@WAS History

The International organization on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services (@WAS) was founded in 2003 given the overwhelming success of the iiWAS series of workshops (1999, 2000) and conferences (2001-on) and the prospect of continuing the organization of these events in the forthcoming years which have encouraged some to propose the creation of a non-profit International Organization for Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services (@WAS).
In 2003, @WAS launched another series of conferences called International Conferences on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia (MoMM) held in Jakarta in conjunction with iiWAS2003 conference and was officially opened by the Minister of Communication and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia at that time. MoMM aims to provide a discussion forum for the exchange of ideas and Information by researchers, students, and professionals on the issues and challenges brought by the emerging wireless technologies for mobile and multimedia applications and services.

Starting in 2003, iiWAS and MoMM conferences series proceedings have been published by the Austrian computer society in its books@ocg book series. A number of reputable international journals have also agreed to publish special issues of iiWAS/MoMM conferences series.

@WAS had endorsed many conferences like the International Conference on Telematics Systems, Services and Applications (TSSA), the International Conference on Wireless Systems, Services and Applications (WSSA) organized by Bandung Institute of Technology which were held in Bandung, Indonesia in 2006 and 2007 and EATIS Conference (Euro American Conference on Telematics and Information Systems), which took place in Santa Martha, Columbia in 2006, in Portugal in 2007 and in Aracaju, Brazil in 2008. The aim of the latest was to actively promote academic collaboration between European and American universities.

In addition to fostering a forum for the exchange and communication of ideas and information among researchers, students, and professionals, @WAS, by various means such as workshops, symposium, short papers and a Master and Doctoral colloquium, have been striving to concoct a program of academic and professional excellence while giving young researchers opportunities to present their work and benefit by the experience of their peers and seniors.

In 2005, @WAS launched the Master and Doctoral colloquium to give PhD, Masters students and candidates the opportunity to present their work and receive a valuable feedback from the members of a committee with experienced researchers from both Academia and Industry.

In 2006, @WAS started the tradition of holding the Emerging Research Projects Applications Symposium (ERPAS) WAS2009 for researchers to present, discuss and defend their work-in-progress or projects preliminary results in front of an international and renowned audience of researchers and developers.

Starting in 2006, @WAS has expanded to run in-conjunction workshops. These workshops are dedicated to foster emerging work and applications as well as the work of young researchers. They aim at giving their participants an interactive forum of presentation and discussion.  These workshops were: SIIK (Workshop on Semantic Information Integration on Knowledge Discovery) held in 2006, MoMIR (Workshop on Mobile Multimedia Information Retrieval) held in 2006, 2007, and 2009, BWCCA (Workshop on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications) held in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, SoC (Workshop on Systems-On-Chips) held in 2006, TwUC (Workshop on Trustworthy Ubiquitous Computing) held in 2006, 2007, and 2008, AIIDE (Workshop on Applications of Information Integration in Digital Ecosystems) held in 2008 and 2009, RED (Workshop on Resource Discovery) held in 2008, MoCoHeTM (Workshop on Mobile Collaborations for Hospital-based Health Care), UWA (Ubiquitous Web Applications held in 2008, IST-AWSN (Workshop on Intelligent Systems Techniques for Ad hoc and Wireless Sensor Networks) held in 2009, HCI4UCE  (Workshop on HCI for the Ubiquitous Computing Environment  held in 2009.
In 2008, iiWAS celebrates its tenth anniversary. iiWAS2008 is hosted by the Johannes Kepler University Linz. There have been a number of important achievements to mark the tenth anniversary of iiWAS. iiWAS, was for the first time, endorsed by the ACM SIGWEB. MoMM was endorsed by ACM SIGMM. The proceedings of both conferences were published by the ACM and available in its Digital Library. It has become a high visibility, high-impact, international conference.
In 2009, @WAS hosted the inaugural Web Applications Competition. The competition was to build a web application, which is accessible publicly through a URL. The application should be developed to facilitate e-applications such as e-learning, e-government, e-communities, e-Business etc.

@WAS  Executive Steering committee decided in 2009 to create @WAS Decennial Award to acknowledge the continuing contributions of individuals to the @WAS organization and to the iiWAS and MoMM conference series. The award was conferred the on Professor Doctor Gabriele Kotsis, the vice rector for research of the Johannes Kepler University Linz in recognition of her outstanding scientific, didactic and organizational contributions to the @WAS organisation and the iiWAS and MoMM Conferences.