W3C at Industry of Things World, Berlin

The Web of things seeks to counter fragmentation of the IoT through metadata and APIs, building upon W3C's framework for linked data. We seek to simplify application development, and enable easy integration across IoT platforms and application domains. To help with reaching out to stakeholders, W3C took part in the Industry of Things World conference in Berlin on 19-20 September 2016, with the support of the W3C German/Austria office. The event attracted nearly 1000 attendees interested in the potential of the IoT for industry. In the opening keynote "Beyond Industry 4.0", Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster presented the Web of things as the jet engine for smart factories, products and services, and the interoperability layer above the Industrial Internet.

W3C greeted visitors at our stand and handed out introductory materials including the white paper for the Web of Things, and a joint white paper on semantic interoperability prepared by individuals involved in a broad range of organisations.

We also ran a workshop "Building the Web of Things – Standards for semantic interoperability and end to end security". The workshop was organised by Georg Rehm, W3C Office Germany/Austria, and started with an introduction to the Web of things by Dave Raggett. We had two panel sessions. The first on the industrial perspective with Axel Schüßler (Connctd), Colin I’Anson (HPE), Frank Reusch (RWE/Lemonbeat) and Dieter Wegener (Siemens). The second panel session focused on coordination across IoT alliances and standards development organisations with Stefan Hoppe (OPC Foundation), Stefan Weisgerber (DIN) and Thomas Hahn (Plattform Industrie 4.0).

Later, W3C was represented on the conference standardisation panel along with Stefan Hoppe, Global Vice President, OPC Foundation, Dave Raggett, W3C Staff Lead for the Web of Things, and Dieter Wegener on behalf of ZVEI-Führungskreis Industrie 4.0. Our thanks to the moderator, Melinda Crane, Chief Political Correspondent, Deutsche Welle.