happy birthday www

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 will take place in the Globe this Friday afternoon 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 at CERN will be able to follow the event, either via a webcast at http://webcast.cern.ch, or on the website of the French news channel, lci.fr. The event will also be relayed to the Main Auditorium, the AB auditoriums in Meyrin and Prévessin, the Council Chamber, the AT auditorium and restaurant 2.

If you have any questions you'd like to ask Tim Berners-Lee, there will be an opportunity provided by the organizers of the Lift '09 conference, which took place last month in Geneva. If you have a question to ask, you can submit it via http://asklift.com/www-at-20/, and the most popular ones will be put to at the end of the afternoon.

With 2009 being declared the Year of Creativity and Innovation by the European Union, the 20th anniversary of the Web serves as a timely reminder of the powerful role that creativity in basic research plays as a driver of innovation. I hope you enjoy the celebration.

Rolf Heuer
CERN General Director

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