The Web of Things (WoT) IG/WG has made significant progress towards our goal of an open Internet of Things based on web standards. At the recent W3C TPAC meeting held in Fukuoka Japan on September 16-20, we once again demonstrated the use of WoT Thing Descriptions to support interoperability between IoT devices from multiple manufacturers. A variety of devices from Panasonic, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Intel were combined with a Web Things gateway from Mozilla as well as services from Oracle and Siemens to target a variety of consumer and industrial IoT use cases. NHK additionally demonstrated an integration of their hybridcast system with WoT, using data embedded in television broadcasts to drive contextual IoT services, such as adapting lighting to specific content.

The following figure gives a concrete example of the main deliverable to date of the WoT WG: the WoT Thing Description. A WoT Thing Description is simply a standardized data format, based on JSON-LD, for providing the metadata for a Thing so that the services and data it provides can be understood and so that it can be accessed by authorized users. It can be used to describe existing devices and services as well as supporting the development of new IoT systems. The intention is to support the integration of IoT systems by allowing a common means for metadata to be exchanged and a common high-level abstraction for network interactions based on properties, events, and actions.

We are now rechartering both the Interest Group and Working Group with work items such as discovery and ad-hoc interoperability in constrained environments. We encourage readers interested in these topics to reach out and engage with us in this exciting work!

Dave Raggett, W3C activity lead for the Web of Data and champion for the Web of Things, gave an invited talk on the Web of Things at the plenary session of the FIWARE Summit on Tuesday 8 May in Porto, Portugal. FIWARE is a leading open source IoT platform that has emerged from IoT projects supported by the European Commission. Dave later met with FIWARE staff to discuss potential opportunities for collaboration between W3C and FIWARE in respect to alignment between the W3C Web of Things object model and scripting API with the FIWARE Orion context broker, which is based upon ETSI's NGSI-LD as a REST API using JSON-LD for querying, updating and notifications of changes to the context, including IoT devices. Given the use of W3C's framework for Linked Data as the basis for both the Web of Things and FIWARE's Context Broker, it makes sense to look for opportunities to align the vocabularies and APIs.

The WoT face-to-face meeting in Santa Clara, CA, USA was a special meeting: It was the first official activity of the newly chartered Web of Things Working Group (WG). The Interest Group (IG) transferred the work items, it had identified and consolidated over the past one and a half years, to the WG, where they entered Recommendation Track. As a result, the WG now created the following Editor's Drafts:

• https://w3c.github.io/wot-architecture/
• https://w3c.github.io/wot-thing-description/
• https://w3c.github.io/wot-scripting-api/
• https://w3c.github.io/wot-binding-templates/

The drafts are developed on GitHub. The repositories to contribute are linked from each draft. The corresponding WG Task Forces -- note that contributing now requires being a W3C and WG Member agreeing to the Patent Policy -- are organizing weekly WebEx calls, but also make use of the GitHub Issues. Intermediary results will be shared publicly during the joint WoT IG and WG WebEx call.

Besides this historical event for W3C WoT, Santa Clara also had an excellent OpenDay with (among other) valuable input from the JSON Schema and JSON-LD 1.1 authors, interesting experiences from WoT implementors, and inspiring talks by Physical Web creator Scott Jenson as well as HP Fellow Bruce Fleming.

Santa Clara Participants (left at the very end)

Next PlugFest

The PlugFest this time was enriched by a remote Festo plant operated through Siemens's node-wot implementation and a ROS-based Intel robot. Meanwhile Panasonic even got a pet for their ever-growing WoT-enabled smart home with numerous connected sensors, actuators, and applicances. The goal for the next PlugFest is to include OCF devices that are integrated into the Web of Things through the first Binding Template.

Finally, a big THANK YOU to Intel for hosting this face-to-face meeting in Santa Clara!

A few month ago, the partners of the COMPOSE European projects also active in the WoT IG were asked to reflect on the experiences implementing large interoperable IoT ecosystems and to produce a technical recommendation for the WoT IG/WG showing the way towards standardization.

EVRYTHNG together with a number of partners and the support of W3C took on this mission and produced the Web Thing Model which became an accepted member submission last August. The goal of this post is to provide an overview of the Web Thing Model and explain its relation to the current work of the WoT IG/WG.

