research Initiative Executive Director the NIC.br facilities, where the W3C Brasil Office is hosted. Tim was in Brazil as invited keynote speaker at Campus Party event. He was welcomed by the NIC.br directors Demi Getschko and Hartmut Glaser, and by Vagner Diniz, W3C Office Manager. During his three hours visit he also had a free conversation with W3C Brazilian members, Internet Governance Steering Committee members and guests from, universities, and private and public sectors. Tim said we are living exciting time, "technology is changing, environment is changing, what make W3C mission of leading the web to its full potential more exciting". In this context, Tim said he expects to hear from Brazil its specific point of view on how web should meet Brazilian needs. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Feb06 2009-02-06 2009-01-21: About 400 people attended the New Years Event of ISOC.NL that was held Jan 15th in Amsterdam with support from many local and international internet related organisations based in the Netherlands. It was probably the biggest New Year event for the local internet community of the Netherlands ever!. Prominently among the co-organizers is the W3C Belelux Office which maintains a long standing cooperation with ISOC.NL. 4 of the 8 talks during the reception (10 to 15 minutes each) were on W3C subjects given by Ivan Herman, Steven Pemberton, Dick Bulterman and Eric Velleman. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Jan21 2009-01-21 2009-01-20: The Hungarian translation of the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines has been published by the Hungary Office entitled „Web Akadálymentesítési Útmutató 2.0”. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Jan20 2009-01-20 2009-01-01: After he served nearly 6 years as manager of the W3C Greece Office Evangelos Markatos hands over to Irini Fundulaki. Evangelos started July 2001 as Office coordinator and became Office manager in February 2002. W3C would like to thank Evangelos for all his work and dedication. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/News/2009#Jan01 2009-01-01