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W3C Australia Office organizes W3C south and Semantic Web Meetup

Posted on October 6, 2010 by

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

Posted on October 6, 2010 by

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

Posted on October 5, 2010 by

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

Posted on October 1, 2010 by

New W3C UK&IRL Office manager Phil Kingsland 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

Posted on September 17, 2010 by

Speakers at W3Cday ltr: Klaus Birkenbihl, Philipp Slusallek, Martin Kurze, Günther Neher, Benjamin Adrian, Felix Sasaki and Christian Lieske. Missing: Jens Grochtdreis and Alexander Haffner. 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

Posted on September 2, 2010 by

Screenshot of W3help.org website

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

Posted on September 1, 2010 by

Participants of the India Office Workshop On August 5^th and 6^th 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.

China Office cooperated with Tsinghua University on the 4th Chinese Semantic Web Symposium, CSWS2010

Posted on August 31, 2010 by

Tsinghua University, host of CSWS2010 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.

W3C Members meeting in Korea

Posted on August 13, 2010 by

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.

Semantic meetup with the W3C Benelux Office

Posted on August 12, 2010 by

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.