during the closing session, a film was played which showed a demonstration of the first Graphical User Interface (GUI) by doug engelbart back in 1968. doug engelbart was present in the ballroom and received a standing ovation when he was introduced to the audience and received the Web Software award. it was a very touching moment.
robert metcalfe, vice president of technology from international data group gave a very interesting and entertaining talk. to me, these were the key statements:
"the Web will collapse in 1996"
"the W3C should take the lead in taking care of the Web standards, but might wanna stay away from producing their own browser." (he referred to the announcement of tim berners-lee, who said that the W3C will develop their own Web software)
"thank you Microsoft for adapting Java" (Microsoft announced that they will buy a Java license from Sun)
"the least important session: HTML" (he said, people attending a Web conference should probably know HTML ...)
"the most important session: micropayment" (as i said before, the Web goes commercial !)
"where is NetScape ?" robert had the following hypothesis why NetScape was not present at the conference:
NetScape's CEO is worth millions of dollars, but tim berners-lee is not and therefore the later didn't want NetScape to show up ...
NetScape does not care about standards ...
NetScape is busy ...
NetScape has heard that Microsoft adopts TCP/IP so they gave up and sold their shares to america on-line ...
robert claims that he called NetScape to find out the truth and they said they recently participated at five expositions, so they simple hadn't time to come.
finally, in answer of a question from the audience, he said the Web conference can only sustain its growth if it is no longer handled by volunteers !
monsieur jean-françois abramatic from INRIA invited the audience to attend the
fifth World Wide Web conference
in spring 1997 in paris, france.
it was stated, that after paris, there will be only one Web conference per year !
back to 4WWW95 main document.
4WWW95 closing session /
08-jan-96 (ra) /
reto ambühler
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