Report from Boston: The 4th WWW Conference
Report from Boston: The 4th WWW Conference
An informal report of the 4th WWW Conference in Boston, December 1995.
his is an informal diary of two delegates who attended the big event for World Wide Web people, namely the 4th International
WWW Conference. Debra Hiom, the SOSIG research officer and John Kirriemuir, the UKOLN
Information Officer provide the dialogue.
The good quality photographs were taken by Debra, on her expensive camera, while the not-so-good quality pictures were taken by John on a cheap and nasty disposable camera (7 dollars).
Due to the rapid speed of change within the Web World, International WWW Conferences
are held roughly every 6 months; number 3 in the series
was held in Germany in April 1995, while number 5 will be held
in Paris in May 1996. This conference took place in the Copley Marriott Hotel in central Boston (where a
large number of the delegates stayed) from December 11-14th.
The series of World Wide Web Conferences are the events to go to for sampling the latest in the rapidly moving field of World Wide Web development, research and implementation. This particular conference was hosted by the World Wide Web consortium (W3C), which now consists of over 100 member organisations and is headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web. At this particular conference, 57 papers were presented, as well as an exhibition of Web products and technology, a poster display of ongoing research, a day of tutorials and workshops and a day dedicated to developers of Web-based systems and technology. In addition, people were allowed to spontaneously set up their own "birds of a feather" session, where like-minded people could huddle and discuss their common interest. Selected sessions from the conference were broadcast over the MBONE, which enabled real-time sound and pictures to be relayed. This meant that people with an adequate network connection and the right software around the globe could watch the conference, as well as submit questions during the sessions.
The full programme is available on the Web, from which you can see the full versions of most of the presented papers.
The report is split into the following days:
Contents Page - Electronic Libraries Programme and Project Information
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