Why You Need to Know About HTML5

A few weeks ago, I attended the keynote presentation at the Bilbao Web Summit, a global conference focused on designing the next generation of the World Wide Web, which was held in Bilbao, Spain.

As an event marketer, I was impressed that a first-time conference was able to attract so many professionals. Certainly, their speaker choice contributed to this strong turnout. The keynote was given by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, and primary author of the HTML, HTTP and URI specifications that make what we do on the Web today possible—1,800 people packed the room.

Berners-Lee made many thought-provoking points. In this week’s blog post, I focus on just one, which I believe has the most impact on the marketing of exhibitions and conferences.

However, before I get to that point, I want to digress briefly to touch on a clarification he made in the beginning of his remarks. He discussed the difference between the Internet and Web. Yes, there is a difference, even though many of us use the terms interchangeably. The fact that he brought up this distinction is worth noting in and of itself.

The Internet is a massive network of networks that connects millions of computers together globally, and was around long before the Web. The Web is built on top of the Internet, and enables the sharing of multimedia information (text, graphics, video, etc.) over the Internet via linked Web pages which are accessed through browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. Think of the Internet as the hardware, and the Web as the software. Having a basic technical knowledge here will be helpful in best leveraging evolving technologies for your shows.

Now to the main takeaway for event marketers. Berners-Lee said that the “Open Web Platform is a really exciting thing” and discussed the potential of HTML5, the core of this new platform. HTML5 is an emerging W3C specification that is the fifth major revision of HTML, the language used to create Web pages.

Why is this so exciting and what does it mean to event marketers? HTML5 provides a set of tools to create Web-based applications that will run on any device, across PC and mobile. This is especially beneficial in the fast-growing mobile space that is becoming more important in show marketing.

By enabling the development of cross-platform creative assets, HTML5 addresses the enormous fragmentation caused by so many different mobile devices and offers the potential to achieve a simpler design/production process, scale/bigger reach and cost efficiencies for your advertising campaigns. In addition, HTML5 provides tools for creating rich media experiences, also beneficial for mobile marketing as the majority of mobile devices today don’t allow Flash-enabled content.

HTML5 is already being deployed by early adopters but it is still in development. According to a W3C press release, the goal is “to achieve broad interoperability for the full specification by 2014.”  Stay on top of what is happening here. It is exciting!

Posted on June 2, 2011