Celebrating 20th birthday in Japan - ASIA strong in Web standards -

W3C20 ASIA is the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the first W3C Asian host at Keio University in Japan in September 1996. The celebration consisted of three parts: a technical seminar, keynotes and the reception. The celebration gathered evangelists, specialists and experts to talk about various areas and use cases and topics, including future visions.

One forward-looking highlight of the event was a presentation about how the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympics Games is placing high importance on the Web accessibility of their Web pages and digital media, showing how much Web accessibility continues to be vital in the world.

The keynote panel discussion showed a clear strong tie among Asian countries.The speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan discussed topics including accessibility, IoT (Internet of Things), WoT (Web of Things), data, Fintech (Financial technology), RegTech (Regulatory technology) and society-facing issues around trust on the Internet and Web.

That’s why W3C in ASIA is so important. This population is coming online and we are all coming connected. The speed of light is not fast enough; traditional distinctions are disappearing—things like analog vs. digital, physical vs. virtual, real time vs. not real time, human vs. not human, but application or agent—and the disappearance of those distinctions will enable the next digital generation to overcome the speed of light.

An expectation for the W3C is to work with the rest of society to manage what’s coming next, since all people, life, industry segments, jobs or even virtual worlds are on the Internet and Web. Though the next 20 years will be very challenging, the panelists were confident that the W3C is the place for it to be brought to realization.

The reception opened with a Web visualization demonstrated by a budding artist and featured interesting talks from widely known speakers, as well as other demonstrations. This remarkable event made a strong impression about the importance of W3C in Asia.