there was no competition, and everyone said “Yep, let’s do it,” because there was nothing to debate. So there is no substitute for being early.
X: You’ve also mentioned that you plan to take a new look at the consortium’s business model. With activities going on in so many areas, does W3C need to find new revenue sources, and what are your ideas about that?
JJ: When we talk about the business model, I wouldn’t restrict that to the financial piece. It’s all of these things: how do we have greater reach, greater technical vitality. The XG groups, the innovation groups, in my mind are also aspects of the business model. But getting back to your question about the financial model—first of all, I think it’s important to recognize that the financial model of a global organization needs to follow the financial model of the global economy. Certainly, we see increased globalization in the economy, so we need to become increasingly globalized. You don’t get much more globalized than W3C, but nonetheless there are areas of the world where there is rapid economic growth and we need to be an increasing part of that.
Another part of this is that the IT industry seeing a lot of merger and acquisition activity that is providing some compression of our membership. That is a challenge we need to deal with as well.
I would say that a third dimension is that the Web is not only about the IT industry, the Web is about every industry. We have some outstanding participation from organizations and companies that are not IT companies, but there is an opportunity to do more.
X: It sounds like you’re basically saying that W3C needs more dues-paying members, and that they need to come from many different industries.
JJ: You’re correct that the largest percentage slice of the W3C budget today is from dues. You’re also correct that we are strongest as an organization, not only financially but technically as well, when we have the largest and most diverse membership possible. But I don’t know that membership dues will be the only means of financial support.
X: One last question, related to the mobile Web. In view of the fact that more people in the future will be accessing the Web from mobile devices than from desktop or laptop computers, W3C and the World Wide Web Foundation are already working to make sure that the Web is accessible across many different devices. But mobile technology isn’t what IBM or Lucent or Novell are famous for. So I’m wondering what experience and perspectives you bring to this effort to make the Web safe for mobile.
JJ: Certainly the companies I’ve been at haven’t been device manufacturers. But wireless technology was invented at Bell Labs, and Alcatel Lucent built much of the infrastructure to support mobile devices. Novell is a huge participant in the Linux community, Linux being one of several choices available for mobile device operating systems. So I wouldn’t say that I’ve been on some island. Absolutely, mobile is extremely important. W3C will always put its focus on things related to standards and interoperability. Next month in Rome, for example, we have a workshop on device interoperability, focused on developers and how they deal with different device.
Mobile devices are absolutely exploding, and when I said earlier that we need to have a perspective on what the next big technology thing is, this is one of them. Despite the huge amount that has happened over the past 20 years, when you look at things like video, mobility, Web services, and cloud computing, we have a tremendous amount of change in front of us. I’m very excited.
