Web.br 2018

The Web.br Conference was launched   in 2008 to lead discussions about open web technologies and to bring to the Brazilian context the main topics addressed in the world about the Web and how it’s evolving as a Platform.

The Web.br  wascreated by W3C Brasil Office, and currently organized and held by the Web Technologies Study Center (Ceweb.br), atNIC.br. It is the most important moment of the year to the Web community in Brazil for discussing, presentating, debating, and networking the future of the web platform.

This year, the Conference brings the theme “The Web in the age of Cognitive Computing”, which seeks to answer questions such as: What will this change in the development routine? What are the new products that emerge from this approach?

Advances in the Web with artificial intelligence applications, machine learning and cognitive computing, among other topics, will be debated by national and international experts in the 10th edition of the Web.br Conference, which will take place on October 4 and 5 in Sao Paulo. Virgílio Almeida (UFMG and Harvard University), Thiago Cardoso (Hekima), Léonie Watson (The Paciello Group) and Chaals Nevile (Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) are some of the speakers confirmed at the event, which is organized by the Ceweb.br at NIC.br, with support from the W3C Brazil. Tickets can be purchased through the address: http://conferenciaweb.w3c.br/.

Acknowledged as the main Brazilian forum for discussion about Web development trends and good practices, the Web.br Conference annually brings together hundreds of participants, including developers, designers, managers, students and Internet users. In this 10th edition, it will have a format that privileges both learning in practice – the first day is dedicated to workshops – and the debate from the presentation of the speakers, which will happen on the second day of the event.

The main theme  “The Web in the Age of the Cognitive Computing” is the highlight of Web.br 2018. “We are talking about machines capable of simulating cognitive processes performed by our brains. It means, for example, we have speech and image recognition applications, which has the potential of resources identification as accurate as humans do… We will discuss the Web as an environment to stimulate the development of cognitive technologies, how it affects the routine of application developers and what are the new products that arise from this approach, besides the ethical and social implications, among other issues”, says Vagner Diniz, manager of Ceweb.br and W3C Brasil.

Talks

Concrete examples of computer research and related areas will be presented by Virgílio Almeida, a professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and associate professor at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. In his talk at Web.br 2018, Almeida will analyze the social and ethical impacts of cognitive computing, will promote reflection on topics such as the right to be forgotten, privacy protection, surveillance,classification and prioritization algorithms. Complementarily, Thiago Cardoso, Hekima’s co-founder and chief technology officer, will discuss the responsibility of making technologies and applications ethical, conscious and inclusive. The expert will det a il concepts, best practices and challenges in the use of data and artificial intelligence.

After all, what kind of data is relevant in the machine learning era? Chaals Nevile, technical program director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, will bring to the Web.br initiatives that seek to provide not only easily processed data but also meaningful data for machines. Questions likeas what is worth doing when it comes to machine learning and what data is still valuable will be answered. Léonie Watson, director of communication with developers at The Paciello Group (TPG), will discuss, Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”, what it means to be a person with a disability in a world of artificial intelligence. Léonie  will analyze how technologies are changing the way people with disabilities interact in the world and their key challenges.< / b>

Workshops

The Web.br participants will also have the opportunity to learn how to create conversation interfaces. In the workshop “Methods of Design and Evaluation of Conversational Systems”, Heloísa Candello, an IBM research scientist, will present basic concepts of the technology and illustrate, through use cases, the based-on-dialogue interfaces methods of design and evaluation . In another workshop, William Daflita, coordinator of Technology and Development in Espiral Interativa   and technical leader of the Web For All Movement, will explain how accessibility works in JS frameworks such as Vue, Angular and React. The proposal is to analyze how disabled users interact with sites u s ing a s sistive technologies and what care is taken to use them.

The Web.br 2018 program also includes the workshop “Designing Data Projects and Artificial Intelligence”, with Carolina Bigonha, co-founder and directorat Hekima. She  will showcase the operation and implementation of end-to-end data science projects, considering the building of a robust, people-centric solution.