W3C Office in Italy

CNR, as ERCIM and W3C Member, hosts the W3C Office in Italy, which is located at ISTI.
The mission of an office can be summarized as follows:

To promote adoption of W3C recommendations among developers, application builders, and standards setters, and to encourage inclusion of stakeholder organizations in the creation of future recommendations by joining W3C.

There are a number of general issues which initiated the office program of W3C:

• W3C specifications are becoming more complex and the range is growing. The number of recommendation is is also increasing. This has two major consequences:
  • W3C needs more active members coming from various areas of industry, research, user communities, etc
  • there is an increasing need for better outreach and awareness
• Users and implementors should be aware of W3C technologies
• Uptake of Web technology varies by region. Language, for example, might be a major problem but cultural, regional issues might also become obstacles

To answer to these challenges, W3C partners with regional organizations wishing to further W3C's mission by establishing local W3C offices. These W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, help broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.
Generally speaking, they promote the activities of W3C. This may include

• organizing tutorials, courses, general presentations, etc, on W3C technologies
• providing support to locally-organized events
• organizing translations for W3C documents
• acting as a forum for the members in their region
• building privileged relationships with local authorities, government agencies, user groups, various local communities (for example, with local disability groups in promoting W3C's WAI activities)
• feeding back local input to W3C
• issuing a monthly newsletter, sent out to a local mailing list, and including the most important news of W3C in the past period, possibly translated to the local language
• producing promotional brochures, documents, possibly CD ROMs
• build a network with the local press (both general and specialized) to disseminate W3C information and to secure proper press access for W3C in general
• support W3C communications and press releases

Everybody is invited to join and contribute to the success of W3C's work. The role of the Offices is to disseminate this very fact and to work with W3C Team to invite the local industries to actively participate in the development of Web technology, together leading the Web to its full potential.

Each office maintains a local web site (http://www.w3c.it/ is the Italian Office Website), following a common style, which lists the activities in the region and includes staff contact information. These web sites are linked from the Offices' Site at W3C.