Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world forever: Tim Berners-Lee handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall entitled "Information Management : a Proposal". "Vague, but exciting" is how Mike described it, and he gave Tim the nod to take his proposal forward. The following year, the World Wide Web was born. This week, it's a pleasure and an honour for us to welcome the Web's inventor back to CERN to mark this special anniversary at the place the Web was born.
The celebration
A celebration will take place in the Globe on the afternoon of the 13th March from 14:00 to 17:30. It will consist of short presentations from Web veterans, a keynote speech from Tim Berners-Lee with a demonstration of the original browser, and a series of presentations from people that Tim believes are doing exciting things with the Web today.
Although the event is by invitation only, everyone will be able to follow the event:
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The celebration will be webcast (streamed both by CERN and the French newschannel lci.frfrom 14:00 CET).
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For broadcasters: Eurovision will broadcast the event at 19:00 CET: details.
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For those at CERN the event will also be relayed to the Main Auditorium, the AB auditoriums in Meyrin and Prvessin, the Council Chamber, the AT auditorium and restaurant 2.
Webcast schedule
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14:00: Welcome by Professor Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN
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14:05: Panel: The history of the Web with Ben Segal, Jean-Francois Groff and Robert Cailliau
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15:00: Demo of the NeXT computer on which Tim Berners-Lee developed the Web and which was also the first Web server
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15:15: ** break **
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16:00: Keynote: Tim Berners-Lee
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16:30: Panel: The future of the Web with Chris Bizer, Stephane Boyera, Dan Brickley and Tom Scott
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17:00: Close
Put your questions to Tim Berners-Lee
The organizers of the Lift '09 conference, which took place last month in Geneva, have provided a site where you may put questions to Tim Berners-Lee, and vote for your favourite questions submitted by others: http://asklift.com/www-at-20/. The most popular questions will be answered by Tim after his talk.
Where the web was born
More information on the beginnings of the web at CERN can be found in the following sites: