The 1996 International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications (ISITA '96) was held September 17-20, 1996 in the Conference Centre at Victoria, B.C., Canada. With 280 delegates and 40 accompanying guests, ISITA '96 was the largest gathering of information theorists this year. Altogether 21 countries were represented at ISITA '96 with the largest number from Japan (125) followed by USA (54), Canada (36) and South Korea (10). A record number of students (100) participated in the symposium.
The technical program consisted of 222 papers. Plenary lectures were given by Ian Blake, Tadao Kasami and Kees Schouhamer Immink. A copy of the proceedings in two volumes (consisting of 851 pages) can be obtained by sending a cheque of US $120, (payable to ISITA '96) to V.K. Bhargava, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055, Victoria, B.C., Canada V8W 3P6, fax: +1-604-721-6048. Payment by MASTERCARD or VISA is also acceptable.
Grants from SITA for young researchers and from the US office of ONR facilitated the participation waiver to several delegates from "economically disadvantaged" countries.
The symposium got off to a good start with the welcome reception on September 17. This was followed by a mini reception and a concert given by LES VIOLES DE SAINTE - COLOMBE on September 18. The theme of the concert was "musical travel of an English gentleman in Baroque time" and it was organized by Kazue Kazahaya Seki from Tokyo.
The symposium banquet on Thursday, September 19 was a pleasant occasion. There were no speeches but invitations were extended by Han Vinck (ISIT '97), by Dave Forney (ISIT '98) and by Hector Perez-Meana (ISITA '98).
The final meeting of IT BoG for 1996 was held on September 18. President Gibson invited the Board of SITA (Society for Information Theory and its Applications) to attend the meeting as observers. This gesture was very much appreciated by our colleagues from Japan.
Further details of the symposium may be found on http://www.citr.ece.uvic.ca/isita96/
Captions for Photographs: (1) Ian Blake delivering a plenary talk. (2) Plenary speaker Tadao Kasami and Fumiko Kasami arriving at the banquet. (3) Technical Program Chair Hideki Imai accepting a gift of native art from Vijay Bhargava. (4) Kees Schouhamer Immink delivering a plenary talk.