The National Institute of Standards and Technology
Information Technology Laboratory Presents
Strategic and Technical Directions from the Visionary Leaders
of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Jean-Francois Abramatic, Chairman, W3C
and
Tim Berners-Lee, Director, W3C and Inventor of the Web
Monday, June 30, 1:30 p.m.
Green Auditorium
The National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Jean-Francois Abramatic, Chairman, W3C:
To lead the evolution of the Web while keeping its interoperability, the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) gathers more than 170 organizations
around the world. Hosted by MIT-LCS in the Americas, INRIA in Europe, and
Keio University in Asia, W3C has already made available recommendations
and sample code in the area of protocols (HTTP 1.1), languages (HTML 3.2
& CSS) and information labeling (PICS). Exposed to the strong market
requirements reported by its industrial members, W3C has also to take
into account architectural issues (scalability and adaptability) as well
as societal impacts (accessibility, internationalization). Cooperation
with government organizations might help in that regard as the recent
launch of the Web Accessibility Initiative has shown. The presentation
will review the achievements of the consortium and will address the
strategic issues it is facing.
Tim Berners-Lee, Director, W3C and Inventor of the World Wide Web:
The World Wide Web Consortium divides its activities into three domains:
Architecture, User Interface, and Technology and Society. The first deals
with all that is "under the hood" for the user, including HTTP 1.1 and
its successors, PEP, URLs, and the relationships with distributed object
oriented systems. The User Interface domain includes HTML, style sheets
(CSS), graphics formats, and the problems of Internationalization. The
Technology and Society domain includes security, payment, and aspects
such as Parental control (PICS), Privacy (P3), intellectual property
rights (WTS).
In all the developments across these diverse areas, certain common
requirements emerge. Among these are the needs for a computer
understandable web, recursively involving trust and knowledge management.
The need for extensible language design is driven both by the reality of
dynamic extension in real time by mobile code, and also long term
considerations of evolvability of the huge field at a rapid pace by using
human research and development resources in a scalable manner.
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Jean-Francois Abramatic
Born in 1949, Jean-Francois Abramatic received his Master's Degree from
Ecole des Mines in Nancy (1971), his PhD from University of Paris VI
(1980) in France. His career evolved from research to industry. His
areas of interest cover signal and image processing, graphics and
networking, and more recently, the Web.
>From 1992 to 1996, Jean-Francois Abramatic has been Director of
Development at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et
Automatique (INRIA) in France. He was responsible for setting up
partnerships between research and industry and contributed to the new
strategic positioning of the institute.
The most significant achievement was the participation of INRIA in the
International World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is hosted by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Laboratory of Computer Science
(MIT-LCS), INRIA and Keio University and gathers more than 170
organizations world wide.
Since September 1, 1996, Jean-Francois Abramatic is Chairman of the W3C
and Associate Director of MIT-LCS.
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Tim Berners-Lee
A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim is now with the Laboratory
for Computer Science (LCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT). He directs the W3 Consortium, an open forum of companies and
organizations with the mission to realize the full potential of the Web.
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.
Before coming to CERN, Tim was a founding director of Image Computer
Systems, and before that a principal engineer with Plessey
Telecommunications, in Poole, England.
Tim is married to Nancy Carlson. They have two children, born 1991 and
1994.
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Directions to NIST:
The headquarters site of the National Institute of Standards & Technology
is located near Gaithersburg, Maryland, just off Interstate Route 270,
about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the center of Washington, D.C.
>From Washington (northbound on Rt. 270), visitors to NIST should enter
the Collector/Distributor lanes at Exit 9 and take Exit 10, Rt. 117 West.
Turn left at the first traffic light and proceed through the main gate
(Gate A).
If coming southbound on Rt. 270, take Exit 11B, Rt. 124 East (Quince
Orchard Rd.).
Visitors should go to the receptionist in the main lobby of the
Administration Building and follow signs to the Green Auditorium.
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