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<title>WebWorld Orlando Trip Report by Dan Connolly</title>
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<h1>WebWorld Trip Report</h1>

<address>
<a href="http://www.hal.com/~connolly">Daniel W. Connolly</a><br>
$Id: trip-report.html,v 1.1 1997/07/06 06:21:12 connolly Exp $
</address>

<hr>
<h2> Background and Summary </h2>

<p> The <A href="http://www.ocm.com/dci/summary.htm">WebWorld</a>
    conference series is run by Digital Consulting Inc. <a
    href="http://www.ocm.com/dci/jayweb.htm">Jay Weber</a> from EIT is
    the conference chair.

<p> I was invited to speak on HTML and related matters. (see: <a
    href="ww9401.html">materials from my presentation</a>)

<p> In contrast to a conference like the Geneva WWW conference, this
    had a decidedly commercial slant. This was not a group of
    academics and engieers getting together to share wigged-out ideas;
    rather, it was MIS managers, marketing managers, and consultants
    getting together to discuss the status and growth of the internet
    as a way of doing business communications and commerce.

<p> The Web is no longer something that only a few bold companies are
    getting into. The feeling I got at this conference was that having
    a web site is becoming as important as having an 800 number. If
    you don't have one, your competitors will, and you'll lose
    business.

<hr>
<h2> Sunday: Pre-conference Seminars </h2>

<p> As my travel arrangements had me arriving in Orlando Saturday
    evening, I was able to attend some of the pre-conference seminars.

<h3> <a
    href="http://www.ocm.com/dci/daverad.htm">Using the Internet to
    Target Your Markets</a> by David Radin and Nathan
    Wgoner</h3>

<p> This was a very polished presentation, aimed at folks in
    marketing who were trying to get a feel for the size and character
    of the markets they can reach through the net.

<p> It was interesting to hear the questions and guage the level of
    understanding of the audience. This whole area is moving so
    quickly: some folks come in looking for consultants with "3 years
    of experience," only to discover that the web itself is barely 3
    years old. The folks that have been at it for six months or more,
    on the other hand, generally had tangible results that they were
    proud to share.

<h3> <a
    href="http://www.ocm.com/dci/allansem.htm">Advanced Development
    Topics</a> by Alan Richmond</h3>

<p> Alan has been doing forms, imagemaps, and CGI development since
    the technologies themselves first appeared. He started developing
    forms-based applications at Goddard space center. He is now
    writing a book on the subject and starting his own consulting
    business.

<p> He edits the <cite><a
    href="http://www.stars.com/">Web Developer's Virtual
    Library</a></cite>, which is an invaluable resource for web
    applications developers.

<p> Again, the varied level of familiarity with the net, the web, and
    forms technology among the audience was an interesting situation
    to observe.

<p> There was a lot of interest in HTML conversion tools and editors,
    as well as HTML standards and upcoming features.

<hr>
<h2> Monday: Conference and Exposition </h2>

<p> I unfortunately missed the conference chair address, as I was busy
    preparing for my own presentation.

<h3> <a href="ww9401.html">Formalizing Web Technology</a> by Dan
     Connolly </h3>

<p> I had originally told the conference organizers that an overhead
    projector would satisfy my A/V requirements. But on Sunday, when I
    realized how much connectivity and equipment was available, I
    requested a PC with a web browser connected to the net. After a
    little checking, they told me I could have a web browser for my
    presentation.  But when the time came, the net configuration
    didn't work out.  So there were some awkward points in my
    presentation where I had intended to do a little surfing. But it
    worked out for the most part.

<p> As this was my first speaking engagement, I was pleased that the
    room was comfortably small, but filled to capacity with around
    120-150 attendees. I hope that they were convinced of my opinion
    that the growth of the web as a commercial market depends on
    better specifications to ensure interoperability and
    extensibility.


<h3> Keynote: Marc Andressen</h3>

<p> Marc gave a high-speed talk on his view of the recent past and his
    vision of the future. He plugged Netscape and its products only a
    little. He emphasized open systems, interoperability, and rapid
    growth.

<p> I'll be interested to see how the security features of the
    Netscape browser and NetSite server interact with evolving payment
    infrastrutures to create "instant gratification" shopping on the
    net.

<h3> Secure HTTP: Alan Shiffman, EIT </h3>

<p> Alan is a great speaker. He gave a pretty nifty presentation of
    public key cryptography in general security issues for commercial
    internet applications, and briefly demonstrated that the S-HTTP
    proposal meets the requirements for secure transactions in internet
    applications.

<h3> Keynote: Jay Tanenbaum, CommerceNet</h3>

<p> Mr. Tanenbaum noted the tremendous growth of business uses of the
    web and the net. He was careful to point out that CommerceNet
    didn't really invent any of the technology (with the notable
    exception of S-HTTP), but in the eyes of business executives, they
    "legitimized commerce on the net."

<p> He explained that there were some proprietary systems (Microsoft
    Network, and the Lotus/AT&amp;T collaboration) that could have eclipsed
    the internet as a platform for commerce, had CommerceNet not demonstrated
    the benefit of a decentralized system.

<h3> Product Showcase </h3>

<p> The expected players were there: Netscape, Spry, etc. The biggest
    booth was America Online's showcase of the InternetWorks browser
    that they recently aquired in buying BookLink Technologies. There
    were several MS-Windows based browsers that went beyond Netscape
    or any of the other Mosaic work-alike with really novel user
    interfaces.

<p> Many of these interfaces go a long way to helping users manage a
    web of bookmarks into the global web. Unfortunately, it seemed
    that each browser had its own proprietary database format for
    these bookmarks, even though there was no clear reason why they
    couldn't be stored as HTML.

<p> There were some reasonable authoring systems, including an add-on
    to MS Word version 6 for Windows. But far and away the best
    authoring tool was Pages.

<p> Pages has been around for a while, providing separation of content
    from presentation for mission-critical document management by way
    of some very professionally crafted style sheets and design
    elements. All they did was apply their technology to the much
    smaller HTML problem. The result is a really slick tool. Too bad
    it's only available on NeXTStep! Apparently an MS-Windows port is
    in the works.

<hr>
<h2> Tuesday</h2>

<p> <i>Stay Tuned...</i>

<hr>
<h2> Wednesday </h2>

<p> <i>Stay Tuned...</i>

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