The History of the Meshing Roundtable
In these early years, Roundtable information was primarily disseminated by word of mouth among meshing researchers and preprocessing software developers. Then, in 1994, the info-net was thrown wide with a formal announcement to some USENET newsgroups. Attendance more than doubled and the Roundtable saw a significant number of international attendees. 1994 marked the first year that papers were accepted for the meeting.
Beginning with the 1995 Roundtable, papers became mandatory and a steering committee was formed to plan each following meeting. With this Roundtable a refereed proceedings of the presented papers was published in a bound volume and on the World Wide Web. From 1993 to 1995 the Roundtable was held in Albuquerque, which lead many to assume that it would be held there ad infinitum.
The 1996 Roundtable is being held in Pittsburgh, near many of the industries and software houses in the eastern United States that use and develop meshing technology. Today, the Roundtable maintains its international flavor, and future years may see a Roundable held at a non continental-U.S. location. The 1996 Roundtable is steered by a committee taken from private industry, universities, and government laboratories. The Roundtable is an energetic meeting with lots of informal interaction, oftentimes between would-be competitors, yet somehow the discussions are always based on scientific understanding rather than marketing hype. A lively panel discussion is one of the traditional main events.