News Release: W3C Spanish Office Launches Standards Tour 2004

W3C's Office Program spreads the word of Web Standards in countries
throughout Europe and Asia; next week, the W3C Spanish Office will begin
  its first nationwide tour of Spain, visiting 10 cities in the month of
November.

For more information on the tour, the special standards-based multimedia
seminar, and the first ever prize for best applications of Web
standards, please contact Janet Daly at +1.617.253.5884 or <janet@w3.org>.

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W3C Spanish Office’s Standards Tour 2004 to Visit Ten Cities Throughout
Spain

Bus Equipped With W3C Multimedia Demos; Multimodal Web Seminar in
Madrid; First W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization

Web Resources

This press release:
In English: http://www.w3.org/2004/11/sptour-pressrelease.html.en
In Spanish: http://www.w3.org/2004/11/sptour-pressrelease.html.es
In French: http://www.w3.org/2004/11/sptour-pressrelease.html.fr
In Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2004/11/sptour-pressrelease.html.ja
Check http://www.w3.org/Press/ for all hypertext versions

Info on the W3C Standards Tour: http://www.w3c.es/gira/info/intro.html.en

W3C Spanish Office: http://www.w3c.es/


http://www.w3.org -- 27 October 2004 -- The W3C Spanish Office brings
its first W3C Standards Tour to ten universities in Spain from 3 to 26
November 2004 to demonstrate W3C's work and promote the use and adoption
of W3C technologies. The environment-friendly tour bus has access to
people with disabilities, multimedia equipment where demos of W3C
technologies will be at visitors’ disposal, projection equipment,and
video conferencing and Internet connectivity via satellite. During the
tour, the ten universities will host conferences giving university
research staff, students and organizations interested in W3C standards
adoption and implementation the opportunity to establish relationships.

The Standards Tour runs for three weeks and visits the following cities
in Spain. All events are free and open to the public.

     * Gijón (Opening Ceremony): 3 November 2004
     * Bilbao: 4-5 November 2004
     * Zaragoza: 8 November 2004
     * Barcelona: 9-10 November 2004
     * Valencia: 11-12 November 2004
     * Sevilla: 15-16 November 2004
     * Madrid: 17-19 November 2004
     * Salamanca: 22 November 2004
     * A Coruña: 24 November 2004
     * Oviedo: 26 November 2004

"Although the Web is in concentrated use in Spain, there is a lot of
exciting new technology coming in the near future. The bus is an
opportunity to see what's new and coming up," said Tim Berners-Lee,
Director of W3C.

"Our Spanish Office has come up with a novel way of reaching out in
Spain," said Ivan Herman, Head of Offices at W3C. "The Standards Tour as
well as the W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization are
exciting opportunities for the W3C and the Spanish technical community
to make active and lasting contact."

"It's wonderful to see the amount of new Web development work happening
in Spain," said José Manuel Alonso, Manager of the W3C Spanish Office.
"W3C encourages and supports the adoption of its standards and
technologies throughout Spain's academic and business communities."

The Standards Tour is organized by the W3C Spanish Office with the
generous support of Red.es and Fundación CTIC, and with the help of
Software AG España, TeleCable, Fundación ONCE and Centro de Estudios
Garrigues.

Multimodal Web Seminar in Madrid

Researchers and participants from industry are invited to the Multimodal
Web Seminar at the tour stop in Madrid, where speakers from W3C Member
organizations in Spain and members of the W3C Team will present the work
of the W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity. The seminar is funded by the
European Commission’s IST Programme as part of the Multimodal Web
Interaction (MWeb) Project.

First W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization

The W3C Spanish Office Prize for Web Standardization will be launched
during the tour. The prize encourages the use and adoption of W3C
Recommendations at Spanish universities, and is awarded to the prototype
that best demonstrates W3C technologies in one or more of the following
fields in an innovative way: Semantic Web, Device Independence, Voice,
and Multimodal Interaction. The prize winner will be selected by members
of the W3C Team from ten finalists.

The winner will receive an applied research grant to develop a full
project based on her or his winning prototype at the Fundación CTIC
headquarters in Gijón, Asturias, Spain. The best five finalists will
also receive a top of the line laptop computer, courtesy of Red.es and
Acer. The winner and winning prototype will be announced at an award
presentation ceremony to be held in Asturias during the first quarter of
2005.

About the W3C Spanish Office

Established in October 2003, the W3C Spanish Office is hosted by
Fundación CTIC. Located at the Science and Technology Park of Gijón,
Asturias, Fundación CTIC is a non-profit organization which carries out
and disseminates applied research on information technologies. For more
information see http://www.w3c.es.

About W3C Offices

W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, broaden
W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in
W3C Activities. W3C currently has fourteen Offices located in Australia,
the Benelux countries, Germany and Austria, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong,
Hungary, Israel, Italy, Korea, Morocco, Spain, Sweden, and the United
Kingdom and Ireland.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

Contact Spain --
     José Manuel Alonso,< jalonso@w3.org>, +34.984.39.06.16
Contact Americas and Australia --
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.206.228.1097
Contact Europe, Africa and Middle-East --
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa, <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.11.70


The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run
by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT
CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and
Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new
technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the
Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org

Received on Wednesday, 27 October 2004 07:05:44 UTC