W3C Spanish Office's Standards Tour 2004 to Visit Ten Cities Throughout Spain

Business Wire, Oct 27, 2004

http://www.w3.org -- Bus Equipped With W3C Multimedia Demos; Multimodal Web Seminar in Madrid; First W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization

The W3C Spanish Office brings its first W3C Standards Tour to ten universities in Spain from 3 to 26 November 2004 to demonstrate W3C's work and promote the use and adoption of W3C technologies. The environment-friendly tour bus has access to people with disabilities, multimedia equipment where demos of W3C technologies will be at visitors' disposal, projection equipment, and video conferencing and Internet connectivity via satellite. During the tour, the ten universities will host conferences giving university research staff, students and organizations interested in W3C standards adoption and implementation the opportunity to establish relationships.

The Standards Tour runs for three weeks and visits the following cities in Spain. All events are free and open to the public.

--Gijon (Opening Ceremony): 3 November 2004

--Bilbao: 4-5 November 2004

--Zaragoza: 8 November 2004

--Barcelona: 9-10 November 2004

--Valencia: 11-12 November 2004

--Sevilla: 15-16 November 2004

--Madrid: 17-19 November 2004

--Salamanca: 22 November 2004

--A Coruna: 24 November 2004

--Oviedo: 26 November 2004

"Although the Web is in concentrated use in Spain, there is a lot of exciting new technology coming in the near future. The bus is an opportunity to see what's new and coming up," said Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C.

"Our Spanish Office has come up with a novel way of reaching out in Spain," said Ivan Herman, Head of Offices at W3C. "The Standards Tour as well as the W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization are exciting opportunities for the W3C and the Spanish technical community to make active and lasting contact."

"It's wonderful to see the amount of new Web development work happening in Spain," said Jose Manuel Alonso, Manager of the W3C Spanish Office. "W3C encourages and supports the adoption of its standards and technologies throughout Spain's academic and business communities."

The Standards Tour is organized by the W3C Spanish Office with the generous support of Red.es and Fundacion CTIC, and with the help of Software AG Espana, TeleCable, Fundacion ONCE and Centro de Estudios Garrigues.

Multimodal Web Seminar in Madrid

Researchers and participants from industry are invited to the Multimodal Web Seminar at the tour stop in Madrid, where speakers from W3C Member organizations in Spain and members of the W3C Team will present the work of the W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity. The seminar is funded by the European Commission's IST Programme as part of the Multimodal Web Interaction (MWeb) Project.

First W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization

The W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization will be launched during the tour. The prize encourages the use and adoption of W3C Recommendations at Spanish universities, and is awarded to the prototype that best demonstrates W3C technologies in one or more of the following fields in an innovative way: Semantic Web, Device Independence, Voice, and Multimodal Interaction. The prize winner will be selected by members of the W3C Team from ten finalists.

The winner will receive an applied research grant to develop a full project based on her or his winning prototype at the Fundacion CTIC headquarters in Gijon, Asturias, Spain. The best five finalists will also receive a top of the line laptop computer, courtesy of Red.es and Acer. The winner and winning prototype will be announced at an award presentation ceremony to be held in Asturias during the first quarter of 2005.

About the W3C Spanish Office

Established in October 2003, the W3C Spanish Office is hosted by Fundacion CTIC. Located at the Science and Technology Park of Gijon, Asturias, Fundacion CTIC is a non-profit organization which carries out and disseminates applied research on information technologies. For more information see http://www.w3c.es.

About W3C Offices

W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities. W3C currently has fourteen Offices located in Australia, the Benelux countries, Germany and Austria, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Korea, Morocco, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and Ireland.

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org