by Steven Pemberton
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an industry consortium modelled on the successful X Consortium for X Windows. It exists to develop common standards for the evolution of the World Wide Web and is run by the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA and INRIA, the European W3C center, in collaboration with CERN, originators of the web.
The idea is to bring together organisations and companies working on developments of the Web to pool resources and to ensure standards, producing specifications and reference software. W3C is funded by its members but its products are freely available to all.
Activity areas of the Consortium include:
Several ERCIM institutes have independently joined the Consortium, and now ERCIM has as a whole.
Supporting the W3C effort within ERCIM is the World Wide Web Working Group W4G, formed specifically to pool ERCIM resources within W3C.
W4G organises twice yearly workshops on various aspects of the Web, and Birds-of-a-feather meetings at World Wide Web Conferences.
The next W4G workshops are at Abingdon, near Oxford, UK, Monday 20 - Wednesday 22 November 1995, on Design and Electronic Publishing; and at Sankt Augustin, near Bonn, Germany, Wednesday 7 - Friday 9 February 1996, on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
Further details of W3C can be obtained from http://www.w3.org/.
Further details of W4G and its workshops can be obtained from the W4G homepage, URL: http://www.cwi.nl/ERCIM/W4G/ or from the chair of W4G:
cwi.nl