Travel to Austin | Accommodations | Reimbursements | Weather | What to Bring | Web Forum | Hardware and Software | Schedule & Roster | First-Day Activities | Deadlines | Questions? | More about Austin
Please make your own travel arrangements to Austin. Plan to arrive on Sunday, 1 June or Sunday, 15 June. A special registration table for our workshop will be open at the Jester Center conference facility from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. that afternoon. If you arrive earlier or later, you can check in at the main Jester Center registration desk. We will gather for introductions in the Geography Department that evening at 7:00 p.m. The workshop will end at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, 7 June, or Saturday, 21 June.
You will be reimbursed UP TO $US450 for economy rate round-trip travel to Austin and taxi to and from the airport. If traveling to Austin by automobile, please record your mileage for reimbursement. Participants journeying from Canada should be sure to travel by US air carrier.
A taxi is the easiest way to reach the Jester Center Conference Center on the University of Texas campus. The ride from the airport takes less then 15 minutes and will cost $8-10. Please be sure to save your taxi receipts for reimbursement. You should also save parking receipts!
If, to keep your travel under $US450, you must arrange to stay over a Saturday night (as required of some economy fares), I will pay for your extra night's stay in our conference facility. If this is the case, please be sure to note your arrival and departure dates on the enclosed "Conference Housing Request" form.
The brochure you received in the first mailing describes the conference facility where you will be staying. Single rooms have been requested for all participants. The rooms are arranged with a shared, connecting bath, two single rooms sharing each bath. There is a small chance that we may have to use a small number of double rooms for some participants. All meals are provided, except Sunday night. We've compiled a list of restaurants close to campus you might find helpful. The cafeteria provides a wide range of menus at each meal to suit different tastes and dietary requirements.
All arrangements and payments for your stay in Jester Center are handled by the workshop staff, so there is no need for you to contact the conference center directly. To complete the room reservations we need to know if you will be arriving earlier or leaving later than the official conference dates (perhaps to obtain lower cost airfares). Please return the enclosed "Conference Housing Request" to confirm your arrival and departure dates.
On-campus parking is available, although at some distance from the conference facility due to construction. The use of libraries and computer facilities will also be provided. Access to sports facilities will also be available at a small additional charge ($2 per day, or $10 for the week).
You will be reimbursed for your travel costs just after the close of the workshop. To process these reimbursements as quickly as possible at the close of the workshop, I need to have you complete and return the "Payee Information Form" inclosed in the first mailing as soon as possible. Instructions are clipped to the form. You must include a photocopy of a photo-ID with the Payee Information Form or it cannot be processed and your reimbursement will be delayed!
June weather in Austin is usually hot (80-100° F) and very humid. Informal attire (shorts and t-shirts) is recommended for the entire workshop. However, the air conditioning in most University buildings is set high. It is worth packing a light sweater or pullover. The temperatures so far this year have been somewhat below normal (mid-70s rather than upper 80s) and it's been quite wet, but several long range weather models indicate that this summer is about to get warmer than usual. You can check Austin’s weather forecast on the Web by going to http://www.kvue.com and following the link to “five-day forecast”. Other items you might find useful include:
Materials and Equipment to Bring
Please be sure to bring along the workshop reader. You should also bring copies (paper or digital) of instructional materials that you wish to develop for the Virtual Department. This includes photographs, slides, maps, and diagrams you may wish to scan and incorporate into your materials. You may also wish to bring textbooks, books, and other instructional publications that might serve as guides to developing additional materials. If you wish to ship materials to Austin in advance of the workshop, mail them to Virtual Geography Department Workshop, Department of Geography, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1098, Attn: K.E. Foote.
Please feel free to bring your own laptop computer to the workshop. We have a few extra ethernet connections in the lab and can connect your laptop to the Internet if you have a 10Base-T (twisted-pair) adapter. Also, the rooms in the conference center now have direct 10Base-T internet connections running at 10 megabits per second.
Equipment and Software Available for the Workshop
Most of the workshop sessions will be held in Geography's Environmental Information Systems Laboratory. The lab is equipped with 15 Intel-based Windows NT microcomputers (66 to 200 MHz) connected to a 200MHz server, 1 Windows 95 system, 1 Windows 3.1/DOS system, 1 mobile NT system and 6 Macs. The lab is also equipped with paper and slide scanners and two projection systems (one mobile). All the computers have direct, high-speed Ethernet connections to the Internet.
During the workshop you will be provided with your own Web publishing area on the University of Texas's main webserver for developing and testing new materials. You can also use ftp, telnet, and fetch to access webservers at your home institution.
We will be using Netscape Gold as our primary software tool for HTML authoring. If you are not already using Netscape Gold, please download a copy from http://www.netscape.com/ and familiarize yourself with its use. Editing Web documents is very easy with Netscape Gold. We will provide tutorial sessions for you if you would like extra coaching at the start of the workshop. If you use different authoring tools, please let us know. We may be able to load them on our systems, but must check first with our laboratory manager Don Davis.
The Windows microcomputers and Macs will be loaded with Microsoft Office 97 (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint), Photoshop, Netscape Gold, and other useful utility programs. Office 97 on the PCs includes new, direct HTML editing capabilities in Word. In addition, the PCs have the CorelDRAW 6.0 Suite (Draw, Photopaint, Capture, and 3D) and Freehand, and the Macs will be loaded with Adobe Premiere and Pagemill. You may also wish to bring your own software for use during the workshop. However, please be sure to contact Don Davis (ddavis@texas.grg.utexas.edu) well in advance of your arrival to ensure that he has adequate time to load the software.
Please return all registration materials to us by April 25. Registration packages received after that date will be accepted, however, your travel reimbursement may be delayed several weeks.
Preliminary Schedule and Roster
The workshop schedules and roster are on-line at http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/ virtdept/contents.html. You will also receive a roster and preliminary schedule by mail the week of May 5. The schedule may be rearranged slightly to better meet participant interests expressed in the pre-workshop questionnaire, so check the on-line version often.
You’ll notice that during the first day of the workshop we have scheduled time for all participants to share their experiences using Web-based instructional materials. If you have published materials in the Web, please be prepared to give a 8-10 minute overview of your projects on Monday morning.
We have created a discussion area for the workshop called the “Web Forum.” Here you can share your thoughts on the projects you are planning for the Web. I’d like you to focus on identifying where we should begin our development efforts this summer and also on possible collaborative projects. Please visit the Forum regularly between now and June.
General questions and questions about travel and accommodations may be addressed to Ken Foote [phone at (512) 232-1592 or (512) 472-2938, by FAX at (512) 471-5049 and by e-mail at k.foote@mail.utexas.edu] or Shannon Crum [phone at (512) 232-1577, by FAX at (512) 471-5049 e-mail: shannon@texas.grg.utexas.edu].
Questions about computers (hardware configurations, software availability, and ethernet connections) should be directed to Don Davis at ddavis@texas.grg.utexas.edu.
Questions about reimbursements should be addressed to Shannon Crum (shannon@texas.grg.utexas.edu).
Staff will be available for check-in from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. Meals in Jester Center will begin Monday morning so you are free to find supper on your own Sunday evening, before or after our first session. Our first session together will be that evening at 7:00 PM in the Geography Building room GRG 302 about three blocks from Jester Center. See you then!
Created April 1997 by Shannon Crum
Last Updated 11 May 1997. slc.