Zakon Group Powers International World Wide Web Conference

Conway, NH – November 1, 2005 – When authors submit their papers and reviewers choose which ones to accept for next year's International World Wide Web Conference, they will be doing so through a service provided by Zakon Group LLC.

The OpenConf conference management system, developed by Zakon Group, is a peer-review application already in use by hundreds of conferences, workshops, symposia, and journals worldwide. The software handles all aspects of paper submission, assignment of reviewers, online review of papers, and paper selection, along with facilitating the management of the whole process by the event chairman.

Robert Zakon, CTO of Zakon Group, developed the original version of the software in early 2003 to aid with an annual information security conference he has helped organize for the past seven years. The software was released later that year on the Internet, in open source format, so other conferences could benefit from its use. Although a few other similar applications were in existence, none were as easy to setup or use as OpenConf, and within just a couple of years there have been thousands of downloads. OpenConf has been an integral part of a diverse set of events, including: Midwest Finance Association's Annual Meeting, Security Enhanced Linux Symposium, IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, and Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference.

Earlier this year, Zakon Group started offering OpenConf as an online service to a few conferences unable to or not interested in hosting the software themselves. "After considering a number of similar systems", the 15th International World Wide Web Conference, "chose OpenConf not only for the management software but for the hosting facilities and responsive customer service," said Simon Harper, one of the event organizers. Zakon Group will be both customizing and hosting the software for the conference which will take place in Glasgow, Scotland next year. Zakon has been active with Web technologies since its infancy, and was a speaker over a decade ago at the 3rd International World Wide Web conference in Darmstadt, Germany.

Zakon Group plans to officially launch the OpenConf Managed Hosting Service in 2006. At customers. request, other editions of the software are planned, including one tailored for use by journals. Additional information on OpenConf is available at www.OpenConf.org.

Zakon Group LLC is a high-tech consulting firm offering services and solutions ranging from Web development and hosting to systems integration and rent-a-CTO consulting. Zakon Group brings together the right mix of technology, experience, knowledge, and innovation, in delivering services and solutions that are customer-centric, on time, reliable, creative, and effective to clients of all sizes. For more information about Zakon Group, visit www.ZakonGroup.com.

###