Dear All,

It was wonderful meeting many of you at the GIS-IDEAS Symposium in Hanoi. My sincere thanks to all participants for making the GIS-IDEAS Symposium a great success. Many thanks to the Local Organizing Committee for the excellent arrangements.

The GIS-IDEAS attracted 170 participants working in organizations in 7 countries (Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, US, Canada, Germany). A total of 50 Oral presentation and 18 poster presentations were made. Two GIS-IDEAS Special Issues of selected papers presented at the GIS-IDEAS symposium are planned to be published in the Asian Journal of Geoinformatics and Japan Society of Geoinformatics in early 2003. It was also decided to hold the next GIS-IDEAS Symposium in Hanoi in 2004.

Will be posting some of the pictures taken at GIS-IDEAS on the Symposium web-site soon.

Thank you all once again and looking forward to the GIS-IDEAS Symposium in 2004.

Raghavan

-------------- Dr. Venkatesh Raghavan Co-Coordinator GIS-IDEAS & JVGC