"The W3C's work is important to me because it is really much more than technology—it is about building a foundation that supports new ways of communication, socialization, commerce, government, and civilization."

—Balaji Prasad, W3C10 speaker

Speakers at W3C10:

About the Speakers

Jean-François Abramatic is Chief Product Officer of ILOG, a leading provider of enterprise-class software components and services. An Internet authority, he served as chairman of the W3C, and as a director of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). He currently serves on the W3C Advisory Board, the Forum des Droits de l’Internet and the Conseil Stratégique des Technologies de l’Information. In addition to commercial experience, Abramatic has been a research scientist at INRIA. Jean-François earned an engineering diploma at Ecole des Mines, Nancy, and a PhD in computer science at the University of Paris VI.

David Berlind is the Executive Editor of ZDNet. David has served as the Director of PC Week Labs (now eWEEK), editor-in-chief at Windows Sources, editorial director at Computer Shopper and general manager at Ziff-Davis. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, PBS, BBC Television, CBS Radio, NPR and has been quoted in many newspapers including The New York Times, USA Today, Newsday and the Chicago Tribune. Prior to becoming a tech journalist in 1991, David was an IT manager responsible for design and deployment of custom software, LANs and WANs, PC-mainframe connectivity, corporate technology standard-setting and end-user training programs.

Tim Berners-Lee has served as Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since its inception. A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). With a background of system design in real-time communications and text processing software development, in 1989 he invented the World Wide Web, an Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing. While working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, he wrote the first Web client (browser-editor), first Web server, and first version of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) in 1990.

Rodney Brooks is Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also co-founder and CTO of iRobot Corp. His research focuses on robotics—intelligent robots operating in unstructured environments, and the understanding of human intelligence through the use of humanoid robots. Rodney is a Founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He appeared as himself in Errol Morris's movie, "Fast, Cheap, and out of Control." His latest book is Flesh and Machines.

Michel Cosnard is director of the INRIA research unit in Sophia Antipolis (Nice). His research interests are in the design and analysis of parallel algorithms, complexity analysis of automata and neural nets. From 2001 to 2004, he was appointed director of the National Research Program on Grid computing by the French Ministry of Research. He is a member of the IFIP working groups on parallel processing and neural networks. He currently serves as editor in chief of Parallel Processing Letters.

William Gillis (Bill) is founder and Director of the Center to Bridge the Digital Divide (CBDD) at Washington State University. The CBDD multidisciplinary team helps people, communities and institutions apply information technology to economic development and other critical global challenges domestically, and internationally with a focus in Africa. Bill served on the Washington State Utility and Transportation Commission, chaired the FCC Rural Task Force on Universal Service and chaired the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Committee on Consumer Affairs. Bill holds degrees from Washington State University and the University of Wisconsin.

Philipp Hoschka, W3C Deputy Director, is responsible for technical contacts with European research and development. In addition, Philipp heads the W3C Interaction Domain, which delivers W3C's key user interface specifications, e.g. HTML, SVG and VoiceXML. Philipp currently focuses on making mobile Web access work. In the past, he spearheaded the development of the SMIL Recommendation at W3C.

George Kerscher is Senior Officer of Accessible Information, Recording For the Blind & Dyslexic in the USA; Secretary General for the DAISY Consortium; Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Open eBook Forum (OeBF); and co-Chair, Steering Council of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). He dedicated to developing technology to make information accessible and fully functional in the hands of persons who are blind and disabled. He himself is blind. George coined the term "print disabled" to describe people who cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability. He advocates that access to information is a fundamental human right and believes properly designed systems can make all information accessible to all people.

Rohit Khare is Director of CommerceNet Labs, a nonprofit organization advancing the use of the Internet for electronic commerce through research into the software architecture of decentralized systems. When he began his career at W3C ten years ago, one of his first assignments was working with the developers of SSL and S-HTTP at CommerceNet. Rohit worked for MCI, earned a master's from the University of California Irvine, founded KnowNow, and returned to UCI for his doctorate.

Alan Kotok, W3C Associate Chair, manages contractual relations with W3C Members, coordinates the efforts of the worldwide W3C Systems and Web Team and is site manager of the W3C MIT site. Alan retired from Digital Equipment Corp. in 1996 after 34 years service. While at Digital, Alan was principal architect of the DECsystem 10 family of systems. He helped establish Digital's Internet Business Group in 1994 and became Digital's first W3C Advisory Committee representative.

Denis Lacroix is Director of Development for e-Travel, the e-Commerce division of Amadeus. e-Travel is dedicated to delivering online travel solutions to airlines, corporations and travel agencies worldwide. He has a long history of developing leading edge technology at Amadeus, including playing a key role in the creation of Amadeus online initiatives. In 2004, he was named one of the Power 20 by Business Travel World. Denis is a graduate of the Ecole Centrale Paris and previously held engineering positions at Digital Equipment and IBM.

