Last november, I sent a long email to the Advisory Board of the W3C about the structure and finances of the Consortium. One short paragraph of that long email was the following one:

" Remember, it's a world of geeks. That might sound weird, but I recommend the Consortium starts a complete product line of gear, clothes, and geeky objects. To be even clearer, the famous "<body> </body>" t-shirt should be sold in a W3C online store and have a W3C logo on the right sleeve. That could drive a lot of income."

And this morning, I learned from Karl Dubost that the W3C is setting up such an online store. Read here, here and here. I just wanted to tell one thing to my W3C friends : it will work only if the items sold in that store are really cool. Funny. Geeky. Nice colors and shapes. Suggestions :

  • of course the very famous "<body> </body>", "<head/>" and "geek"
  • "Content-Type: human/geek"
  • "More than ten years of W3C Membership and still alive"
  • "Browser war is just another day at the office"
  • "I'm interoperable"
  • "Cool URLs don't change"
  • "body { background: gray; }" for a gray t-shirt
  • best-sellers W3C mug and W3C french beret
  • W3C logo on the front, "Web standards matter" on the back
Examples of good t-shirts (all copyright Alsacréations):
Examples of t-shirts that almost nobody understands or recognizes...