How we came to the Web, our hopes, fears, etc.

<inserted> scribenick: koalie

Rong_Chen: 1987: testbed for the Web
... then @@
... now I represent my perception of the new web
... WeChat is like the Web in China
... drawback is that it's controled by one
... we're proposing a decentralized WeChat
... from WWW to the new Web

Yoshiro_Yoneya: 30 years ago in Japan, no internet
... when the Web appeared, several services like ftp, gopher
... history of service, platforms
... I have a long experience in internet
... changes of the internet
... how will the changes to the internet affect services
... my hope for the future: communication with large distance
... e.g. between astronauts, to the moon, mars

Karl_Dubost: Hi, I'm Karl, I'm a webaholic
... I started using the internet before the Web
... why?
... I was using usenet
... I saw Tim's message announcing the Web
... I started to compile the server at Montreal University
... I put a link to page B on Page A and the other way around... and... MAGIC!
... I saw the potential right away
... I bored my friends to death
... today?
... I'm still amazed
... 30 years after, I find it still mind-blowing
... for those who don't know me: I worked 10 yaers at W3C, then Opera, than a web agency, now Mozilla
... my fear?
... hyper-centralization of services, all the things that are needed to put things online
... threats to individuals
... it enables searching, control, mass surveillance
... my hope?
... finding solutions in the protocols, the formats
... that allow something more distributed

Thomas_Wisniewski: I'm with Mozilla
... I've started very young when I started to "be on the Web"
... I was into old computer
... in Ontario Canada, access to internet was a challenge
... as soon as the internet was available I read everything I could on it
... then I got education and a job
... I returned quickly to it
... became a web developer
... it blew my mind to return to it
... how the web was forming
... I started to feel empowered
... I joined Mozilla to follow my conscience
... this has inspired me to do better
... make the Web a safer place for people
... I want to be part of the wave that makes that renaissance happen

Helen_Garneau: I'm with the Sovrin Foundation
... we're a non-profit
... deentralized network for the exchange of VCs
... I am here for the DID WG
... I was a recipient of one of the Diversity Fund
... my background is journalism
... I covered capitol hill for a while
... facilititad the coverage by all of the journalist
... coming here? that's very similar
... then I worked in children's books with the privacy and security angle
... my husband works in military intelligence

[people laugh at the contrast]

Helen_Garneau: I really enjoy talking about decentralization, priv-sec
... I want my children to have safer interactiosn on the internet

Wendy_Reid: Kobo
... fellow Ontario kid
... I'm younger than the Web

[Tanya too!]

Wendy: my early days on the Internet were games and messenger
... my intro to W3C was through neopets
... looking at "how do I?" pages

Ralph: wait! are you younger than CSS?

Wendy: not that young :)
... I searched html tags
... ended up on the html specs
... I created my own web page
... friends and I would spend hours on table layouts
... my journey with EPUB brought me back right at the W3C
... I told my childhood best friend I was going to TPAC --she's the only person who understands

[laugh]

Wendy: there are amazing things coming out of the Web
... I would love the Web to return to a place that was safe, not controlled by big corp run by a man who looks a bit like an alien

Rachel_Comerford: McMillan Learning
... I had no interest in the Web as a kid
... but was raised by someone who was
... my Dad
... he forced the Web on me at every turn
... I was given logo to play with
... and basic and c++
... because of that I rebelled and went into creative writing
... I can't avoid the Web under any circumstances apparently
... so I went into Digital Publishing
... in standardization
... when IDPF merged with W3C, MAcMillan decidd that I would become the representative for them at the W3C
... I'm making my father very happy and proud

[laughs]

Tantek_Celik: back when I was working at Microsoft in 1998,
... I was told to implement CSS
... I asked a lot of questions
... Chris Wilson, whom as was asking all my questions, told me to just go ask the working group in e-mail
... the group after a while said "you should join our meeting. It's in paris"
... and this is where I met Bert and started to be a member of the group
... we have a high bar of where things were
... since then, I'm in a community I love
... doing work in the open
... contribute to other people's work
... fast-forward 2000s
... I worked at a startup indexing blogs at Technorati
... social media happen
... a bunch of us wanted something decentralized
... 2010
... a bunch of us started IndieWeb
... to reclaim our identities, and content on the Web --with a modern approach
... fast-forward a few more year: work at Mozilla
... who paid me to work on the things I liked
... I was asked to chair the social web working group
... and people heard my ideas and I was invited to an AB meeting
... was elected and spent 5 years on the W3C AB
... despite all the positive impact of the Web I want to ground it in reality
... in the last few years, there's been very bad impact
... having worked on some of the fundamental technologies, I feel we could have done a better job
... the web has brought us societal ills
... people are impacted even those not involved in moving the web forward
... I'd like to recognise this and focus on how can we address the ills especially those that disproportionately impact marginalized communities and individuals

