Media and entertainment experts take to the podium at WWW2006

Speakers from Wunderman, Reuters, Yahoo and Universal Music are among the media experts who will take to the podium at the 15th annual World Wide Web Conference on 23rd May. Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee will open the four-day event, to be held in the UK for the first time, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

The opening day of the conference, Tuesday 23rd May, will tackle the impact of web-based innovation on advertising, publishing and the media. Delegates will hear speeches on web-based opportunities for the international news media, open access and web publishing and the latest anti-piracy initiatives.

The non-profit organisation Kendra Initiative is organising speaker and panel sessions on the impact of the web on entertainment. Their sessions will include presentations by the International Webcasting Association's Peggy Miles; Paul Jessop, CTO for the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry; Rob Wells, Universal Music's divisional director for new media and digital services and Peter Buckingham from the UK Film Council.

Kendra Initiative's founder Daniel Harris comments: "WWW2006 is the ideal opportunity for high level web users, content owners and creators from the media industry to come and present their requirements to the web's guardians. It is a unique opportunity to connect with the people shaping our online universe."

Also speaking will be Scott Cohen, founder and VP international of The Orchard, Reed Elsevier's Nick Baker and former editor of the BMJ, Dr Richard Smith.

Conference workshops and tutorials will tackle the mobile Web, Internet Protocol TV, blogging and best practices in Web design and development.

For more information: /www2006

Ends

Notes to Editors

1. Confirmed speakers for WWW2006 include:

• Tim Berners-Lee - Inventor of the World Wide Web
• David Brown - Chairman of Motorola
• Michael Rawlins - Chairman of the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
• Gillian Kent - Director, MSN.co.uk.
• Tao Yang - Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President, Ask Jeeves
• David Belanger - Chief Scientist, AT&T Labs
• Tony Hey - Corporate VP for Technical Computing, Microsoft
• Mary Ann Davidson - Chief Security Officer, Oracle
• Geoffrey Hall - Chief Technology Officer for Europe, Nortel.

Further speaker information can be found on the conference website www.www2006.org

1.World Wide Web 2006 is the annual conference of the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) and is organised by the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science in conjunction with the British Computer Society. The four-day event, to be held in the UK for the first time, will take place at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre between 23 and 26 May 2006. It is expected to attract up to 1500 delegates and will bring together key players from the international community.

2. Kendra Initiative is a media and technology, academic and industry alliance of over 500 participants in 40 plus countries. It has been established to develop and promote an open marketplace for digital media and is currently building and trialing models. Its goals are:

• To simplify and streamline buying and selling digital content by driving industry adoption of open protocols
• To enable interoperability between service providers, media applications and devices - every link in the content value chain
• To build a system where consumers can use any device or application to browse, search and purchase from the globally distributed collection of content catalogues.
• To create a more pleasurable buying experience for consumers and increase reach and revenue for content owners.

For more information: www.kendra.org.uk

For further information:

• Rachel Albon, Media Liaison, WWW2006 Conference Team, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, tel: 01329 661982 (9am-3pm), mob: 0796 848 0452, email: www20006-press@www2006.org
• Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, tel: 023 8059 5453, email: j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk

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