Greeting WOW members and Web Professionals everywhere!
For today’s podcast, I sat down with Dan Connolly, Technical Staff at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with a request that he summarize his keynote session that took place in Denver, CO. last month.
Dan Connolly is a research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in the Decentralized Information Group (DIG) and a member of the technical staff of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). His research interest is investigating the value of formal descriptions of complex systems like the Web, especially in the consensus-building process.
In 1995, Dan moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to join the W3C staff at MIT. From 1995 to 1997, during the intense struggle between Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, Dan chaired the working group that preserved HTML as an open standard.
Check out today’s three minute podcast on the Web Professional Minute website.
Today’s minute is sponsored by the Web Master Survival Guide. When you need professional resources, be sure to check out webmastersurvivalguide.com There is something there for all skill levels and disciplines and be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.
Transcript:
Bill Cullifer, Web Professional Minute: I am here with Dan Connolly, technical staff from the W3C at the Web Directions North Conference in Denver. Good morning Dan and thanks for agreeing to this interview.
Dan Connolly: Good morning.
Bill Cullifer, Web Professional Minute:: Dan, you gave a presentation this morning on a variety of W3C topics, kind of a landscape of the web as we know it today. Can you summarize that session for the subscribes of this podcast?
Dan Connolly: Sure. I think I will use a different question somebody asked at another conference was okay, with technology where anybody can make a radio show, does that mean we are all artists or whatever? The technology is available for everybody and one of the people that had been an artist for a long time sort of had a really good answer which was that it doesn’t mean we are all artists, but we are all responsible for our aesthetic choices. So, I talked a little bit about the balance between proprietary technologies and open standards and stuff and the web is kind of everywhere and everybody has got a choice about how they are going to be a part of it and so you can contribute, you can watch you know and if you don’t make choices, your choices are going to be made for you and this is happening everywhere from government to technology and art and everything in between. So, I think, I was trying to give people a sense of let’s zoom out and look at this technology that’s interacting with our society. It’s changing economics over time and in the course of a day and so yeah, the web used to be… I got in as a technical thing, but now it is connected with a lot of stuff with family and culture and life.
Bill Cullifer, Web Professional Minute: Yeah, very well said. If I am a teacher and I am listening to this podcast and I am looking out in the landscape[Phonetic] in terms of opportunity for employing people, would you have any specific recommendations on areas that they should essentially focus in on?
Dan Connolly: Well, the really current things right now are all dot mobiles[Phonetic] location where services [Inaudible] like this. JavaScript programming is something that remarkably young kids pick up and do amazing things with, but also you know try to go up the food chain a little bit from just the technology. How does this apply to tennis[Phonetic], how does this apply to government, how does this apply… you know and if you can have one good idea that connects a little piece of technology with a little piece of how life works, you could really change [Voice Cross Over].
Bill Cullifer, Web Professional Minute: Excellent. Thank you for your thoughts and for your time today.
Dan Connolly: Right.