Florence program committee

["I. David Brown" <idbrown@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca>]

Although I have not apparently been active for the last month or so, I did
spend some of the Christmas holiday thinking about the program committee
for the Florence Congress.

I am member of the computing commission by virtue of being the chair of
COMCIFS which is a committee of the IUCr executive and not itself a
commission.  Therefore I was not on the list of commission chairs
circulated by Carlo Mealli.  When I wrote to him about this I was
instructed to work through the computing commission.

It is important that computing be visible at the Florence congress and
that we suggest some names for the program committee.  The names I would
like to suggest are Ton Spek, Lachlan Cranswick and Ralf Grosse-Kustleve.
Other commission members may have other suggestions and, in any case
since the program committee is restricted to quite a small number, none of
our candidates may be chosen.

We should certainly request computing sessions at Florence and, speaking
for COMCIFS, I would suggest two possible topics - 'How to work with CIF'
and 'Crystallography in the age of information technology'.  The first
would be more in the nature of a tutorial, but the second would explore
new directions that will transform crystallographic computing and
information handling before we meet in Osaka in 2008.

Does anyone else have other suggestions?  Can our leader make sure that
our suggestions are suitably edited and passed along to Carlo before the
Feb 28 deadline?

		Best wishes for 2003 to all of you,

				David


*****************************************************
Dr.I.David Brown,  Professor Emeritus
Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research,
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tel: 1-(905)-525-9140 ext 24710
Fax: 1-(905)-521-2773
idbrown@mcmaster.ca
*****************************************************