Dear Friends of the Web …
Tonight, 14 September 2008, I joined Tim Berners-Lee in Washington, DC, USA at the incredible Newseum for his announcement of the formation of the new World Wide Web Foundation. Tim’s speech is online, as well as video and photos and a press release.
Many thanks to everyone who has helped get us to this first step:
- Alberto Ibargüen and the Knight Foundation for their very generous seed grant.
- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Web Science Research Initiative, and the joint task force behind this project: Tim, Stéphane Boyera, Daniel Dardailler, Craig Heintzman, Rosemary Leith, Mauro Nunez and Thomas Roessler.
- Ian Jacobs, Karl Dubost, Ted Guild and many others from the W3C systems and communications teams for building this Web site.
The promise of the Foundation is to accelerate the Web’s advancement and growth around the planet. It is pretty exciting to be a part of it. We are still in the planning phase, and I expect to use this blog to share more information as we progress towards a full launch in early 2009. All those interested in becoming founding donors for this initiative are welcome to contact me at donations at webfoundation dot org.
Beyond financial contributions, what about contributions of intellectual capital? It would be great to hear your ideas on how the community that is developing the Web used now by about 1/5th of the inhabitants of the planet could contribute their time and skills to bring the benefits of the Web to the other 4/5ths.
Have a look around the new site. If you have any questions or ideas, send me email at contact at webfoundation dot org.