2 April 2014, San Francisco, California
Annotating is the act of creating associations between distinct pieces of information. Annotation is a ubiquitous activity online in many guises: comments on articles, footnotes, sticky notes, “hot spots” on images, timestamped notes on video or audio tracks, highlighted text passages in ebook readers, evocative pictures attached to song lyrics, quotes and links on social media, and even tagged bookmarks, are all forms of annotation. One of the most common and engaging web activities for the average person is discussion of a document or piece of media.
Many projects and companies are now turning to annotations to solve a variety of issues with communication on the web.
W3C recognizes the value and potential in annotations of various types, and is holding a workshop to determine what the web ecosystem needs to fully realize the potential of annotations.
Annotation currently lacks a structured approach. Comments are siloed inside the blog or comment system hosted and controlled by the publisher of the original document, or inside an ebook reader. They aren't readily available for syndication or aggregation, and it's difficult to find more comments by an insightful author if they are scattered around different places on the web. Worthwhile commentary is obscured by trolling, spam, or trivial comments. These are challenges both social and technical.
Other problems are purely technical: interchange formats need to be agreed upon; privacy and security of comments need to be preserved; styling highlighted content across element boundaries is tricky; and finally, anchoring a passage when you don't control the original document, or when it has a multipage or single page view, or when it has newer versions or has otherwise changed from when the annotation was made, is a hard problem, and lies at the heart of annotations.
These requirements should be met across document types, reading systems, JavaScript libraries, and disciplines of study or entertainment. This workshop will focus primarily on the technical issues, with an emphasis on pragmatic solutions.
We want to identify the biggest challenges, most compelling use cases, and most promising solutions for standardization. We invite you to submit a paper and to attend this workshop to help shape the next steps.
In February, W3C started a discussion with the community on the development of a charter for a possible Working Group on Annotation at W3C. We anticipate getting further community perspectives on the scope of this proposed charter at this workshop. The plan may then be to revise and finalize that charter soon after this workshop; that charter may then be sent to W3C members for final approval and a Working Group could be started soon thereafter.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:
We want to know more about your state-of-the-art approaches.
To ensure productive discussions, the workshop is limited to 80 attendees. Participation is free and open to W3C members and non-members. Each organization may provide a maximum of two attendees.
Position papers are required to be eligible to participate in this workshop. Organizations or individuals wishing to attend must submit a position paper explaining their perspectives on a workshop topic of their choice no later than 28 February 2014. Participants should have an active interest in the area selected, ensuring other workshop attendees will benefit from the topic and their presence.
Position papers should:
See the position papers submitted for a similar W3C workshop as an example.
The authors of particularly salient or representative submissions will be given the opportunity to present their position at the workshop, to foster discussion. Those submitters not selected to present are still encouraged to attend the workshop to contribute to the discussion.
Position papers and presentation slides must be in English, in HTML, PDF, or plain text format. All submissions should be one to five pages in length, although they may link to longer versions or appendices.
Please note that submitted position papers will be published on the public Web page of the workshop.
Position papers should be submitted via email to the <team-annotation-submission@w3.org> mailing list.
W3C's Annotation Workshop is collocated with I Annotate 2014, an industry summit on annotation, which begins the day after W3C's workshop and includes 2 hackdays on the weekend. Attendees of the W3C Annotation Workshop are encouraged to attend the I Annotate summit, as well. I Annotate is organized by the host of the W3C Annotation Workshop, Hypothes.is. Organizations interested in becoming sponsors are encouraged to contact the organizers.
Golden Gate Room
Fort Mason Center
2 Marina Blvd
San Francisco, CA 94123
United States
+1 (415) 345-7500Wednesday, 2 April 2014
8:00–17:00
W3C has not negotiated special prices with any hotels, but we have identified 3 reasonably-priced hotels within walking distance of the venue:
Attendees may also wish to check local bed-and-breakfast options nearby.
The nearest airport is the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).
(Forthcoming)
Hypothes.is is a non-profit organization dedicated to the open annotation of all human knowledge. They are part of a community working towards an open source framework to allow fine-grained critique and community peer review of journal articles, books, news, religious texts, government documents, legislation and the web writ large. Their goal is to create shared infrastructure to help humans reason more effectively together.
W3C Workshops, meetups, and other events bring you into direct contact with leading Web technology experts: representatives from industry, research, government, and the developer community.
Whether your interests are focused on a particular topic being discussed by a Working Group, or you wish to reach a diverse international audience setting W3C's strategic direction, sponsorship helps your organization reach W3C's engaged participants.
Sponsorships offset a portion of our meeting costs, so W3C welcomes multiple sponsors for each event. All proposals for sponsorship are subject to W3C approval.
If you're interested in being a sponsor of the Annotation Workshop, please contact J. Alan Bird at abird@w3.org or +1 617 253 7823.
For additional information, please visit the Sponsorship program.