All presenters/attendees, Some important information on the upcoming U.S. / Canadian Great Lakes Operational Workshop is given below: This email will be re-produced on our conference web page (http://glomw.eas.cornell.edu/) under a "latest information" link: 1) Presenters - please upload your presentation to http://glomw.eas.cornell.edu/fileupload/ by March 18th. We would prefer to not have to download presentations from CDs on the day of the workshop. The user name for the site is "glomw". The password is "presenters". This link is also available on the conference web page, in the "Workshop Agenda" section, near the top of the page. 2) For all attendees, we would appreciate it if you could confirm your interest in the Tuesday night social event. Just send a yes or no email to Michael.Evans@noaa.gov and Michael.Jurewicz@noaa.gov. 3) For all attendees, if you have any special needs regarding transportation to and from the conference location, or regarding food / food allergies, please let us know. Mark Wysocki: mww3@cornell.edu 4) For attendees, if you are staying at the Best Western hotel, we have confirmed that they will be running a shuttle to and from the conference site at Bradfield Hall. The distance is about 2 miles. If you are staying at the Statler on the Cornell campus, it's about a 10 minute walk to the conference. Students and signs will be available in route to the conference to make sure you find your way from the hotel to the conference. For those that would prefer not to walk (especially in the case of bad weather), we will be running a shuttle to Bradfield Hall. We will also be running a shuttle out to the social event on Tuesday evening, along with some car pooling. 5) We are expecting the social event and dinner to cost 20-25 dollars. For those that are interested in attending, you will be asked to pay by cash or check (made out to Cornell University) prior to the event (no credit cards). 6) Finally, the conference cannot occur if the government shuts down due to the ongoing budget controversy. As many of you know, the government is currently on a 2 week contingency budget that is set to expire on March 18th, the Friday before the conference. If a budget agreement is reached for the rest of the fiscal year, or if an agreement is reached to go with another contingency budget that will carry us past the conference, we will immediately place a prominent message on the conference web page confirming that the conference is on. At this point, we believe that one of these scenarios is far more likely than a shut down. However, if no agreement is reached by midnight Friday night (March 18th), we will place a prominent message on our web page stating that the conference is cancelled, early on Saturday morning. We have discussed this possibility with the Best Western and Statler hotels, and they have indicated that they need to know about reservation cancellations by noon on Saturday, so it will be important for everyone to check the web site on Saturday morning if you are not sure about the budget situation. That's it from here. Looking forward to seeing everyone at Cornell in about 10 days. If anyone has any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know. - Mike, Mike, and Mark