Following the success of previous years, the UK AVS+UNIRAS User Group returned to Hornton Grange on the University of Birmingham Conference Park for its conference in the year 2000. The venue, which was built during the early 1900s as an imposing Edwardian-style gentleman's residence, has been tastefully refurbished to retain a wealth of original features whilst offering all of the facilities required, such as a modern Conservatory Dining Room and modern en-suite bedrooms, to run a successful and enjoyable conference.
The conference attracted 31 delegates and speakers from both academic and commercial backgrounds. The group was particularly pleased to welcome Krzysztof Nowinski from Warsaw University representing the Polish AVS User Group, and also Th. Siebers from Oce-Technologies in The Netherlands, which gave an interesting international flavour to the event.
The conference started at mid-morning on the 20th of November with three presentations from AVS discussing future developments in their product range with a talk by Toby Cheetham from Unilever about OpenViz component development rounding off the morning. The afternoon session started off with four presentations from users of the whole range of AVS products, illustrating the very diverse areas, both academic and commercial, that the applications are used in. Old hands at the conference were concerned that John Stringer hadn't been working on his presentation in the lunch and tea breaks for his talk after tea, but despite these worries he gave the promised updates on GSharp as scheduled. A quick tour of developments at the International AVS Centre at Manchester lead up to the AGM, which closed at 6 o'clock, just when the bar opened.
After a few pre-dinner drinks, including an excellent handpulled Robinson's Cheshire Bitter, the delegates enjoyed the conference dinner in Hornton Grange with wine kindly provided by AVS. Most then re-adjourned to the bar, which was open until midnight. A few hardy souls then moved over to the bar in the main part of the Conference Park to round off the evening into the early hours.
At breakfast the following morning there appeared to be a few sore heads, but a quick walk around the block and the morning's talks soon cured them. The presentations were again a well-balanced mixture of applications and product talks, with Krzysztof Nowinski's talk giving a rare insight to the facilities that are available in Poland for data visualization. For the first time in many years Mikael Jern from AVS was unable to be present due to European commitments - we hope that this will only be a short break with tradition - but his place was ably taken by an additional talk from the Manchester Visualization Centre and a panel session with the AVS staff; many thanks to the AVS staff for putting themselves in the firing line.
There was a vote for the best paper (excluding those given by AVS personnel) with a prize of a bottle of champagne being donated by AVS. This was won by Frank Arnott of IGM by just one vote from Margaret Stark of the MRC Human Genetics Unit - congratulations to both.
The next conference is on the 5th and 6th of November 2001, again at Hornton Grange. The UAUUG web site has details of this and other information about the User Group, including links to other relevant sites and to the full program and presentations from this, and previous, conferences.
We hope to welcome you to the 2001 conference.
Paul Hatton
The University of Birmingham and Conference Local Organiser