The Web Thing Model in a Nutshell

In a nutshell the Web Thing Model is a cookbook for integrating Things to the Web and in particular to HTTP, WebSocket, JSON and JSON-LD. It was built to give recommendations in 4 main areas: Protocols, Best Practices, Resources and Data Model and Semantic Extensions.

However, conscious that not all Things will offer native APIs using these tools (mainly because of resource constraints such as being battery powered), it starts by looking at integration patterns: Direct Connectivity, Gateway-Based Connectivity and Cloud-Based Connectivity.

With these integration options in mind, the Web Thing model looks at Best Practices (1) for implementing Web Things. This is where protocols such as HTTP and WebSocket are mentioned but it also covers how to apply REST principles to build the API of Things.

Then, it focuses on a simple but powerful Resource and Data Model (2) composed of the following resources:

• Things - A web Thing can be a gateway to other devices that don’t have an internet connection. This resource contains all the web Things that are proxied by this web Thing. This is mainly used by clouds or gateways because they can proxy other devices.
• Model - A web Thing always has a set of metadata that defines various aspects about it such as its name, description, or configurations.
• Properties - A property is a variable of a web Thing. Properties represent the internal state of a web Thing. Clients can subscribe to properties to receive a notification message when specific conditions are met; for example, the value of one or more properties changed.
• Actions - An action is a function offered by a web Thing. Clients can invoke a function on a web Thing by sending an action to the web Thing. Examples of actions are “open” or “close” for a garage door, “enable” or “disable” for a smoke alarm, and “scan” or “check in” for a bottle of soda or a place. The direction of an action is usually from the client to the web Thing. Actions represent the public interface of a web Thing and properties are the private parts. Much like in any programming languages, you can access the public interface, and whatever is private remains accessible only for privileged parties, like the instance itself or, in this case, the web Thing. But limiting access to actions - that is, the public interface - also allows you to implement various control mechanisms for external requests such as access control, data validation, updating a several properties atomically, and the like.

All these resources are semantically described by simple models serialized in JSON. Resource findability is based Web Linking standard and semantic extensions using JSON-LD are supported. This allows extending basic descriptions using a well-known semantic format such as the Schema.org Product schema or the GS1 Web Vocabulary. Using this approach, existing services like search engines can automatically get and understand what Things are and how to interact with them.

The Web Thing Model in the Real-World

The Web Thing Model has been adopted by a number of organisations and European projects as a basis for creating the application layer of Things in IoT scenarios. We also decided to start implementing it in the EVRYTHNG API and wrote an opensource Node.js reference implementation for the Raspberry Pi called webofthings.js.

The Web Thing Model and the W3C WoT IG Work

The Web Thing Model was only the beginning of the Web of Things work at W3C. Since then a number of members joined and are driving the exploration efforts forward in the W3C WoT Interest Group, soon to be starting as a Working Group.

The relationship between the Web Thing Model and the current WoT IG work is pretty straightforward to understand. The Integration Patterns of the Web Thing Model are similar to what the WoT IG Architecture Document references. Similarly, the model of Things and other the model of other resources is discussed in the Thing Description which takes a very similar approach and terminology to the Web Thing Model.

However, there are also differences: the Web Thing Model focuses solely on readily Internet (TCP/IP, UDP) and Web of browsers compatible protocols (WebSocket, HTTP, HTTP/2) and relies on translators for other protocols. The WoT IG Architecture Document extends this and proposes the notion of Protocols Bindings. A Protocol Binding is a way to map an existing IoT protocol (e.g., BacNet) to the Thing Description and its interaction patterns. Finally, unlike the Web Thing Model which focuses on describing a REST API and a pub/sub extension, the WoT IG Architecture Document also references a scripting API: it proposes an IDL (Interface Description Language) that offers programmatic access to Things and their services. Note that this presentation below gives you a closer look at the similarities and differences between the two approaches.

Reading Further...

If you are interested in adopting and evolving the Web Thing Model a good starting point is the “Building the Web of Things” a book by Dom Guinard and Vlad Trifa that takes a practical look at using the Web (and the Web Thing Model) to build connected products. Also, you might want to checkout or contribute to webofthings.js, a simple implementation of the Web Thing Model approach for the Raspberry Pi. Finally, this is only the beginning of standardization in the Web of Things so make sure you keep an eye on the upcoming work of the Web of Things Working Group!

