Leading the Web to its Full Potential ...

Weaving the Foundation for the Next Generation of the Web

Overview of the World Wide Web Consortium

Dr. Philipp Hoschka, Deputy Director for Europe

World Wide Web Consortium

Introduction to the W3C

July 2004

Early History (1989 - 1996)

1989: WWW invented by Tim Berners-Lee

1994: W3C founded, MIT (Oct)

1994: 1st W3C meeting, Cambridge (Dec)

1995/6: INRIA/ Keio become Hosts

1996/7: 1st Recommendations

• PNG (10/96), PICS (10/96), CSS (12/96), HTML (1/97)

The Evolving Web

__________ Anyone Anywhere Anytime Anyhow Any Device ___________

Engineering the Foundation for the Web of Tomorrow

Developing Web Standards at W3C

• Building the Web's foundation requires a clear, effective Process

• Vendor neutrality

• Culture of coordination and consensus

• W3C Recommendations should be royalty-free, open
  • W3C's Patent Policy: Perhaps the most clear and comprehensive in Internet standards industry.

• The "Recommendation Track"
  • No "rubber stamping"
  • Ensuring interoperability and compatibility
    • Engineer dependencies

W3C Family

• ~370 Members , worldwide (mapping history)
  

• Advisory Committee : 1 Representative per Member
  

• Advisory Board, Technical Architecture Group

• Team = vendor neutral, technical staff (~65 at ~ 20 locations)
  • Management Team

• Liaisons with over 40 standards bodies

• 3 Hosts: MIT, Keio, ERCIM

• 14 Offices (locations)

• Accountable to the global Public

Organization of Technical Work

(org chart )

• 4 Domains

• 21 Activities

• 51 Groups
  • 32 Working Groups
  • 7 Coordination Groups
  • 12 Interest Groups

Cross-group and inter-organization coordination, and engineering of dependencies is major requirement and strength of the W3C and its Recommendations

Achievements

• Foundational Web Standards

  (list / SVG)

• New starts on new standards coming ...

• Leadership in the Web Community
  • Accessibility, privacy, internationalization, valid mark-up,
  • Patent policy (and public action, e.g. Eolas, ISO codes, etc.)
  • Recognition
  • Considering now, issues, like Internet governance, outreach to developing countries, etc.

The World Wide Web Consortium

(Prospectus / Flyer: US, A4)

Workshop Participants and W3C

• WG Members (6) : AT&T, Alcatel, France Télécom, Nokia, Oracle, SAP
• W3C Members (4) : Boeing, ISTI-CNR, University of Edinburgh, Vodafone
  • Participate in Multimodal WG !
• Non-Members (10) : Dresden University of Technology, IEEE Informatics and Telematics Institute, Intesi Group, Intuilab, Telecommunications Research Center Vienna, ITC-irst, Thales, Université catholique de Louvain, Vida Software, Zentrum für Graphische Datenverarbeitung
  • Join W3C !

Join W3C !

Conclusion

• Still much to do for the Web to reach its "full potential"

• Industry, government, academia, Team and public work together to lead development of requirements and solutions

• Workshop goals
  • Inform about W3C Multimodal activities
  • Input and interest from new communities
    • Aerospace, automotive, ...
    • EU research