W3C

I have a lengthy history with W3C, stretching from somewhere around 2003 through to the present day. I began getting to know the organisation when I first started looking into the possible application of Semantic Web technologies for online safety. One thing lead to another and my W3C experience, which continues to this day on berhalf of GS1, includes:

Chair of the first incubator group (W3C Content Label Incubator Group).
Chair of the POWDER WG (that lead on from the incubator).
Member of the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group (June 2005 - 2009) for which I edited or was an acknowledged contributor to 6 published Notes or Recommendations.
Team member responsible for further developing and running online training in mobile Web and SVG (2009 - 2010);
Co-organised and ran workshop on Augmented Reality on the Web (June 2010); lead to establishment of Points of Interest Working Group.
Contractor brought in to update and run a revised version of the Mobile Web Best Practices Course (2011)
Team member September 2011 - December 2013 working on eGovernment, particularly in EU-funded projects in this area.
December 2013 - September 2016, Data Activity lead, coordinating new and current work around developent of the Web of data. In particular working on
- Data on the Web Best Practices (hands on role, team contact, closely related to the Share-PSI project that I coordinated).
- Spatial Data on the Web (collaboration with the OGC)
- Permissions and Obligations Expression
September 2016 - June 2017, Data Strategist, meaning more or less the same as my role as Data Activity lead but with slightly different emphasis following an internal reorganisation. My final W3C blog post gives a good summary of the kind of issues I faced in this role. Leaving was hard but I'm over it now!
Having moved to GS1 in July 2017 I made the case for our continued membership. I took over as GS1's representative on W3C's Advisory Council in December 2018.
September 2019, joined the Decentralized Working Group on behalf of GS1 and became an editor of that WG's Use Cases and Requirements document.
In August 2022 I became co-chair of the RDF Canonicalization & Hash WG with Markus Sabadello. This is related to the work on Verifiable Credentials.

So that's AC Rep, working group member, working group chair, contractor and team member, back to AC Rep, WG member and document editor, and co-chair. Quite a comprehensive set of roles at this organisation. It does that to you …

The World Wide Web Consortium needs little introduction. Headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, it is the organisation through which Web technologies are standardised (the best-known one of which is HTML).

I've participated in W3C working groups for many years, notably the Mobile Web Best Practices WG in which I was active from its creation in June 2006 until 2008. My primary concern in the group was in the development of mobileOK.

Alongside my MWBP role, I chaired the first Incubator Group which then lead to the formation of the POWDER WG. This comes under the Semantic Web Activity and means that I also sit on the Semantic Web Coordination Group. There's more about POWDER on a separate page.

My role

I joined the W3C team in February 2009 to work on the Mobile Web Initiative, specifically to develop and deliver training around the relevant Recommendations. The most up to date information about this can be found on the training page.

After a few months away I rejoined the team in September 2011 to work on EU projects in the general area of eGovernment.