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.
W3C Brazil Web Conference a success
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.
Web.br Census published by CGI.br and NIC.br
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.
W3C Australia Office organizes W3C south and Semantic Web Meetup
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.
Armin Haller appointed new manager of the W3C Australia Office
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.
W3C Brazil Office holds W3C Web.br 2010 Conference
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.
New host for the W3C UK and Ireland Office: Nominet takes over from STFC
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.
W3C Germany and Austria Office holds W3C day at Xinnovations 2010
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.
W3help.org, the website of China Web Standards Promotion Community launched
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.
W3C India Office holds Workshop on Internationalization of e-Governance Applications
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.