On behalf of the Chemical Structure Association Executive Committee, I should like to respond to Bernard Blessington's message about the Chemical Structure Association organising local meetings in preference to electronic conferences. The CSA was co-organiser of the 4th international conference on Chemical Structures in the Netherlands last June, at which the latest research in chemical structure information handling was presented. This was attended by around 130 people from many different nationalities, all of whom benefitted greatly not only from the lectures, poster session and exhibition, but also from numerous informal discussions which took place daily in the coffee breaks, over meals and at the bar. At the other end of the spectrum, the CSA aims to provide introductory courses for people who have little or no experience in the field. The Internet Workshop to be held in April in Sheffield is a teaching workshop, and, as it is designed for people who are not familiar with using the internet, would obviously be inappropriate as an electronic conference. One of the current aims of the CSA is to extend the membership worldwide and we hope that the new Web site at http://www.chem-structure.org will help to achieve this aim. We already have a new member in India. Organising an electronic conference would be an excellent way to enable all our members to take part, and also to attract the schools, the undergraduate and postgraduate students that, as Bernard Blessington points out, can afford neither the time nor money to attend local meetings. However, what are people's experience with electronic meetings? What resources are required to set up an electronic conference? The CSA does not have the resources to organise such a conference on its own. We would need to work in conjunction with an academic organisation, for example, which has spare Web space available and students who have the time spend on setting up an electronic conference. There is often a registration fee for electronic conferences. Does this severely restrict the number of people who take part? If you have taken part in an electronic conference, has it been of great benefit to you, or do you have recollections of Web pages you never got round to looking at, and e-mail messages you never read properly because of the pressing distractions of your day-to-day work which surrounded you? Is it better to get away from the office for a day or two to meet with other people in a focussed environment? We would very much welcome your response to the above questions. Janet Ash CSA Chairman ------------------------------------------- Janet Ash Herengracht 14E 1015 BK Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel/Fax: +31 20 6269610 e-mail: ash@euronet.nl or 100547.562@compuserve.com ------------------------------------------- ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)