Bob Metcalfe is a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Massachusetts. He serves on the boards of Polaris-backed high-tech start-ups including Ember, Narad, Paratek, and SiCortex. In 1973, he invented Ethernet at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. In 1979, he founded 3Com Corporation. During the 1990s, he wrote a weekly Internet column in InfoWorld. Metcalfe graduated from MIT, got his PhD from Harvard, taught at Stanford and Cambridge, and was elected in 1997 to the National Academy of Engineering. Bob is a Life Trustee of MIT.

Eric Miller, Semantic Web Activity Lead, is responsible for the architectural and technical leadership in the design and evolution of Semantic Web infrastructure. With W3C Members, he works towards producing Web standards that support Semantic Web requirements, building support among user and vendor communities for the Semantic Web, and establishing liaisons with other technical standards bodies. Eric is a Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Takeshi Natsuno, Managing Director for Multimedia Services, has overall responsibility for charting the business strategy of all multimedia related services of DoCoMo, including i-mode strategic alliances with global application/content providers and key Internet players. Mr. Natsuno, one of the key developers of i-mode business models, managed the launch of i-mode in 1999. Widely regarded as a leading expert on the Internet and multimedia, he was named one of the world's 25 most influential e-business leaders by Business Week in 2001. Mr. Natsuno is the author of i-mode Strategy and a la i-mode.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network (www.oreillynet.com) and hosts conferences on technology topics. Tim is an activist for open source and open standards, and an opponent of software patents and other incursions of new intellectual property laws into the public domain.

Balaji Prasad has 22 years of IT industry experience and represents EDS on the W3C Advisory Committee. He is a published author and frequent speaker at industry conferences on a variety of subjects, including emerging technologies and architectures, sensors, nanotechnology and knowledge management. Balaji has worked in the telematics and mobile wireless space for the last seven years in a Chief Technologist role. His education includes a Bachelor's degree in Engineering and a Master's in Business Administration.

Dave Raggett works for W3C on assignment from Canon. He joined the W3C Team in 1995, and was involved from the very early days with the development of HTML as well as setting up the IETF HTTP working group and helping to initiate work on VRML, MathML and XForms. He authored books on HTML for Addison Wesley, Wrox Press and Prentice-Hall. He is known for HTML Tidy, a tool for fixing up HTML, and EzMath, a natural language notation for mathematics. As W3C's Activity Lead for voice and multimodal, Dave is currently focusing on expanding the Web to include voice interaction. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Lee Rainie is the founding Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Since December 1999, the Washington D.C. research center has examined how people's Internet use affects their families, communities, health care, education, civic and political life, and work places. The Project has issued more than 80 reports on these social issues and important public policy questions such as trust and privacy online, e-government, intellectual property, broadband adoption, and the digital divides. Previously, Lee was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard College and has a master's degree in political science from Long Island University.

Teri Richman is Senior Vice President of Research and Public Affairs, National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) which represents over 100,000 convenience stores in the U.S. Teri is a liaison with members of the U.S. Congress, state legislators and staff, congressional committees, regulatory agencies, community thought leaders and press on issues relevant to the convenience store industry. She directed the industry's e-commerce/Internet strategy, an industry-wide program on responsible alcohol and tobacco sales and regulation and a three-part research project on crime, crime prevention and convenience store security. Teri holds a B.A. from Boston University.

William Ruh is a Senior Director at Cisco Systems with worldwide responsibility for services for the Application Oriented Networking System (AONS) product line. Bill has held senior executive positions at a variety of firms developing a large number of innovative systems including the first Internet stock trading system in Europe, a solution for integrated drug discovery systems and a worldwide Web-based document delivery system for a large petro-chemical firm. He has published four books—his latest, released in July 2004, is Enterprise Integration: The essential guide to integration solutions from Addison Wesley.

David Singer is a Distinguished Engineer in the Almaden Services Research group at IBM. His research focuses on IT and knowledge worker productivity, especially the development of valid metrics for the effect of IT on knowledge workers. David was involved in W3C nearly from the beginning, serving as IBM's Advisory Committee Representative until 2000, and was elected to the first W3C Advisory Board. He is a co-author of the PICS Rating Services and Rating Systems W3C Recommendation. David participated in the HTML Editorial Review Board and the DOM Working Group, and chaired the first RDF Schema Working Group.

Charles M. Vest has been president of MIT since 1990. Dr. Vest served on the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in both the Clinton and Bush administrations and chaired both the President’s Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station and the U.S. Department of Energy Task Force on the Future of Science Programs. He currently serves on the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and on the National Academies-CSIS Roundtable on Scientific Communication and National Security. Charles sits on the boards of directors of IBM and E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company.

Daniel J. Weitzner leads the W3C Technology and Society Activities and is Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. As one of the leading figures in Internet public policy community, he was the first to advocate the use of user control technologies such as content filtering and rating as a means to protect children and avoid government censorship of Intenet content. He co-founded the Center for Democracy and Technology, and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Ian Jacobs, Head of Communications
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