Web Inventor Tim Berners-Lee to Keynote
Premier International World Wide Web Conference
Reston, VA, April 19, 1999 - The International World Wide
Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) of Geneva, Switzerland and Foretec
Seminars of Reston, VA have announced that Tim Berners-Lee, inventor
of the Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),
will deliver a keynote speech at The Eighth International World
Wide Web Conference (WWW8). Berners-Lee will join conference
attendees and technology visionaries from around the world as
they discuss and plan the evolution of the Web as we move into
the next millennium.
Berners-Lee joins keynote speakers Robert Metcalfe, vice president
of technology for International Data Group (IDG), Greg Papadopoulos,
chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems and John Patrick,
vice president Internet technology, IBM. The conference, sponsored
by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2)
and Foretec Seminars will be held May 11 - 14, 1999, at the Metro
Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Canada.
Registration for the conference is available online at /www8/
or call (703) 620-9053.
Tim Berners-Lee, recently named by TIME Magazine as one of
the 100 most influential people of the century, invented the
World Wide Web, the Internet-based hypermedia initiative for
global information sharing. Berners-Lee directs the W3C at the
Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT. W3C is uniquely positioned
to lead the development of the Web to its full potential. W3C
poses questions, explores potential solutions, and then provides
technology solutions (both specifications and software) that
are stable, reliable, and as Open Source, available to all.
"As always, I'll be looking at the dreams we had at WWW1
in Geneva, and whether they have or have not come true,"
said Berners-Lee, remarking on his WWW8 keynote. "I'll be
looking at whether this frenetic activity at W3C and elsewhere
is going to bridge the gap - and if not, what can."
"This year marks the tenth anniversary of Tim's initial
proposal of the Web," said Albert Vezza, co-chair of the
WWW8 conference. "While we may reflect a bit on what has
developed in the past ten years, Tim's speech addressing what
happens in the next ten years provides even more excitement and
promise to our conference attendees, and perhaps more questions
than answers."
WWW8 will address many pressing issues and hot topics concerning
the World Wide Web.
Conference offerings include:
Tutorials and Workshops, May 11
A program of four full- and 11 half-day tutorials, and six workshops
will cover current topics and issues such as the design of Web
sites, multimedia interfaces, Web GUIs, security, authentication,
and Web protocols. These half- and full-day sessions will feature
internationally recognized authorities who are well-grounded
in the practical realities of the every-day world.
Main Conference, May 12-13
The main conference program will consists of: keynote speakers;
an academic track at which 48 papers selected by the program
committee will be presented in three parallel tracks; a W3C track;
and an industry track at which industry representatives will
discuss the challenges, opportunities and issues faced by organizations
in the new network/information economy.
The W3C sessions will provide a comprehensive and up-to-date
view of activities and developments being led by the W3C. Overviews,
more detailed technical presentations, and question and answer
sessions will cover the current W3C activity domains of User
Interface, Technology and Society, Architecture, and the Web
Accessibility Initiative.
Developer's Day, May 14
Presentations will address topics of specific interest to Web
software developers, including state-of-the-art software, protocols,
and hardware.
History Space: The Web is 10 Years Old!
To mark the passing of the first ten years, a special space will
be dedicated to collecting material on Web history. Conference
attendees are encouraged to bring Web related lore (e.g., anecdotes,
recollections, dates and times, names, opinions) or possessions
(e.g., papers, messages, T-shirts, books, mugs, computers, old
web pages, old web sites, photos, tapes, disks).
Pre-Conference Courses, May 10
Two full-day courses will be presented prior to the WWW8 Conference:
"Strategies for Rapid 'Net Deployment," by William
Ruh of Concept Five Technologies, Inc. and "Distributed
Object Security for Web-based Applications," by Philip Wherry,
also of Concept Five Technologies.
About IW3C2
IW3C2 was formed in August 1994 to continue a series of academic
level conferences, the first of which was held in Geneva. Other
conferences in this series were held in Chicago, Darmstadt, Boston,
Paris, Santa Clara, and Brisbane. IW3C2 formally incorporated
in May 1996 as a non-profit association. For more information
about IW3C2, visit http://www.iw3c2.org.
About Foretec Seminars
Foretec Seminars, Inc., formed in 1997 as a subsidiary of the
Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), currently
manages the International World Wide Web Conferences for IW3C2.
Foretec is also responsible for managing various functions of
the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Secretariat for CNRI
including arranging IETF meetings.
