Social Events
Wednesday 22
18:00-19:00 Auditorium and main lobby
WWW2009 Welcome Reception
The Welcome Reception is open to all conference attendees. Bring your camera to enjoy a flamenco show in the auditorium. Gather with old friends and make many new ones at the main lobby buffet.
Thursday 23
19:30-22:15 Mirador del Olivar Golf Course
WWW2009 Conference Dinner
The Conference Dinner is open to conference delegates registered for that event. The dinner venue will be at Mirador del Olivar Golf Course, at walking distance from the Conference Centre. A Spanish dance show will be performed during the dinner.
Before the dinner, Professor Dame Wendy Hall will talk about "A Tale of Two or Three Conferences"
Talk Abstract
Every conference has its own culture, its own character and its own community. As someone who came to the Web via the hypertext community, I couldn't understand why people who attended hypertext conferences didn't want to come to Web conferences, and I couldn't understand why people who attended Web conferences weren't interested in hypertext. I had the same feelings of frustration when the Semantic Web community decided to launch its own conference series. To me this was the future of the Web and key developments needed to be discussed at the Web conference. But we now have a very healthy Semantic Web conference community, who meet on an annual basis to discuss concepts that may be of vital importance to the future of the Web but many of them will never have been to a Web conference.
In this talk I will explore the history of the Web conference from the perspective of colliding cultures. What dynamics created the conference, how has it evolved along the way and where might it go next? I'm one of a group of people who have just successfully organised the first Web Science conference in Athens. Why did we do this? Why didn't we organise it as part of the Web conference? Any of you who have organised a major international conference know what hard work it is. Why do we make life so difficult for ourselves by constantly spinning off new conferences? Why indeed in this digital age do we still feel the need to physically attend conferences?
