Realising The Full Potential Of The World Wide Web

African Business, Feb, 2001 by Jennifer Lewis

Founded in 1994, The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) aims to 'develop common protocols to enhance the inter-operability and lead the evolution of the World Wide Web'. The W3C was created out of the need for one, coherent body to lead, steer and co-ordinate the evolution and development of the World Wide Web.

The W3C is an international industry consortium, jointly hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science in the US, the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique in Europe, and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan. Because the Consortium is hosted by these three important research organizations, it is able to leverage the most recent advances in information technology. The W3C's Director is Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web.

The Consortium's real strength lies in he broad technical expertise of its Membership. It has more than 270 commercial and academic Members worldwide, including hardware and software vendors, telecommunications companies, content providers, corporate users, and government and academic entities.

W3C is funded from membership dues, public research funds, and external contracts. It provides a vendor-neutral forum for its Members to address Web-related issues. Working together with its staff and the global Web community, the Consortium aims to produce free, interoperable specifications and sample code.

The Consortium also provides a number of public services, which include: (1) A repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, (2) Reference code implementations to embody and promote standards, (3) Various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology.

The Consortium's page for HTML issues is http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/