On the 55th World Standards Day, my history of the Web and relationship with W3C

Today is the 55th World Standards Day. The first one was declared in 1970. It is still relevant today and worthy to honor the efforts of the many individuals and organizations who develop voluntary standards. Standards are blueprints for systems and technology to operate as seamlessly as possible.
Standards are instrumental globally both at the social and economic levels. Standardization is the development by consensus of technologies, techniques, systems and processes which aim to maximize compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality.

W3C is a standards development organization (SDO) which launched in 1994 -- 30 years ago. We celebrated W3C's 30th anniversary a week in advance this year, taking advantage of our community gathering for our yearly conference, TPAC 2024, where our work groups coordinate solutions and resolve challenging technical and social issues that the Web faces.

In 30 years W3C published 14254 technical reports for 518 web standards. The rest is standards-to-be all at different milestones of maturity, notes which are informational documents, registries or superseded documents because all technologies evolve and improve.

In 1946 when 25 countries decided to form the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) my parents were toddlers. In 1970 when the first World Standards Day was celebrated I wasn't yet born. In 1994 when W3C was launched by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee I was a student. I joined W3C in 1999 and its mission and values shaped the person I became. 

My point is that standardization is in-depth work that is done in the very long run. Standards are everywhere, ubiquitous, almost like utilities. They are so low-level that for the most part people are made aware of them only when they are controversial, fragmented or do not work. Part of my job in the W3C Communications Team is to ensure that key parties are aware of the Web standards work of the Web Consortium so that they can participate.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to talk about (my) history of the web and my relationship with the World Wide Web Consortium. Brian Kardell on behalf of W3C Member Igalia hosted and filmed the interview which aired late last week. I was delighted by the favorable timing which would see this "Igalia Chat" released the same month W3C celebrates its 30th anniversary.

I hesitated to accept the invitation because I didn't think I had a lot to contribute, given that I joined W3C only thanks to my good fortune, and given that unlike so many in the Web and Internet community I took a non-traditional discovery path. But Brian being an excellent host, he coaxed out of me a lot more than I was aware I knew. So many memories resurfaced! For example did you know the 1998 soccer World Cup was streamed live, in ASCII, over Telnet? I watched it!

Parts of the interview are a bit personal, but I shared with Brian some of my favorite thoughts and hopes for W3C.

My history of the Web starts at the discovery of a URL in 1995 on the back of a Sony Music CD, at making friends over IRC in 1996, then learning LaTeX in 1998 before learning HTML in the early 2000s while at W3C to work on and for the Web.

My relationship with W3C started in late 1998 at a job interview that I had not prepared for because I had little hope to be hired, but which turned out to be massively interesting. I got the job in January 1999 and today, 25 years after, I've held many roles within the organization and today still I continue to advocate internally about the things I care about for the Web and what as a public-interest organization the Web Consortium must do to better connect humanity.

Of my early "W3C years", we talked about Napster, Netscape Composer, Blogger, My.Opera, Blosxom, MovableType, WordPress, CSS, W3C's annual conference TPAC which I helped organize for many years, Social media and Mastodon, Identi.ca, a few pivotal moments for W3C, including the creation of Community Groups to significantly expand how web features could be incubated and put on the "fast track" for standardization. We took a trip back to 1994 to explain why W3C was set up the way it was, and then Brian and I could reminisce on why we had met in the first place 10 years ago: attempting to create a Membership tier with a reasonable fee allowing individuals to become W3C Members without paying the same fee as a small organization. Fast forward to 2023, W3C incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in the US, becoming officially the public-interest non-profit organization that it's always been. This is where I'm treading a bit of uncharted waters: after being a vocal proponent internally of doing more for Web sustainability and human rights, it would seem like there are opportunities for W3C's meaningful work to be complemented which may be coming to fruition in the near term.

If you watch/listen I hope you learn something!