The Hypercat Alliance organised a one day event on 27 September 2016 at the BT Centre, London, to showcase IoT projects using the Hypercat specification for web based access to catalogues of IoT services. The projects encompass 11 vertical “spearheads” across smart cities and industry, from logistics to smart lighting. Dave Raggett, W3C Staff lead for the Web of things presented a short introduction to the Web of things, and took part in the panel session on the future of Hypercat and the IoT. W3C, Hypercat and BSI are seeking to collaborate on promoting a shared vision for countering fragmentation of the IoT, and to encourage more companies to take an active role in driving work on standards as the Web evolves from a Web of pages into a Web of things. In support of this collaboration, W3C is planning on launching an IoT on the Web Business Group to bring together people to work on the business requirements across a broad range of application domains, and to help with coordination across IoT alliances and standards development organisations.

From left to right: Mike Fisher (BT), Stuart Higgins (Cisco), Dave Raggett (W3C), Scott Steedman (BSI) and Nick Monnickendam (Flexeye).

The Web of things seeks to counter fragmentation of the IoT through metadata and APIs, building upon W3C's framework for linked data. We seek to simplify application development, and enable easy integration across IoT platforms and application domains. To help with reaching out to stakeholders, W3C took part in the Industry of Things World conference in Berlin on 19-20 September 2016, with the support of the W3C German/Austria office. The event attracted nearly 1000 attendees interested in the potential of the IoT for industry. In the opening keynote "Beyond Industry 4.0", Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster presented the Web of things as the jet engine for smart factories, products and services, and the interoperability layer above the Industrial Internet.

W3C greeted visitors at our stand and handed out introductory materials including the white paper for the Web of Things, and a joint white paper on semantic interoperability prepared by individuals involved in a broad range of organisations.

We also ran a workshop "Building the Web of Things – Standards for semantic interoperability and end to end security". The workshop was organised by Georg Rehm, W3C Office Germany/Austria, and started with an introduction to the Web of things by Dave Raggett. We had two panel sessions. The first on the industrial perspective with Axel Schüßler (Connctd), Colin I’Anson (HPE), Frank Reusch (RWE/Lemonbeat) and Dieter Wegener (Siemens). The second panel session focused on coordination across IoT alliances and standards development organisations with Stefan Hoppe (OPC Foundation), Stefan Weisgerber (DIN) and Thomas Hahn (Plattform Industrie 4.0).

Later, W3C was represented on the conference standardisation panel along with Stefan Hoppe, Global Vice President, OPC Foundation, Dave Raggett, W3C Staff Lead for the Web of Things, and Dieter Wegener on behalf of ZVEI-Führungskreis Industrie 4.0. Our thanks to the moderator, Melinda Crane, Chief Political Correspondent, Deutsche Welle.

Beginning of July 2016, the W3C Web of Things Interest Group met in Beijing, China, with a broad range of participants from 25 different companies and institutions. The face-to-face meeting was hosted by the China Electronics Technology Group  Corporation (CETC), the China IoT Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance (CIoTA), and the W3C host at Beihang University. The event was also co-located with the CIoTA’s 2016 International Open IoT Technology and Standard Summit.

The first two days were open to local companies and institutions. We learned about CETC’s vision of IoT interoperability and enjoyed live demonstrations encompassing many things such as air purifiers, car controllers, and talking robots as well as the cloud-based E-Harbour IoT platform implemented by Beijing Wuliangang Ltd.

The Beijing meeting was also a milestone for the W3C WoT activities, as for the first time, all envisioned building blocks came to life in our so-called PlugFest. Multiple companies brought their prototypes, which we then interconnected in different cross-company, cross-domain collaboration scenarios. We successfully tested a running Web of Things made of

• Air conditioners
• Classic Raspberry Pi with extension shields
• Industrial automation controller
• Generic BACnet gateway
• Table fan
• Window curtains
• Wireless sensor nodes
• WoT-enabled Web browser
• Several scripted WoT apps exposing virtual Things

The PlugFest scenarios now covered all building blocks

• All devices registered their semantic Thing Description in a repository that allows SPARQL lookups
• The participating Things had Protocol Bindings for HTTP, CoAP, BACnet, and Lemonbeat
• The WoT-enabled Web browser as well as the industrial controller offered the Scripting API for dynamic mashups written in JavaScript

