TPAC 2007: Session 1: Welcome

Transcript

Steve Bratt: It's my pleasure to welcome you to the first ever W3C Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meetings Week ... please fill out the survey after the meeting and let us know what we can do to improve the format of this meeting ... I have a few preliminary announcements that I want to make too ... but before we get to that, how is everyone doing with wireless? please raise your hand if you are having any trouble and keep your hand up ... we're going to be logging the meeting in a couple of ways, IRC channel (#tp and password beantown) and we will be recording this meeting with both audio and close captioning, so be aware that everything we say will be recorded and read in real time ... does anybody disagree with this before we go into the introductions?

Steve Bratt: First of all it is a very exciting time to be working on the Web ... I am very impressed with the growing interest on using Web technologies, in very different ways, hosting and linking documents ... within W3C and outside of W3C, 1.2 billion people with access to the Web, on desktops and laptops ... another phenomena is the growth in the use of mobile phone, 2 million (?) new phones everyday coming into use ... and all the work we are doing on Mobile Web and other areas is going to open up the Web and Internet and communication and commerce to a much larger fraction of the earth's population than ever before ... within W3C I am very excited about the the work we are doing in Mobile Web, Ubiquitous Web, Semantic Web, Web Services and all these new areas, Web Accessibility ... we will have some interesting discussions today about some of the Web technologies that really power the Web of today. The people's Web. It will be an interesting session for you.

Steve Bratt: Just so you know, the people you see in the room, that are here at the Technical Plenary, are amongst the people who power W3C who develop our standards and get them out there in the world ... right now, we have 1400 people working in 60 groups across W3C, so only a fraction of them are here today ... I want to thank you up front for all the great work you are doing within W3C ... so this week it's time to get to know each other a little bit better, to spend time in the meetings you are having on Monday and Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday ... but I know that a very important part for you are the breaks and the reception and so on ... we have a nice reception planned for you tonight on the 16th floor of the hotel ... beautiful view, and if the weather is as nice as it's been you are going to have an enjoyable view up there and continue to enjoy conversation and nourishment while you are there too.

Steve Bratt: Today, hopefully, you will listen ... we've done a great job of providing you with wireless connections ... I know you got a lot of important work to do on your laptop, but I really hope you will take time to listen and savor the messages that are being put forth up here ... but more importantly, to participate in those as well ... and we do have microphones up here, and have asked the moderators to give plenty of time, hopefully 10 to 20 minutes at least of time to entertain questions from the floor, so when the time comes, queue up in one of the two microphones here and we will try to get to you as quickly as possible ... of course make your statements and comments as short as possible an get to the point, so we can have as many people get up to the microphone as possible.

Steve Bratt: Also, I mentioned the feedback survey, the URI is here ... since you don't want to bother reading all that, simply just go to our agenda page for today, and you will also see the feedback survey there ... we are asking quite a few more questions than usual because this is a new format, combining the Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee meetings ... so we really want to get your feedback of how this is working and what we can do to improve it next time.

Steve Bratt: The summary of what we are going to do today is here ... I don't think I need to read it to you, a lot of exciting things ... I want to remind you again of the birds-of-a-feather table signup outside the hall ... If the pages get filled up, we are going to be paying attention to that and we can put new pages up for you ... we hope we are going to have an active number of tables, and up in the 16th floor will be a fun place to have your discussions ... the rest of you will be having lunch in the tent area as well, hopefully, you will enjoy that as much ... a lot of interesting things for you today.

Steve Bratt: I want to thank our sponsors for the Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee Meeting 2007, BEA, Cisco, IBM and Nokia ... this is our biggest meeting of the year and without their sponsorship we couldn't provide all the facilities and capabilities we've been able to provide for you here at W3C.

Steve Bratt: Just a reminder too, I would like to ask you not to take flash photography in the room ... there are some people who are sensitive to sharp strobe type lights, so please refrain from flash photography.

Steve Bratt: And another thing is that we do a press listening as well ... and of course I mentioned before this thing is public and it is going to be out there for people to see and hear ... but also we are going to press covering this too, which is great ... we have bloggers and some press ... we actually have a press event conference today at noon for the sponsors, and some of the W3C team ... we are looking to open up the work we are doing here to the public more than we have in the past.