For Immediate Release IW3C2's first World Wide Web Conference in Asia to be held in Hong Kong (HONG KONG, 5 March 2001) Around 1,500 web experts from the IT industry, various governments and academia from across the world are expected to join Asia's first World Wide Web Conference to be held between 1 & 5 May 2001 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. It is the tenth such conference since 1994 organised by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2), but it is being held in Asia for the very first time. Conference General Co-Chair, Prof. Vincent Shen of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said, "We are very pleased and honoured to have been entrusted with holding the WWW10 in Hong Kong. We believe that this event will really help to put Hong Kong on the map in this rapidly developing and challenging field." "The previous WWW conferences have been held mainly in the US or Europe, and just once in Australia, we are therefore delighted that this time we are going to have it in Asia. It also serves to underscore Hong Kong's role as a major IT and telecommunications for this region." said Prof. Shen. Mr. Nigel French, board chairman of the WWW10. Ltd., remarked, "We aim to give the conference a regional as well as international flavour. This sharing and meeting with the world's best minds from mainland China, Japan, Taiwan, India, and other Asian countries and regions, as well as North America, Europe and Australia will undoubtedly open up new possibilities and opportunities to accelerate Hong Kong's already rapid deployment of IT in business and industry. We hope it will also provide fresh impetus to the use of IT in human resources development." Kicking off with a full day of tutorials and workshops, the conference will then be conducted through a variety of presentation methods including refereed papers, posters, panels, a W3C track and five specialised tracks focusing in Culture, E-commerce on the Web, Web and Education, Web Internationalisation, the Web & Society and a Vendors Forum. The conference will be wrapped up by a Developers' Day. There will be around 100 local and over 250 overseas presenters delivering their research papers on the advancement in Web technology. At least 170 articles and papers will be presented during the conference. Topics will include E-Commerce, Internationalisation, Web & Education, Caching, Virtual Visitors, Web Crawling and XML Foundations. Seven world-renowned web-experts will be the conference's keynote speakers, they are Mr. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium; Mr. John S Chen, Chairman, CEO & President of Sybase Inc.; Mr. Chris Jones, Vice President of Microsoft Corporation; Mr. Keiji Tachikawa, President and CEO of NTT DoCoMo Inc.; Mr. N.R. Naryana Murthy, Chairman and CEO of the Infosys Technologies Limited, Dr. Robert. S. Sutor, Director of e-Business Standards Strategy of IBM Corporation and Ms. Susan J Blackmore, Reader in Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Program Co-Chair, Dr. Michael Lyu, said, " The conference program is designed to expose participants to the most advanced web developments and offer brainstorming opportunities for 'web-makers' to design more creative use of the Web." He added, "We expect a large turnout for this event, so please register early, and an early-bird discount will be given to those who registered on or before 31 March 2001 23:59 GMT-10. Registration should be done online at http://www10.org.hk." WWW10 is jointly presented by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Productivity Council, Hong Kong Computer Society, The Hong Kong IT Federation, and The Hong Kong Web Symposium Consortium; and is co-sponsored by Microsoft Corporation, IBM Corporation, Sybase Inc., PSINet, The Croucher Foundation, Verity, Sino Software Research Institute and The Hong Kong Institute of Education. - End - Issued By: WWW10 Limited Media Enquiry: Vis Communications Consultancy Limited Mr. Felix Poon Tel: 2804-2388 / 9464-7843 (felix@viscomm.org) Miss. Merida Cheung Tel: 2804-2386 / 9752-8292 (merida@viscomm.org) Fax: 2804-2390 WWW10 Organizing Committee (c/o W3C Office in Hong Kong) Address: Cyberspace Center, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2358-8772 Fax: (852) 2358-8777 URL: http://www10.org.hk