Introduction - Tuesday 13 Nov. - Wednesday 14 Nov. - Press Corner
W3C's Mobile Web Initiative is a Premier Association Sponsor of Mobile Internet World to be held at the Hynes Convention Center, 13-15 November 2007, in Boston, MA, USA.
Founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, W3C's goals include providing the technical framework to allow any user with any device the freedom and power to use the Web anywhere and at any time. W3C's Mobile Web Initiative is a key component of W3C's "One Web" vision.
The W3C-MWI organized pre-conference seminar runs from 13:30 to 17:00.
Chair: Matt Womer -- W3C Mobile Web Initiative Lead, Americas
Matt Womer
joined W3C in April 2007 as Mobile Web Initiative Lead for Americas. Matt was
previously heavily involved in Mobile Web standards at W3C as a France
Telecom/Orange's representative working on multi-modal and mobile Web
applications. He also participated in the Mobile Web Initiative Device
Description Group, where he co-edited and wrote two documents. Starting in
1994 as a co-founder of early Web startup One World Interactive, Matt has
helped bring Fortune 500 companies to the World Wide Web.
The mobile Web goes where the users go. Users demand Web access when and where they need it, using their mobile devices.W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative brings it to them.
Steve
Bratt serves as W3C's CEO. He has primary responsibility for
worldwide operations and outreach, including overall management of Member
relations, the W3C Process, the Team, strategic planning, budget, legal
matters, external liaisons and major events. Prior to joining the W3C in
January 2002, Steve held leadership and research positions within industry
and government, and served on scientific and arms control delegations. In
1997, he was named Coordinator of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
International Data Centre in Vienna, Austria. Steve received his Ph.D. from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Mobile Web Initiative has produced Mobile Web Best Practices and mobileOK Basic recommendations, but how do they apply to your mobile Web site? Learn more about mobileOK Basic and how to automatically find ways to improve your site with new free tools implementing mobileOK Basic tests.
Sean Owen is a senior
software engineer in Google's New York office, focused on mobile web-specific
search since its inception in late 2004. He has helped lead development of
mobile web search and Google's search integrations with major operators like
Vodafone, KDDI and China Mobile. Sean represents Google in the W3C's Mobile
Web Initiative, serving as editor of the mobileOK Basic specification.
"Will the Web work on my device?" is an increasingly challenging question. Given the growing diversity of Web clients, from mobile devices to billboards, it's apparent that Web content and services must adapt to new environments. Real-time access to device descriptions will enable future adaptive Web servers to meet the challenge. The W3C's Device Description Working Group (DDWG) chair explains.
RotanHanrahan is the Chief Innovations Architect for
MobileAware. A part of the company since its foundation, he is responsible
for strategic research and technical standards. He is a long-term member of
the W3C Advisory Committee, is the Chair of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative
(MWI) Device Description Working Group (DDWG), is a member of the Ubiquitous
Web Applications Working Group (UWAWG) and of other technology initiatives
such as JCP, Apache and the OpenAjax Alliance. Rotan is a vocal champion for
technology standards and consensus. Prior to MobileAware, Rotan was a senior
consultant for Telenor R&D. Before moving to industry, he was a Senior
Academic at the Institute of Technology, Tallaght, and was also served
several years as the Technical Administrator of the National Institute
Network, now known as ITNet. He is the holder of a PhD in Computer
Science.
Ensuring consistency of user experiences across a wide range of diverse devices and networks is a critical challenge for integrated operators such as France Telecom Group. As the web becomes THE service development and delivery platform, browsers become universal application containers as well as windows into integrated service offerings. Core web technology standards and content authoring/adaptation practices are keys to preventing fragmentation of the development “ecosystem”. These standards also aim to improve accessibility and usability of the web for users of increasingly diverse terminal devices. This talk focuses on just a few examples that illustrate the issues we face as the Web becomes the window to mobile content.
Ed Mitukiewicz, Principal
Research Scientist, Orange Labs Boston, has over 25 years of consulting,
software and telecommunications industry experience. His current interests
revolve around web technologies and platforms that enable the creation and
use of context-aware data services accessible from a wide range of terminal
devices. Ed represents France Telecom Group in the W3C Mobile Web Initiative
(MWI), he is a member of the MWI Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, and
he is co-chair of the MWI Steering Council. Prior to joining France Telecom,
Ed was a Principal in the Arthur D. Little (ADL) Communications, Information
and Electronics global consulting practice where he assisted ADL clients in
the Americas, Europe, and Asia with a variety of state-of-the-art-technology
projects.