The highlights were probably

• A WoT app running in the browser to interact with Things using UI elements generated from the Thing Description
• A smartphone running a Servient that allows WoT-based access to off-the-shelf Bluetooth devices
• A wireless sensor node doing a semantic lookup to find our comfort voter and participating in the vote based on its temperature sensor
• A portable script moved to the industrial controller to control an air conditioner in Japan
• A semantic rule engine to control window curtains from a wireless brightness sensor
• Mashing up a BACnet controller and KNX room unit with a fan over Lemonbeat, an LED matrix over HTTP, and the voting sensor node over CoAP

This time, on-site participation was difficult for some of the previous PlugFest participants. Thus, we decided to move future PlugFests further toward remote participation and make reference implementations available online. Any implementer is invited to join to explore the current practices and to help leading the WoT activities into the right direction!

The next face-to-face meeting of the Interest Group will be in Lisbon, Portugal on 22-23 September 2016 as part of the W3C annual get together (TPAC 2016).

I've just returned from the IoT TechExpo Europe in Berlin. This event reflects the huge interest internationally in the potential for the Internet of Things. There were over one hundred exhibitions spread over two floors, along with 5 tracks. I was one of the panelists in a session on creating a standards framework for IoT as part of the Developer and IoT Technologies track. I followed this with a talk on tackling data security and privacy challenges. The talk covered the following topics:

• Understanding the unique challenges of security for the IoT, and preparing for the next evolutions of the technologies involve
• Addressing the risks of big data – greater volume of sensitive data creating a greater risk of data and identity theft, device manipulation, data falsification, IP theft and server/network manipulation etc.
• Enabling data security in IoT – protecting integrity, authenticity and confidentiality of information
• Exploring issues of privacy – to what extent users require privacy, and how it can be maintained whilst still making data useful
• The role of metadata and shared trust assumptions for end to end security across platforms

IoT security should worry us all, and we need to work together on pooling best practices and identifying where new standards are needed. By participating in the discussions your company can help to drive this and to benefit from discussions with other security experts. Security is an important topic for the Web of Things Interest Group so please join us to help build a more secure Web.

The Web of Things depends upon applications for its value. In the Interest Group. we’ve talked a lot about thing descriptions and APIs, but very little about applications, and I think this is holding us back.

A microcontroller may be dedicated to a single application. This is the model for the Arduino framework where each device is limited to one application sketch. For home hubs and cloud platforms we need to enable multiple applications to be installed and run. Some apps run in the background without a human machine interface, e.g. a data logger that stores sensor data onto a memory card or which uploads the data to the cloud. Other apps run in the foreground and require a human machine interface.

Imagine using a smart phone to access apps on your home hub. One of these will allow you to manage the installed apps. It will allow you to review the existing apps, to run them, to delete them, and even to install new ones. One way for this to work is for the home hub to act as a web server. At the minimum the hub will need to support HTTP, but it would be better if it can also support WebSockets for asynchronous bidirectional messaging. The hub would also need to support the protocols and communications technologies to access IoT devices.

When it comes to finding new apps to install, you would visit a website on the Internet that is trusted by your home hub. By this I mean that the hub provides the CORS headers that enable a script on web page loaded from an Internet site to communicate with the hub. The CORS header might enable any domain, with the hub requiring a certificate to be provided by the website. I can imagine the web page passing the URI for the app to the hub for it to download, subject to your approval. An app could be delivered as a zipped collection of files. The hub would verify their integrity and install them on local storage. The files would include the human machine interface for the apps, i.e. the HTML and related resources for the web page for accessing the app. The files would also include the scripts for accessing the things hosted by the hub as proxies for the connected IoT devices.

There are challenges for the smart phone to find the home hub, but I am confident that this would soon be overcome as the use of home hubs for smart homes becomes commonplace. Likewise, IoT devices need to be able to discover the hub and register themselves. Alternatively, the hub could discover the devices, but that doesn’t work so well for sleepy battery operated devices that aren’t listening for discovery probes.

Thing descriptions are metadata that describes how applications interact with things, and what protocols and communications patterns, platforms should use to access other platforms. If apps know about classes of devices and the protocols to access them with, then thing descriptions aren’t needed as the information is embedded in the app’s code. So what are the benefits for thing descriptions? They enable gateways to operate without needing to install apps for the given IoT devices, more generally they enable proxy chains, e.g. from an IoT device to a gateway to the cloud and finally to a web page on your browser. They enable services that combine data from different cloud platforms. They enable search and composition of services. They enable simpler applications which can interact with local software objects without needing to know about the communication patterns and protocols.

