Welcome to Annette KIK, the new Benelux office manager and thanks to Fons Kuijk for his support to the W3C activities in the last years. Annette Kik, communications adviser at CWI in Amsterdam, joined the W3C Benelux Office in January 2012 as the new manager. She graduated in nuclear physics and has been working in science communications since 1994. From 2000-2007 she worked for the Benelux Office before. At CWI, Annette is also involved in other international organizations, such as ERCIM, as a member of the editorial board.
Changes in W3C Brazil’s Staff
Carlos Cecconi, project analyst of W3C Brazil, will leave the office to work as Technical Advisor at the Executive Secretariat of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), which hosts W3C Brazil Office. All the W3C Brazil Office team thanks Carlinhos Cecconi for his great contribution to the spread of open web platform and his commitment to the growing of the Office. On the other hand, CGI-W3C joint projects will keep Carlinhos connected to the Office.
Two new professionals joins the W3C brazil Office team:
Reinaldo Ferraz, Web development specialist, joined W3C Brazil Office last June. He is graduated in Digital Design and post graduated in Hypermedia Design. With more than 12 years of experience in web development, design and standards, he is in charge of web accessibility and open web plataform projects.
Caroline Burle dos Santos Guimarães, specialist in negotiations, joined W3C Brazil Office last month. She is graduated in International Relations, and is taking her graduate studies in Latin America, at the University of São Paulo. She is responsible for the international projects, such as open data, and government relations.
NEWS- W3C Opens Office in Russia
/ —16 February 2012— As part of increasing inclusion and participation in W3C, W3C announced today the launch of a new Russia Office. The Office is hosted by the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (HSE), founded in 1992. As one of Moscow’s leading Universities, HSE will work with W3C to strengthen ties to both industry and research in Russia as well as HSE’s many international academic and industry partners.
“I am happy to welcome W3C in Russia,” said Victor Klintsov, Deputy Director of Institute of Information Technology at HSE and the head of the new Office. “It is very positive to see growing demand for Russian talent not only to be included in one of the most dynamic industries, but also to shape it. Second, it is quite important for Russian specialists to contribute to the most prominent area of Internet development: the Web.”
To mark the launch, on 16 February 2012 HSE will organize an opening ceremony at Ria Novisti with speakers from Russian ministries, industries, HSE and W3C, including:
Bernard Gidon, EMEA Business Development Leader on “Transforming the Web together”
Victor Klintsov on “W3C in Russia”
Daniel Hladky, W3C Russia Office Deputy Director on “Industry value chain: Impact on Web Technologies”
“Russia is one of the world’s largest economies,” said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO, “and within Russia, the IT sector is one of the fastest growing parts of the economy. HSE plays an important role in connecting W3C to this vibrant market. Today we welcome the dynamic developers and Web firms of Russia to the W3C Community.”
W3C CSS Meetup – Paris, Wednesday 8 February 2012 – from 7:00 pm
La série des meetups W3C continue ! Après le HTML5 meetup en avril 2010, et le SVG meetup en septembre 2010 en septembre 2010, voici un tout nouveau meetup W3C dédié aux feuilles de style CSS.
Le W3C invite la communauté Web (développeurs, designers, etc.) à participer à un meetup dédié à CSS (Cascading StyleSheets), le mercredi 8 février 2012, à partir de 19h00, à La Cantine. De nombreux membres du groupe de travail W3C CSS seront présents, et répondront à toutes vos questions.
Les orateurs déjà confirmés sont :
- Daniel Glazman (Disruptive Innovations): “Présentation générale des travaux du CSS Working Group en 2012”
- Vincent Hardy (Adobe): “CSS Filter effects”
- David Baron (Mozilla): (TBD)
Merci de vous enregistrer sur le site Web de la Cantine!
W3C Day in Spain 2012
The W3C Spanish Office is pleased to announce the W3C Day in Spain, which will be held on January 12, in Granada. This event is organized every year since 2006 in different cities around Spain, with the main objective of gathering together the Spanish W3C Members to discuss about hot topics related to Web technologies. The W3C Day will be opened by Dominique Hazael-Massieux, W3C Mobile Web Initiative Activity Lead, who will give a keynote on HTML5. After his presentation the protagonists are the W3C Member representatives who expose their successes, challenges, and issues using standards.
This year, the community is also invited to take part in the event actively. Spanish researchers, professionals, and individuals will present lightning talks on interesting subjects such as Linked Data, Accessibility, and Open Data. See the agenda with the invited speakers and more information on the website of the event.
W3C Day presentation receives Award
The presentation “Leichte Sprache – Large Scale” (Simple Language – Large Scale) from Christian Lieske, given at the W3C Day event in Berlin on 19 September 2011, received the X-Award. This award is given for presentations at the annual Xinnovations event that foster innovative ideas and solutions. See also the complete list of winners for this year. The topic of simple language on the Web was awarded because it bears the potential to build bridges between communities: accessibility, language technology and Web technology standardization. The group of people who has gathered around this topic is eager to pursue this direction and to help realizing the Web for everybody.
W3C members meeting in Korea
The W3C Korea Office held a Korean Member Workshop in Seoul on 16 November 2011. 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 Media Annotation, Social Federation.
The new W3C member, NIA(National Information Society Agency), who joined W3C membership in October 2011, 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.
W3C HTML5 Day in Korea
The W3C Korea Office hosts the W3C HTML5 Day in Korea on 17 November. In the event, the activities of W3C HTML5 KIG(Korea Interest Group) will be introduced as well as HTML5 & Media, future direction of HTML5 technologies. Registration is required and the number of participants is limited. Please register by 6. November 2011.
Web accessibility takes centre stage
Ensuring the Internet is available to all – whether computers or people – was a central theme of this international conference.
About 800 people gathered in Sydney on October 13-14 for the Web Directions South conference, the premier conference for Web professionals in Australia. For the third year running, the W3C Office Australia hosted the W3C South Track, a two-day thematic track that runs in parallel to the design, business and development tracks and is fully integrated in the two day program of the Web Directions South conference.
This year’s feature topic was accessibility. The W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) have been adopted by the Australian Government and all government websites, including CSIRO’s, must comply by 2012.
The Guidelines are designed to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities beyond vision impairment, as well as older individuals with changing abilities, but following the guidelines tends to make web content more usable for everyone.
Andrew Arch (part of the team who developed the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy to help Australian Governments adopt WCAG 2.0) described ways to simplify the task of improving the accessibility of content and Gian Wild (who spent six years writing the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines) demonstrated useful techniques for achieving compliance with WCAG 2.0.
The W3C South Track also covered development of open standards and guidelines for web languages and protocols. Peter Mika, from Yahoo Research in Barcelona, told of how search engines will soon be able to answer complex questions. Other points of interest included augmented reality, the mobile web and how practical publishing tools are shaping the web experience at the Australian War Memorial.
See slides from the talks http://south11.webdirections.org/.
W3C German-Austrian Office celebrates HTML5-Day 2011
The W3C German-Austrian Office celebrates the HTML5-Day 2011 on 23 November. In a one day tutorial held at the Berlin Theseus Innovation center, we will expand on background and goals of HTML5, technical basics, HTML5 and Web architecture. In addition, many new features will be demonstrated via a variety of examples. Registration is required and the number of participants is limited. Please register by 16. November 2011.