Workshops on W3C Web Standards - 2009 November 2009 - Murcia, Granada, Tenerife (Spain)
Report

Introduction

Spain Map with Murcia (South East), Granada (South), and Tenerife (Canary Island, North Atlantic), © GoogleThree cities: Murcia, Granada, La Laguna (Tenerife)

The workshops were held in three public Spanish universities: Universidad de Murcia, Universidad de Granada, and Universidad de La Laguna. All of them were wide interested in co-organize the event, and they considered very important spreading topics not enough present in the current curricula such as Web standards, or the W3C's role in the success of the Web.

These universities were randomly selected among the cities where the W3C Spain Office had not organized previous events in. The first three proposals to the universities were accepted immediatelly. Specially, the departments of telecomm and computer science of the universities.

November 11, Murcia (South East of Spain)
The event was held at the Computer Science Faculty (Facultad de Informática) of the University of Murcia. The event were framed in the 25-year anniversary of this faculty. More info on the site of the event.
November 12, Granada (South of Spain)
The event was held in collaboration with the signal theory and telecommunications department (Departamento de Teoría de la Señal, Telemática y Comunicaciones) of the Engineering on Computer Science Technical College at University of Granada. More info on the site of the event.
November 25, La Laguna - Tenerife (Canary Islands)
The workshop was held in collaboration with the Taro Group, part of the Technical College of Engineering on Computer Science and Telecommunication at University of La Laguna. The Spain Office has never visited this region before. More info on the site of the event.

Welcome at the workshop in Murcia Opening of the workshop in Murcia by Prof. José Manuel García Carrasco, Dean of the Computer Science Faculty at Universidad de Murcia

Audience

A half of the public were students at universities. One month before each workshop, every event website was announced on the Spanish news section, and the registration form was open. The entrance was free of charge, but there were limited invitations due to the capacities of the rooms:

Audience in Granada Audience in Granada

Once the registration form was open, the seats were assigned in a first come first served basis. We accepted 30% more attendees than the capacity of the room. The rooms were completely full of attendees. For example, in the Granada's workshop, a waiting list registered more than 100 people.

In a couple of weeks all the seats were sold out, and a huge amount of emails were received in order to ask for additional seats. The events were advertised on the Spain Office's web site, and via Twitter/Identi.ca. Also, the universities printed and published posters with the information of the workshop. These announcements were a success.

Attendees' Profiles

A half of the attendees were students, and the rest were IT professionals (Web designers and developers, project managers, managers at local SMEs, etc), also representatives from Public Administrations.

Registration in Murcia Registration in Murcia

All of them found technical content (HTML, best practices, etc.) in the talks.

Talks

Martin's talk in Granada Martin's talk in Granada

All the workshops were introduced by Martin Alvarez Espinar, Spain Office Manager, who presented an overview on Web standards and W3C. After that, he gave a more technical talk about best practices on Web design, Accessibility, Mobility, and Semantic Web.

In every event, people from the host were invited to participate actively in it (giving a talk or in a panel).

Murcia

Computer Science Faculty, Murcia Computer Science Faculty, Murcia

In Murcia, the event was introduced by the Computer Science Faculty Dean, José Manuel García Carrasco. He thanked the Office for organizing the event within the frame of their celebration (25 anniversary of the Faculty).

Jesualdo Tomás Fernández, professor at Universidad de Murcia, and an expert in Semantic Web, gave a talk in the workshop titled "Walking towards the Semantic Web". He was the person who helped the Spanish Office to organize the event at this university.

Also, Pedro José Vivancos (from the company Vócali Sistemas Inteligentes) was invited to present a standard-based semantic browser developed for the educational community.

After the two Martin's talks, the Jesualdo's one, and the Pedro's demonstration, a panel with these three panelists was held. There, the public interacted with the speakers, asking questions related to the previous talks. The public was very active in this session.

Jesualdo and Pedro during their talks in Murcia Jesualdo and Pedro's talks in Murcia

Granada

Opening in GranadaOpening table in Granada

In Granada, the talks addressed by two experts on Mobile Web Services were the perfect complement of the Martin's presentations. These invited speakers were: Juan José Ramos Muñoz, and Ángel Gómez García, researchers at Universidad de Granada.

The University's authorities in charge of the opening were:

Everyone of them shown the commitment with standards and valued the W3C's role in the community. After that, they expressed their wishes of being W3C Members.

Juan José's TalkJuan José's Talk

Ángel's TalkÁngel's Talk

During the break in Granada, coffee was served for all attendees and speakers. This coffee was by courtesy of the Faculty of Computer Science.

