Presented by:

Pam Donohue Kevin FieldWes Johnston Jessica Sayers

What is W3C? Tim Berners-Lee is the Director and Inventor of the

World Wide Web. Invented in 1989 (Not the inventor of the internet)

Primary author of HTTP, HTML, XML, and URL specifications

“The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards”

Mission: To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web

Since 1994, published over 90 standards called the W3C Recommendations

What does W3C do? W3C designs and promotes interoperable open (non-

proprietary) formats and protocols to avoid the market fragmentation of the past

Most work revolves around the standardization of web technologies

Organizations join W3C to work and exchange ideas and participate in a standards body to keep up with the latest technology and observe market fluctuations on the web

One of W3C's primary goals is to make the benefits on the web available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability

W3C Operations

Operations are supported with dues, research grants, and other sources of public and private funding

Operations are jointly administered by MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in the U.S., the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) in France, and Keio University in Japan. Includes 15 regions around the world

The W3C offices work with their regional Web communities to promote W3C technologies in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities

The W3C Technology StackThe Web is an application built on top of the Internet

Who listens to them?

ANYONE who has a vested interest in the internet

The W3C sets guidelines and suggestions to make the web available for all users

“By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation.”

W3C members As of February 2006 the W3C has 402

members

Memberships are welcome to any company willing to pay an annual membership fee

Contributions are also welcomed

Contributors are listed on the W3C website

W3C membership distribution by commercial sector

W3C membership distribution by country

Membership Fees

Organization Type in United States (country category HIC)

Annual Fee for Memberships Starting 2006-01-01

For-profit organization that has annual gross revenue, as measured by the most recent audited statement, of greater than or equal to 200,000,000 USD.

63,500 USD

For-profit organization that has annual gross revenue, as measured by the most recent audited statement, of greater than or equal to 50,000,000 USD and less than 200,000,000 USD.

25,400 USD

All other organizations, including not-profit organizations and government agencies.

6,350 USD

Current Members

The members are a fairly diverse group of companies and organizations

Likely suspects including Microsoft, Boeing, Sun Microsystems, and IBM are currently members, as are a number of smaller companies with less recognizable names

…more members A-SIT Academia Sinica ACCESS Co., Ltd. ACORD Corporation Adobe Systems Inc. Adomo, Inc. Afilias Limited Agfa-Gevaert N. V. AgileDelta, Inc. Agrawal Consultants Albert-Ludwigs-Universität-Freiburg, Institut für Inform

atik

Alcatel Altova GmbH Alzheimer Research Forum Foundation Amadeus s.a.s. AME Info FZ LLC America Online, Inc. (AOL) ANEC European Association for the Co-

ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation

Antenna House, Inc. Apple Computer, Inc. Argo Interactive Ltd Arjuna Technologies Ltd. Asemantics S.R.L. Aspect Communications AT&T

Benefits of becoming a member

The opportunity to interact and work directly with the leading companies and organizations in the Web world;

Right to submit proposals ("Member Submissions") to be considered for future Consortium work;

Gain public recognition of your organization's contributions through your display of the W3C Member logo

Display of organization's logo and testimonial on the W3C home page, viewed by a quarter million visitors each day on average;

Knowing why a standard was written a particular way may help you plan for future versions more effectively than your competitors.

W3C’s Business Process

They have created strict guidelines for the process of creating new web technology standards

The purpose is to create fair, progressive, and responsive standards through consensus of the Director, members, and the public

Interest in a new topic must be generated. A topic is submitted to the Advisory Committee through a Member Submission

A team of experts organizes a workshop and discussions to create more interest

After enough interest is generated, the Director announces a new Activity Proposal

Process cont..

When there is enough support for the new Activity Proposal a team composed of member representatives, invited experts, and W3C representatives begins working on the topic

The team creates guidelines that undergo many revisions

A technical report is eventually created and reviewed by the W3C

Process cont..

The members, Director, and the public must come to a consensus regarding the proposed guidelines

If there is support from the Advisory committee the new standard is published as a W3C recommendation

Process cont..

Open Standards In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the

most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together

W3C refers to this goal as “Web interoperability.” By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation

(http://www.w3.org/Consortium/)

World Wide Web operation under “Open Standard”

America Europe

Asia Africa

WWW

Everyone has equal access

What if big companies were allowed to write their own Web languages and protocols to the web?

We get Web fragmentation

Microsoft Yahoo

Google WWW

Web fragmentation would lead to:

Multiple private Web systems competing with WWW

Micro-Web Google-Web

Yahoo-Web WWW

Other Standard Bodies

ISO 9000, ISO 14000 International Organization for

Standardization

ANSI American National Standards Institute

SEI Software Engineering Institute

IEEE (I triple E) Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers

Any Questions?