Venue

The Conference Centre
INTERACT '99 will be hosted in the James Watt Centre of the Edinburgh Conference Centre in Riccarton, Edinburgh. Opened in 1990, the James Watt Centre is one of Edinburgh's largest purpose built conference venues. This self-contained facility houses a main auditorium, adjacent seminar rooms and social / exhibition space.

HCI in Scotland
There are several groups in Scotland working in the areas covered by INTERACT '99, these include:

• Dundee University's Applied Computing Department
• Edinburgh University's Centre for Cognitive Science
• Glasgow University's Glasgow Interactive Systems Group (GIST)
• Heriot-Watt University's
  • Interactive Media Research Group
  • Image Analysis Research Group
  • Institute for Computer Based Learning
• Napier University's HCI group

Other events in the around INTERACT '99
The following conferences and Festival events are being held in Edinburgh around the time of INTERACT '99:

• User Interfaces to Data Intensive Systems (UIDIS, 5-6 Sept)
• 25th International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB, 7-10 Sept)

• Edinburgh Military Tattoo
• Edinburgh International Film Festival
• Edinburgh International Book Festival
• Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• Edinburgh International Festival

About Edinburgh and Scotland
Edinburgh (pronounced Edinbura) is the capital of Scotland and is a major European financial centre. During the period around the conference, Edinburgh will host the Edinburgh International Festival - the largest arts festival in the world. This year Edinburgh became home to Scotland's first parliament since 1707 (when the act of Union was signed linking the Scottish and English parliaments).

Scotland is one of the four countries making up the United Kingdom which is one of the 15 members of the European Union. She has a strong Celtic heritage with two languages unique to the country (Scottish Gaelic and Lallans). With some stunningly beautiful mountainous regions one of the major industries is tourism, although Scotland also has very strong academic, financial and electronic sectors - not to mention whisky production.

At the time of the conference the average temperature high in Edinburgh is around 17°C and an average low of around 9°C, with an average of 65mm rainfall per month. Current forecasts are available from Online Weather (UK based), CNN (US based) and Yahoo (US based).

The currency in the UK is pounds sterling (£/GBP). Scottish banks have the right to produce their own notes in addition the UK standard Bank of England notes, so there are four versions of each note (Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank and Bank of England). Currency conversion and conversion tables for printing (cheat sheets) are available from Oanda. (Note: Euros are not legal currency in the UK and sterling fluctuates against the Euro).

EU and US citizens require a valid passport but no visa for a UK visit (however, we recommend checking with your travel agent at booking time). Official information for all countries is held at The Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

Getting to Edinburgh
The following are the main companies which fly to Edinburgh Airport on a regular basis:

• From within the UK
  • British Airways;
  • British Midland;
  • EasyJet from London Luton (a budget airline with a small network who you have to book with directly);
  • KLM UK from London Stanstead and London City.
     
• From the rest of Europe
  • Aer Lingus from Dublin;
  • Air France from Paris;
  • British Airways from Paris;
  • British Midland from Copenhagen (codeshared with SAS) and Paris (one-stop);
  • Crossair from Zurich
  • KLM UK from Amsterdam;
  • Lufthansa from Frankfurt;
  • Sabena from Brussels.

The main hubs with good connections to Edinburgh are Amsterdam (used by KLM/Northwest as a hub), London Heathrow (British Airways and Virgin) and Brussels (Sabena). Alternatively you can travel to Glasgow (some more flights including some direct links to US) or Manchester (further but more flights) and travel on by rail or hired car. There is great competition on European air routes, particularly for Edinburgh/London, it is worth shopping around. Rail fares are not always cheaper than flights.

Kosovo/Yugoslav situation: The continuing situation in Yugoslavia is having no direct effect in Scotland. However, it is putting a strain on some air connections especially to south-central and south-eastern Europe and on connecting flights/airports. Some airlines (e.g. KLM from Italy to Glasgow) have failed to accept responsibility for missed connections - check carefully with the airline before accepting short changeovers if flying from south-central and south-west Europe).

For rail information see RailTrack's on-line timetable and for booking see The Train Line (Note: rail services in the UK are provided by many separate companies; the main companies in Scotland are ScotRail, Virgin and GNER; RailTrack maintain tracks and overall timetables but do not run trains; the Rail Line and on-line timetables claim to be operator independent).

Traffic reports and car route planning are available from the RAC.

Getting to The Conference Centre
The Conference Centre is located on Heriot-Watt University's Riccarton Campus to the West of Edinburgh City Centre. Local travel information is available on Heriot-Watt's Visitor Pages

Two HCI researchers head for the hills