Attendees in Granada, during the coffee breakCoffee break in Granada

Tenerife

Attendees in Tenerife, during the workshopAttendees in Tenerife

In La Laguna (Tenerife), the event was held in the afternoon, and was focused on Open Data and eGovernment. Juan Francisco Hernández, from the regional government, was invited to participate in the event, but he was not able to attend due to personal reasons. Also, Carlos de La Fuente, CTIC's AC-Rep, presented his point of view about OGD (Open Government Data). As in the rest of the workshops, Martin gave a couple of talks presenting W3C, standards, and best practices.

Both, Martin and Carlos, extended their talks to cover the time of the schedule. The event was closed with a panel, where the public asked many questions about Web Accessibility, Semantic Web and OGD.

Martin during his talkMartin's talk in Tenerife

Carlos during his talkCarlos's talk in Tenerife

Video Recordings

The talks in Murcia was recorded and broadcasted online, during the event. The Universidad de Murcia's video platform, called TV-UM, was the responsible of broadcasting the videos.

In Granada, Rolando, a voluntary professor from the Telecommunication Department, video-recorded the whole event. Also, he took most of the pictures of these report.

Material

Attendees with spreading material in MurciaAttendees with spreading material in Murcia

Printed spreading material was given to each attendee in every workshop. This material was in Spanish, and it included:

Survey

A couple of days before each event, each attendee received an email where the organizers gave thanks and asked for the personal opinion of the event, through an online survey.

Questions asked were:

In despite of all of the three surveys were independent, and the results were collected in three different parts, all the responses were mixed up in order to have a overall impression of the events. So, the following graphs are the result of mixing 150 survey responses related to the three workshops.

Content of the Programme

Survey results

17% of the attendees think that organization in general was excellent; 68%, good; 14%, 'So, so'; and the rest (1%) did not answered.

Most of the attendees were pleased with the agenda. The rest of them didn't give a specific reason or said that they would prefer other topics more interesting than W3C, and Web standards. Some prefer a more advanced workshop, but some said that some talks were too much technical.

Timing

Survey Graph

9% of the attendees think that timing was excellent; 61%, good; 23%, 'So, so'; 6% poor; and the rest (1%) did not answered.

Most of the attendees were pleased with the duration of the event. Some of them commented that a day-long event would be too much. Only the 6% of the attendees disliked the duration, due to they would have preferred more content, and treating some topics deeply.

Suggested Topics

Attendees suggested other topics such as HTML5, Semantic Web, and CSS (deeply).

Organization in General

Graph

27% of the attendees thought that organization in general was excellent; 66%, good; 4%, 'So, so'; 3% poor; and the rest (1%) did not answered.

Most of the people was pleased, but some negative comments were related to the agenda (a few talks, and too theorical).

Spreading Material (Gifts)

Graph

45% of the attendees think that the spreading material was excellent; 37%, good; 6%, 'So, so'; 5%, poor; 5%, quite poor; and the rest (2%) did not answered.

The majority of the attendees found the spreading material excellent or good and very useful. People who thought negatively, said that they did not receive all of the flyers and guides, due they arrived late, when all the copies had been given. It was announced that more material would be send to the universities.

Premises

Graph

27% of the attendees think that premises were excellent; 47%, good; 16%, 'So, so'; 4%, poor; 3%, poor; and the rest (3%) did not answered.

This point was different in each workshop. People in Granada had the most positive reaction. A coffee break was offered to them and it was very appreciated. All of them were grateful to the organizers.

Some attendees expressed their discomfort about the premises, but all the suggestions were around the huge number of the attendees. The main exposed reasons were the lack of free seats. The room was fully booked, so there were only a couple of seats available in each workshop. In Granada, for instance, the air-conditioned of the room was poor and the temperature was rising during the event, but in general was good.

Most of the complains came from the Workshop in Tenerife. Although the room was not very big, there is not microphone, and the acoustic was limited. Also, attendees had some problems to find the exact room, once arrived to the building.

Will you attend next year?

Graph

Only a 3% of the attendees expressed their intention of not repeating the experience in a similar workshop.

They expected another kind of event, not focused on Web design and development. Although a few people would not repeat, they felt pleased about attending an W3C event in their city.

Media Coverage

During the event in Murcia, a journalist from the university, gathered information about W3C, the Spanish Office, and the workshop in order to compose a press release for the local and regional media.

Related Entries

This press release was published in several newspapers, and blogs:

Conclusions

Every university offered to repeat the event, or celebrate another similar one, the next year.

The Spain Office did many good contacts among the attendees and the co-organizers, who were pleased after the events.