The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) claims to "lead the Web to its full potential. The talk illustrates by whom and how it is done. One part of the concept are the W3C Offices. The first W3C Offices were part of a project that was initiated by W3C with support from the EU in 1997. Offices were established to improve the regional presence of W3C and to overcome language barriers. The first 4 Offices were in UK, Netherlands, Germany and Greece. It will be outlined why the Offices program turned out to be a success and what are the challenges and chances for the future.
Klaus Birkenbihl is CEO of his company ict Media GmbH and coordinator of W3C's international Offices program. Klaus holds a degree in Mathematics from the University of Bonn and started his career at the GMD National Research Lab for Information Technology. Later he was with the Institute for Media Communication of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Klaus was a teacher for Computer Science at the University of Cologne and the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. Klaus was Treasurer and Chairman of the German Chapter of the Internet Society where he is still on the supervisory board. He launched the W3C Germany Office in 1997 and was on W3C's advisory board 2002-2005.