Ralph_Swick: I'm Ralph
... I have been around longer than the Web
... the machine I kept running still had Netscape Navigator
... my goals were tools for humans
... shared with our contemporaries
... near time, but also that could persist for those who come after us
... so they understand
... "cool URIs don't change" for me is meaningful
... that's how I got here
... why I stay here?
... how to fix those problems

Bartek_Nowierski: google Tokyo
... recently joined
... trying to find my place here, and in the universe
... I was introduced to the Web by pure accident

Bartek_Nowierski: I work on the chrome architecture
... a big chunk of my team was going to TPAC so I decided to tag along
... I didn't do a lot of web dev myself except in my school days
... now I'm part of the Chrome team
... interesting to see where this is going
... social media are very interesting place

Bert_Bos: I've also been working on the Internet before the Web
... ftp, usenet, e-mail
... I didn't like the Web at first
... Gopher I liked
... but not long
... I saw the possibilities to create something
... very useful for researchers at university
... documentation, ways to combine information of different types from different sources,
... URLs, mimetypes
... I created a web browser
... I installed the first web server of my university, too
... I want my information and my creation to be useful to others
... as others here mentioned, people something do things unexpected
... with things we create
... in my case, no bad example

Amy_van_der_Hiel: I don't have a tech background
... mine is art history
... used the Web to do research
... I came at the W3C to become PA to Tim Berners-Lee
... I stay because of what we do and what the Web does
... I didn't intend to stay that long
... I can say simply how the web is misused to my friends
... I'm happy and grateful for all of you doing all you're doing to keep us safe

David_Ezell: I got out of school with a master in performance and musical @@
... I thought I'd do that the rest of my life
... but I found computers
... at a company that believed in web standards
... fueling convenience stores
... this was before 1999 and I was told "XML? don't worry, it's a buzz word"
... then 1999, POS (point of sales) <-> back offices
... XML structured data
... Tim talked at our 10th anniv
... he was our keynote speaker, this was 2007
... let's talk about gas pumps
... all of what they do is described by XML
... Tim gave us this talk on gas pumps
... we were looking for unicorns
... what are today's unicorns?
... answer: web of things
... that can help monitor a store as a unit factory
... answer: DID
... which could help buying a product without engaging with a brand

Tanya_Mandal: I'm also younger than the Web
... heard about it in school
... thought it was the coolest thing ever
... my friends were impressed when I made my first web page
... I wanted to make my career out of it
... and work in education
... I work at Internet Acedemy
... who offered me to become a fellow at the W3C
... within the comm team
... what I'm doing comes under the bucket of UX
... how do we make solutions that empower people, enable them, etc.
... that's why I love doing what I do

Hadley_Beeman: My story was when I was 9yo in Ohio
... at my school
... our computer teacher showed me a modem
... we had a limited access
... what blew my mind was scientific data: the weather forecast
... fast-forward 2010
... I was out of job after a contract finished
... job open at Open Data Institude
... linkedgov
... founded with friends
... Tantek came to our of our meetings
... one question was licensing
... this is when Tantek, whom I continue to blame for it, said "you should join the HTML WG"
... they accepted anyone as Invited Expert at the time
... once I done that and voted in the whatwg / w3c survey
... I started to pay attention
... microformat/rdfa conversation interested me
... I jumped in, and in another one
... one thing leading to another...
... what gets me going is doing stuff that's really important
... the plumbing and architecture for users
... affects all kinds of people
... that's why I'm here
... I love to be part of this community
... we're all sharing that same passion
... It's pretty amazing

<inserted> scribenick: amy

Coralie: i've been at w3c for 20 years. it's my first serious job. my background is secretarial/executive assistant. my diploma was english as foriegn language
... I applied for a job at Inria; it was for W3C, I didn't know the web. I bought a Celine Delon CD that showed the sony URI at the back, and I was not able to find out what this wwww thing was because... there was no google

<koalie> https://www.w3.org/2019/Talks/TPAC/ac-coralie-fundraising/Overview.html#

Coralie: friends of mine mentioned something, and i figured out what it was. fast forward to W3C.

<hadleybeeman> tantek: RRS Agent?

<hadleybeeman> ralph: I wanted this tool so our meetings could persist. we were using IRC, but it was emphemeral

<inserted> scribenick: koalie

Ralph: as I said, I wanted tools to persist our conversations

<tantek> who is RRSAgent?

Ralph: I learned syntax

<YoshiroYoneya> https://www.w3.org/2002/03/RRSAgent

Ralph: invited my tools to where we recorded the conversations
... and my bot, rrsagent records this

David: you were also the voice of Zakim

Ralph: RRS are my initials
... so RRSagent was my agent

<inserted> scribenick: hadleybeeman

coralie: I don't know if I told you, but when RSS became a thing for syndication, I kept calling it RRS.

ralph: everybody new to W3C makes that mistake. I apologise for that!

coralie: I'd like to get in conversation with you so we can use your stories.
... You can write to me at coralie@w3.org.

<tantek> My business card / contact info is https://tantek.com/contact

<tantek> :)

<tantek> :)

<koalie> s/Topic: round the table/Topic: How we came to the Web, our hopes, fears, etc./