I am enjoying the slow process of implementing this as open source software, since being able to show people working examples is much more compelling than a slide presentation. My hope is that we can enable a thriving market of apps and services based upon open standards that lower the costs for integration across platforms and in doing so greatly expand the market potential. ]]> 0 Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:48:51 +0000 https://www.w3.org/blog/2016/w3c-day-gijon-spain-26-may-2016/ https://www.w3.org/blog/2016/w3c-day-gijon-spain-26-may-2016/ Dave Raggett https://www.w3.org/blog/2016/w3c-day-gijon-spain-26-may-2016/#comments Dave Raggett

Martin Alvarez Espinar is the manager for W3C España. He invited me to give a presentation on the Web of Things at the W3C Day on Wednesday 26th May in Gijón, a city in Asturias, Spain. After some introductions, we listened to a remote presentation by Szymon Lewandowski who presented the efforts of the European Commission on evolving industry towards a Digital Single Market. I followed with an introduction to the Web of Things and a brief account of the W3C Web of Things Interest Group and plans for a Working Group. There were talks about efforts by the Spanish government to promote the adoption of IoT technologies in the Spanish private sector. Panel sessions included Interoperability within the Industry of Things, Digital Enablers on the road towards Industry 4.0, Cybersecurity within IoT, Big data, cloud computing, and data analytics and Roads to Digital Transformation in the Industry 4.0. In the breaks we were able to visit the demonstrator stands. One applied a semantic based approach to monitoring light pollution due to city lights. Another looked at the potential for exploiting virtual reality. Martin has provided a longer account of the W3C day.

We travelled to Canada for meetings hosted by the Université du Québec à Montréal. A few of us turned up early on Sunday afternoon to prepare for the plugfest. The main face to face meeting, started on Monday 11th April. In the morning we had presentatons: Dave Raggett (W3C) kicked off with a context setting introduction. Soumya Kanti Datta (EURECOM) described work on horizontal IoT application development using Semantic Web technologies. Joao Sousa (Bosch) introduced the BEZIRK Platform. Dave reported his progress with implementation work on web of things servers and gateways. We then heard from Takuki Kamiya (Fujitsu) & Daniel Peintner (Siemens) talked to us about efficient encoding of messages using EXI (Part1 | Part2). After lunch we heard from Michael Koster (Smartthings). Matthias, Kajimoto-san, Sebastian, Johannes talked to us about getting started with a WoT project. Ian Skerrett then presented Eclipse IoT: Open Source Building Blocks for IoT Developers. After the plugfest demos, we enjoyed the group dinner at a Brazilian restaurant.

The next two days featured sessions on our current work items, and plans for outreach, and chartering a Web of Things Working Group. Our break out sessions included one on architecture, one on Bluetooth Smart and one on discovery. On Thursday, several of us took part in the W3C Track at the WWW 2016 Web Conference. The afternoon was devoted to the Web of Things session. We had talks by Dave Raggett (W3C), Johannes Hund (Siemens), Lionel Médini (LIRIS Lab, University of Lyon), Michael Cooper (W3C), Louay Bassbouss (Frauhnofer FOKUS), Sebastian Kaebisch (Siemens), Frank Alexander Reusch (Lemonbeat GmbH), Soumya Kanti Datta (EURECOM) and Claudio Venezia (Telecom Italia).

The Web of Things Interest Group met in Sophia Antipolis, France on 25-28 January 2016, hosted by Eurecom. This started with a plugfest, which is now a regular feature of our face to face meetings. There were four proposed tracks of implementations security, APIs, thing registry and HATEOAS. This event attracted more than 20 implementations including remote participations. A highlight was a demo remotely controlling an air conditioner in Osaka, Japan.

The 26th was devoted to an open day with a variety of presentations. In the morning Johannes Hund from Siemens talked about WoT – exploring the physical world and Dave Raggett from W3C talked about the benefits WoT can bring in manufacturing world creating smart manufacturing. Soumya Kanti Datta from Eurecom described how WoT can assist vehicles to be a part of the constantly growing ecosystem of IoT. Victor Charpenay from Siemens and Louay Bassbouss and Fraunhofer FOKUS shared their insights on Resource-based µRDF Store for T2T Interactions and Implementation of Thing API for HomeKit.

