Dear all,

as you may know from the discussions at our previous meetings there is a new IFIP initiative on "IT and sports" (see annex). TC6 has cinsidered that topic as being of interest - and I have promised to coordinate those activities (one one hand for TC6 and on the other hand for IFIP with respect to Europe; there are some other IFIP volunteers, Erol Gelenbe e.g. would play a corresponding role for North America).

My first actions have been contacts to the German Sports University in Cologne (I happen to be a member of their steering committee) in order to find out whether a workshop or a working conference could be held there together with IFIP. This turned out to be interesting for them. Indeed there are already conferences on such topics - without IFIP for the moment being - and the sports university would be very interested to get a better visibility by the help of IFIP. The conference is intended to take place in the second half of September 2004 in Cologne.

Now I will have a next meeting with some experts of the "IT and sports" topic on March 27 and in order to prepare myself I would have the following questions to you: - Would you be interesting to support the initaitive (as a member of the PC, as a reviewer, as a possibe participant,..)? - Which topics would be interesting for you? Communication topics, but a mentioning of other topics would also be very helpful. - Or (the other way round) do you believe that TC6 should *not* make an effort in the announced direction? If you believe so: what are your reasons for that? (You will see from the annex that in IFIP General assembly the topics was not unanimously discussed but at the recent council meeting in Bilbao according to Plamen nedkov it was welcomed very much that IFIP proceeds in this direction).

I would appreciate very much if you can give me a feedback (at least a short supporting message or a short note that you disagree) until the end of next week, i.e. until March 21.

My message is also intended as a try for a revival of the Email discussion within TC6 which has been practically nonexisting since several months with the exception of the forwarding of some boring Call for papers ;-)

Best regards and have a nice weekend Otto