Last year in Aarhus Olle Olsson from the Swedish office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) raised the intriguing question whether we actually need more web standards. This led to an interesting debate on whether standards are the glue that keep the web together or if they are simply deemed out-dated and are in fact restraining the rapidly developing web industry.
Fact is that ever since the birth of the Web in the early 90′s, all websites have been built using the same very basic technologies. Meanwhile, we want to keep creating richer and more enjoyable user experiences on the web. Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, W3C has worked on developing these basic standards but the major leaps forward remain few and far between.
This seems to be changing as standards such as HTML5 and the Mobile Web-initiative are emerging. These new “Web plumbing elements” we use every day will help organisations build better websites and make them accessible from mobile devices.
At this year’s conference Olle returns to present on the state of standardisation and give a glimpse of results and plans for supporting web technologies. In his presentation on the emerging technology track Olle will draw on several case examples as well as his research to illustrate how organisations can adopt the new standards and make better websites in the future. He will also host a roundtable on whether the mobile web is a blessing or a curse. Last but not least, Olle will be a judge in our popular Web Idol contest, so the audience and contestants can expect a remark or two about standards!
We are very happy to have the W3C represented in Aarhus. Connect with them and hear their take on the direction of the Web. By the way: Engineering the future of the Web is also a key topic in our Thursday morning keynote by Bebo White.