In the afternoon, Matthias Kovatsch from Siemens gave an overview of HATEOAS approaches. Martin Bauer from NEC and Omar Elloumi from Nokia described the semantics in oneM2M. This followed on from the ETSI M2M Workshop in Sophia Antipolis in 2015, where Dave and Soumya had presented the W3C related work. Omar returned the favour by talking to us about his interest in further collaboration between oneM2M and the W3C WoT IG.

The next two days featured detailed discussions on our current work items with break out sessions for each of the four technical task forces.

The Web of Things Interest Group will meet in Sophia Antipolis France on 25-28 January 2016, hosted by Eurecom. The first day will feature a plug fest as part of the group's focus on sharing implementation experience. The second day will be an open day. The last two days are devoted to progressing Interest Group work items, including the preparation of a charter for a Web of Things Working Group, that we hope to launch in the first half of 2016. If you would like to participate in the plugfest or the open day, please contact Soumya Kanti Datta, who says:

EURECOM is very proud to welcome the participants that are preparing tomorrows' standards for truly enabled Web of Things

For more information see the 4th IG meeting wiki page.

The Web of Things Interest Group met in Sapporo, Japan on 29-30 October 2015 as part of W3C’s annual week of meetings (TPAC). We listened to status reports and plans for each of the four existing task forces: Thing Descriptions, APIs & Protocols, Discovery & Privacy, and Security, Privacy and Resilience. These task forces are conducting technology landscape surveys and plan to publish these as Interest Group reports early in 2016. TPAC provided a great opportunity for an exchange of ideas across W3C groups. Tobi Langel talked to us about the work of the Device APIs WG on the Generic Sensor API. We also had joint sessions with the Automotive IG and new Spatial Data on the Web WG. We heard ideas from the MozOpenHard Project on browser APIs for access to low level capabilities (WebGPIO and WebI2C). Fraunhofer FOKUS presented work on a discovery API inspired by the Presentation API. RWE talked about discovery, configuration and working of Lemonbeat-Devices. Samsung introduced their “Things Web”.

A high point of the meeting was the plugfest. We had some 8 implementations, many of which focused on the RGB lamp use case that was agreed in advance. We want to hold another plugfest at our next face to face in January 2016, where we plan to cover security capabilities. After an evening dinner at the Sapporo Beer Garden, we continued the next day with a summary of the results of the plugfest, followed by break out sessions for each of the task forces. We also agreed to launch a new task force to focus on communications and outreach, including collaborations with IoT industry alliances and standards development organisations. We’re continuing to work on plans for chartering a W3C Web of Things Working Group in 2016.

Several of us then traveled on to Yokohama for a joint W3C Web of Things IG and the IRTF Thing to Thing Research Group meeting. There we discussed the aims of the T2TRG which is about to get a charter, and we split into task forces, one focusing on boot strapping security for IoT devices, and the other on REST and a study by Ari Keränen on RESTful design for the IoT. There was enthusiasm for continued dialogue between the WoT IG and the T2TRG, and we will now explore opportunities for joint plugfests in 2016. ]]> 0 Tue, 11 Aug 2015 13:37:00 +0000 https://www.w3.org/blog/2015/w3c-and-iic-sign-liaison-agreement-for-the-industrial-internet-of-things/ https://www.w3.org/blog/2015/w3c-and-iic-sign-liaison-agreement-for-the-industrial-internet-of-things/ Dave Raggett https://www.w3.org/blog/2015/w3c-and-iic-sign-liaison-agreement-for-the-industrial-internet-of-things/#comments Dave Raggett

W3C is seeking to address the current fragmentation and data silos in the Internet of Things by exposing IoT platforms through the Web for a Web of Things. Interoperability will be based upon rich metadata and shared semantics, with services running on a wide range of platforms from microcontrollers to cloud-based server farms. Our aim is to enable open markets of services at a Web scale, with a consequent reduction of costs and expansion of business opportunities.

There are many application domains for the Web of Things, including smart industry.  The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) seeks to bring together the organizations and technologies necessary to accelerate growth of the Industrial Internet by identifying, assembling and promoting best practices. The IIC and W3C have signed a liaison agreement to collaborate on realising the potential for the Industrial Internet.

This includes sharing use cases, requirements and emerging frameworks for consideration in joint work, for W3C to consider the IIC requirements and architectures, and likewise for for W3C Recommendations to be considered in IIC deliverables. This agreement is a sign of the growing importance of the Web for transforming industry practices.

