Full video coverage: Tim Berners-Lee and Andrew Strauss at the Yorkshire international Business Convention 2011

THE phenomenal growth of the world wide web took everyone by surprise but nobody more so than its British founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Sir Tim, who was the keynote speaker at the Yorkshire International Business Convention in Harrogate last week, said the web was very different to his expectations in the early days.

He said: “Did I expect the world wide web to be like it is today (when it was created)? “No. But I did want people to put things on to it. And the thing about it was that it was universal. It should not be an European or English thing.”

Sir Tim told the audience how he invented the world wide web in 1989 while working at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland.

He said he persuaded his then boss to allow him to develop it after spotting the potential of the internet and email, which had already been created.

His royalty-free invention went on to revolutionise the way the world communicates.

Sir Tim said it was important that the web was kept open to ensure its future success. “When they designed the internet, they didn’t design it for anything in particular,” he said. “They designed it for anything you can imagine. And the idea of the web is it’s the same.

“The whole point about this technology is that it really is up to your imagination.

“So if you think of a way a computer could be better. If you think of a way that your life could be better by making a better website.

“If you think that the world could be better if there was a certain type of website, you could write the software to run that website yourself.

“That’s what’s been so exciting about it and to do that you have to keep the thing open.”

Sir Tim said the future of the web was mobile phones and that it was for “all of humanity”. He said that despite 20 per cent of the world’s population now having access to the web, there was work to be done to enable the remaining 80 per cent to use it.

He spoke about importance of managing the internet in a decentralised, neutral and open way and said the internet needs to be more “robust” so that it can’t be “turned off” by certain countries.

“The question of who gets control is very important,” he said. “It needs to automatically route around collapse so it becomes more protected against various forms of attack or accident.”

He also warned against the development of internet profiling and said: “It’s very important for democracy that the web is kept open.”

He added: “It’s also important they are not spying on you.”

Answering a question from the audience about whether a Twitter user should have been allowed to broadcast details of people who had taken out super-injunctions to protect their privacy, Sir Tim said it “brought up a number of different questions”.

He added: “Part of what WikiLeaks and Twitter do is pass on information that is already out there.

“The right to free speech is important but it has limits.”

After his speech, he told the Yorkshire Post that “control of the internet by a large company or a large government” represented the biggest threats.

Sir Tim is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, a web standards organisation founded in 1994 which develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the web to its full potential.

He is also a founding director of the Web Science Trust launched in 2009 to promote research and education in web science, the multi-disciplinary study of humanity connected by technology.

Verdict: 8/10. A fascinating insight into the mind of the world wide web founder but speech was sometimes difficult to follow, which left many members of the audience frustrated.

THE audience knew it was in for an entertaining 30 minutes when the first question to England cricket captain Andrew Strauss made him squirm.

Harry Gration, the BBC presenter who led the question and answer session, said to Strauss. “My job initially is to ask you some really great questions about cricket and the love of the game and so on, but (forget) that. Matt Prior, at Lords, with a cricket bat, through the window. What happened?”

After taking a deep breath, Strauss replied with good humour. “An equipment malfunction is the best way of describing it. I think we learned that Lords needs double glazing as well.”

The Ashes hero told the audience how he led his team to home and away Ashes victories after a humiliating 5-0 defeat in 2006-07.

He said: “So many valuable lessons were learned. We got a lot of things wrong. We did some things right. It really sowed the seeds in my mind for how we could go out there in the future and win.”

Strauss said the team went on a bootcamp with Australian special forces soldiers to test their endurance levels, which brought them closer together and showed that they could push themselves further than previously thought.

The team went through lots of scenarios to prepare themselves for any eventuality and also tried to ignore media coverage. “We know what’s going on inside the four walls of our dressing room – that’s all that matters and that’s all that’s important,” Strauss said.

The England captain warned that international cricket is splitting into two divisions and said administrators should use money from the wealthy 20-20 game to finance test cricket.

Verdict: 7/10. A good-humoured and informative discussion.

The comedian who became well known to millions of television viewers through ITV game show Catchphrase provided a light-hearted start to the day.

As well as jokes about people he is mistaken for – Bill Clinton and Tom O’Connor – Roy Walker discussed the similarities between comedians such as Charlie Williams and Frank Carson, who appeared on the popular Seventies television programme The Comedians and their modern contemporaries, like Michael McIntyre and John Bishop.

He remarked that the only difference is that those from his generation “have jokes”.

Walker also delivered a number of one-liners and localised some jokes for a Yorkshire audience, including: “I was diverted off the A56 into Ilkley and some farms still had notices left up from the foot and mouth outbreak, including one which said: ‘British beef – you won’t get better.’”

Belfast-born, Walker’s career started at the age of 14 as a soprano in the celebrated Francis Longford Choir. He was Northern Ireland Champion Hammer Thrower for two years and served seven years in the army before moving to England and becoming a professional comedian – touring in clubs and cabaret.

In 1977 he came to national prominence through TVs New Faces, followed by many television appearances and in 1986 he became host of Catchphrase. In recent years he has won a whole new fan base through his regular Carpark Catchphrase feature on Chris Moyles’ Radio 1 Breakfast Show.

He delivered, what was for many delegates, the joke of the day: A woman walks into a butcher’s shop and says to the butcher: “Is that a sheep’s head in the window?” The butcher replies: “It’s not love; it’s a mirror.”

Verdict: 6/10. Not very relevant for a business audience but entertaining.

When she was 10 years old, Caroline Marsh dreamed of living the glamorous life an air hostess.

But her world fell apart at the age of 13 when her father died. The family struggled for a number of years, but at the age of 19 her childhood dream came true, when she was one of 10 selected from 5,000 applicants to become a flight attendant with Zambian Express.

Her life changed again when the airline she worked for went into liquidation and she went to collect her final pay cheque from the liquidator. She said: “I came out of that meeting with two things: one, a pay cheque and two, a date with the liquidator.”

The “date” went on to become her husband and in 2002 the couple moved to the UK. Four years later Marsh accompanied her husband to a business conference in Alicante where she heard entrepreneur Steve Bolton talk about property investing in the UK. “I thought, I want to know what that guy knows,” she said. She went on to make £1m in the first eight months.

Marsh now has a successful buy-to-let property business and in 2008 was selected as one of Channel 4’s Secret Millionaires. She worked for the programme as an undercover community worker in Liverpool.

She said: “The market has changed and we have had to change so we know how to position ourselves, seeing what other opportunities there are in the current economy,” she said. “Even though it looks really bad there is a positive side to the property market.”

She added: “Sometimes pain may be the reason that gives us that determination to go out there and make a difference.”

Verdict: 6/10. An inspirational story but video clips filled out an otherwise short speech.