As enthusiastic participants in the MWI, dotMobi has aligned many of its activities with the group's work. Here, James discusses some of these major projects, including the .mobi compliance rules, the ready.mobi test tool, the mobileOK reference implementation - and dotMobi's recently announced device descriptions repository.
James
Pearce is Vice President of Technology at dotMobi, where he is
responsible for domain name technologies, content tools, the company's
developer community and applicable open standards. He brings more than 10
years of experience in the mobile technology sector to the dotMobi team. In
addition to his work on ensuring the quality of content, Pearce is a mobile
standards expert and has worked with a number of standards bodies, including
the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, which aims to bring a better
mobile Internet experience to consumers.
Opera ships browsers to a huge range of devices, from very basic mobile phones through game consoles, set-top boxes and customised systems, to common desktop or laptop computers. This talk will explain how the work of the Mobile Web Initiative helps to ensure that the Web can provide a single platform that is available across such a diversity of user experience, and how it helps to simplify development and make it easier to deliver applications.
Charles McCathieNevile is Opera's
Chief Standards Officer, managing Opera's involvement in a wide range of
standardisation efforts. Within W3C he is active in several different areas
including mobile web, HTML and accessibility, and is chair of the WebAPI
Working Group. Before working for Opera Software in Norway he worked as part
of W3C staff for a little over 6 years. He holds a degree in medieval history
from the University of Melbourne, and when he is not thinking about better
and more useful standards he likes cooking.
This presentation will include a summary of relevant standards that help provide a basis for a rich Web-based experience on handheld devices as well as identify gaps and issues with some of these standards.
Art Barstow has been a Senior
Architect at Nokia since 1998. His main interest is open standards that
facilitate a compelling user experience on handheld devices, in particular
standards for Web browsing, Mobile Applications and Services, Widgets and
Ajax. Barstow is the Chair of the W3C's Web Application Formats Working Group
which is creating a standard for Widget packaging. He has over twenty years
of experience in the computer industry including active contributions to the
Open Source community via the X Windows Consortium, Open Software Foundation
and the W3C.
The talk will be about the future of the Web on the Mobile platform. The Web is evolving into an application medium, one of rich, immersive environments. Most people would agree that the state of the Web on the mobile phone is far from this point, but it is catching up fast. Web applications that are suited for the needs of mobile devices and mobile users, based on existing Web standards, will play an important role in how the Web ecosystem evolves to encompass the mobile platform. This talk will examine some of the existing and newly minted technologies that are bringing this vision to life.
Daniel K. Appelquist
is an American expatriate, living in London, where he works as a senior
technology strategist for Vodafone Group. He works on Web and Internet
projects and industry activities and has helped to create the W3C Mobile Web
Initiative, where he chairs the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group. He
is also the founder of Mobile Monday London, and has spoken at numerous
conferences and events on the mobile Web, including Web 2.0 Summit, South by
Southwest Interactive and the Future of Web Applications.
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director and inventor of the Web, will give the opening keynote on Wednesday 14 November.
One area of growth that approaches that of the Web is in the mobile space... so it follows that the convergence of these technologies can yield tremendous opportunities for people around the world. Tim's talk will focus on aspects of the Web that have led to its extraordinary expansion, and how the critical feature of open technologies can lead mobile growth to new heights and potential. He posits that a new approach, using open standards, can take Mobile from a series of walled gardens to a wildly fertile environment for businesses, people, and cultures to connect. The results of such convergence may lead to a truly ubiquitous communication and information space, with access for anyone, anywhere, using any device.
Tim Berners-Lee has served as
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since its inception. A
graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim is a Senior Research Scientist at
the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
(CSAIL). With a background of system design in real-time communications and
text processing software development, in 1989 he invented the World Wide Web,
an Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing. While
working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, he wrote the first
Web client (browser-editor), first Web server, and first version of Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML) in 1990.
Press Contacts:
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan, and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/