by Steven Pemberton
The formation of the group was prompted by the formation of the World-Wide Web Organisation (W3O) and Consortium (W3C) being led then by CERN and MIT. These organisations are intended to gather and lead further developments of the Web. Recently the European arm has been passed to INRIA, moving ERCIM even closer to the centre of developments.
We hope by forming the W4G to bring together European researchers working with the Web, and to feed into the wider international developments based around W3O.
The World-Wide Web is in a very dynamic period: its immense success has directed many groups to experiments and research in the area. Consequently it is a fast-moving area; for instance there are two international World-Wide Web conferences per year!
As a consequence, we have decided to organise two workshops per year, timed to fall between the two international conferences, as well as organise birds-of-a-feather groups at the conferences themselves.
We have already had two workshops, one in Amsterdam on Design Issues in December 1994, and one in Paris on Tools in February 1995. The next meeting is the birds-of-a-feather at the 3rd WWW Conference in Darmstadt, Germany, and the next workshop is tentatively planned for June in Helsinki, Finland.
There is (of course) a WWW source for information, at
http://www.cwi.nl/ERCIM/W4G,
and a mailing list; to join send email to: w4g-list-request
cwi.nl.
cwi.nl