Stanford News

3/28/97

CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558


THE ONCE AND FUTURE WEB

The Sixth International World Wide Web Conference Brings Together Once and Future Pioneers to Define the Web of Tomorrow

PALO ALTO, CA, March 27, 1997 ­ "If the World Wide Web is a critical part of your life and your livelihood, come to WWW6 to see its future-and yours," says conference co-chair Christine Quinn of Stanford University. "This is the foremost conference on the Web," says Mike Genesereth, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Technical Program Chair for the conference. "As the importance of the Web increases, so does the value of the conference."

The conference will host industry leaders from Silicon Valley and around the world. Researchers from commercial and educational labs will talk about their most advanced, not yet published, work, and how their work will influence the future of the Web.

The Next Connection

The key to the Web's potential is its power as a connection: connecting people and content, as well as connecting people to one another. The nature of these connections will be a special focus of the conference. The task of bringing people and content together through the Web will be the subject of presentations, panels, and a special track devoted to accessibility.

The Interactive Conference Environment (ICE) (http://ice.www6conf.org/) developed for WWW6 embodies the most recent revolution in connectivity. Conference attendees can begin using ICE from the moment they register to find and interact with other attendees, schedule their time at the conference, and even subscribe to or propose additional conference discussion groups before they leave their homes and offices to attend.

And, because ICE is Web-based, participants' WWW6 home pages, along with complete program descriptions and conference discussion groups, are accessible not only to other attendees, but to the world.

In addition, the full-text of the conference proceedings is now world-accessible via the Web (http://proceedings.www6conf.org/) in HyperNews, a format facilitating threaded discussion of the technical program before the conference begins.

History Day

The Web History Project (http://www.webhistory.org) has joined forces with conference organizers for History Day at WWW6 on Friday, April 11. This event features talks by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web; Doug Engelbart, creator of Hypertext; the team behind the first U.S. Web site, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; and other Web pioneers. Their innovations are the architecture of the Web we know today and will continue to inspire the Web products and services of tomorrow. Additional tickets are available to the public for this special, day-long event.

The Sixth International World Wide Web Conference (http://www6conf.slac.stanford.edu) will be held April 7-11, 1997 in Santa Clara, California. The conference is co-sponsored by Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center under the auspices of the International World Wide Web Conference Committee. Corporate sponsors of the event include Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft Corporation.

NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information on Stanford University, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), or the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2), please visit their respective web sites:

Stanford University: http://www.stanford.edu/
SLAC: http://www.slac.stanford.edu
IW3C2: http://www.iw3c2.org