The Web of Things Interest Group will meet in Sunnyvale, California, on 29-31 July 2015, hosted by Fujitsu. This will be our second face to face meeting this year. We plan to discuss progress on use cases and requirements for realising the vision of the Web of Things as a means to connect different IoT platforms via the Web and enable a global market of services. We will review a draft charter for the proposed W3C Working Group on the Web of Things, that we hope to launch later this year.

The Web of Things Working Group will have the objective of standardizing core metadata for the Web of Things Framework, along with APIs and bindings to protocols such as HTTP, Web Sockets, CoAP, MQTT and XMPP. The aim is to provide open standards for discovery and interoperability of services on a world wide basis.

Interest Group members should register for the Sunnyvale meeting as soon as possible. We also have space for a limited number of invited guests, for people who are interested in joining the Interest Group and finding more about its activities. More details of the meeting are on the IG wiki.

The Web of Things Interest Group is gathering use cases and is seeking your help to ensure that we get plenty of examples across a wide rage of application domains. Use cases are valuable as a way of grounding technical discussions on functional requirements and solutions. The survey of use cases will feed into our study of the technology landscape, and into future standards track work we hope to initiate later this year.

We are looking for narratives written from a user perspective along with a brief answers to the following questions:

1. What is the user motivation for the use case
2. How does this translate to a technical description
3. What application domains are related
4. What are the interaction patterns
5. Which aspects are not considered

We are also seeking feedback on a draft taxonomy of applications and welcome suggestions for improvements and additional categories.  For more information, see our wiki page on use cases across application domains.

Joerg Heuer is one of the Chairs for the Web of Things Interest Group. He writes:

Thanks for your support and feedback to Daves poll. By your answer some of you already took the opportunity to briefly introduce yourself. I think this is for the start of the IG a good practice:

My name is Joerg Heuer. Some of you I might already have met at the WoT workshop in last summer in Berlin. I am responsible for embedded networks within Siemens Corporate Technology. The WoT trigger was set in our team by different cross domain applications in the fields of smart grid, electric mobility and automation. So we started to work with web technologies in embedded networks for pilot implementations. The discussions in the recent months have shown that there are quite different views on that elephant called WoT and I look forward to further discuss the understanding of WoT in the starting IG.

To start the work in the IG it seems to be most practical to have some initial calls. Based on your comments it seems most appropriate to setup a sequence of two separate calls at least in the initialization phase of the WoT IG up to the first F2F. So the concrete proposal would be:

Starting with the 24th of February every Tuesday in Group GMT+X: the odd weeks have a call at 09:00 - 10:00 GMT (stating with 24th February, biweekly) and Group GMT-X: the even weeks have a call** at 17:00 - 18:00 GMT (starting with 3rd of March, biweekly).

** Note: this was originally one hour later and we moved it following feedback from IG participants.

It is clear that this approach is not balanced. But taking the limited number of calls until a first F2F under account this approach enables all to participate and have at least only two groups in parallel which might make an initialization easier.

1. What do you think of the two group approach? Is it feasible? 2. Is Tuesday acceptable? At least it avoids Monday and Friday as mentioned in the replies.

Please send your comments to the public list.

The Internet of Things is frequently in the technology news media. Advances in connected sensors and actuators is fuelling interest in applications and services, where according to Gartner, most of the commercial value is expected to be realized. To reach the full potential, this will depend upon open standards as a basis for richly interconnected open ecosystems.

Following the Web of Things workshop in Berlin in June 2014, W3C has launched an Interest Group to focus on the Web of Things. The Interest Group's charter calls for a survey of use cases and requirements across the many potential application domains, along with a study of best practices. The aim is to build a shared vision and identify specific opportunities for standardisation to enable open markets of applications and services based upon the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Web of data.

So far work on the Internet of Things has focused on the sensors and actuators and the associated communication technologies. Comparatively little attention has been given to what is needed for services to break free of today's product silos. Web technologies are considered to be very promising, including the role of scripting languages like JavaScript for defining services. However, there is considerable work left to do to support discovery and interoperation of services, along with attention to security, privacy, accessibility and resilience in the face of faults and attacks.

The potential if we get this right is huge and will greatly expand the scale of the Web. Please join us to help address the many challenges.