ERCIM News No.26 - July 1996 - CLRC

Fifth International World Wide Web Conference

by Martin Prime

After Geneva, Chicago, Darmstadt and Boston, the Web World came to Paris. The Fifth International World Wide Web Conference, organized by INRIA took place from 6-10 May'96, in cooperation with ERCIM, the European Commission and the WWW Consortium under the sponsorship of The International World Wide Web Conference Committee. More than 2,400 delegates from more than 50 countries attended the conference sessions and over 15,000 visited the exhibition.

The conference featured top-level speakers and workshop sessions to address current and future Web issues in detail. Another distinctive component of this conference were important announcements from participating companies. These took place both in conference sessions and in press conferences held in parallel.

A wide-ranging programme of events ran to cater for each of the target categories:

The Tutorials on 6 May got attendees up to speed with down-to-earth subjects such as 'Effective Internet Searching Strategies'.
The Technical Program on 7, 8, 9 May included reviewed paper presentations, industry presentations, State-of-the-Art reports, panels and invited speeches from key figures among the developers, providers and users who are together writing the history of the World Wide Web. The latest Web research, offerings and strategies was presented by such prominent visionaries as James Gosling, inventor of Sun's Java language.
The SME's Forum "Business on the Web" on 9, 10 May, sponsored by the European Commission. This gave - in non-technical, business-oriented language - an overview of the market and technologies, and an understanding of how issues like cost, security, performance, and the laws on cross-border Internet are being tackled. This unique event, held for the first time during the WWW'96 Paris conference, took the clear aim of helping Small and Medium Enterprises improve their business activities with respect to the World Wide Web. It gave attendees an insider view of how companies are already using the Web to achieve success.
The Developer's Day on 10 May brought together international Web programmers to exchange views and experiences on the latest Web programming paradigms.

In addition to the conference sessions, more than 5,000 m2 of Professional Exhibition were open to conference delegates and other professional visitors. The exhibition featured the latest achievements in equipment, systems, software, services, applications, literature and other products of importance to the World Wide Web.

ERCIM had a great deal of involvment in the event. INRIA organized the confernce with Jean-Francois Abramatic as Conference Chairman. Bob Hoopgod (RAL) was Programme Chair, David Duce (RAL) organised the Panels and Ken Robinson (RAL) was responsible for the Posters. Representatives from FORTH, GMD, VTT, CNR and CLRC were on the Programme Committee. Tom Baker (GMD) organised a Workshop on Digital Libraries and Richard Bentley (GMD) a Panel on Cooperative Working.

Please contact:
Yves Peynaud - INRIA
Tel: +33 1 3963 5511
E-mail: yves.peynaud@inria.fr

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