Dear Colleague,

I am writing to invite you to attend the 3rd USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '04), March 31 through April 2, 2004, in beautiful San Francisco, California.

File systems and storage continue to be active focus areas for researchers and technologists in operating systems, computer architecture, distributed systems, networking, mobile computing, and computational science. FAST '04 will bring together over 200 participants from all of these areas in a unified, high-quality forum.

The FAST '04 program includes 18 technical papers carefully selected from a pool of 75 submissions by the program committee. These papers represent some of the best work in the area, ranging from fault-tolerance and storage management to mobile storage. The technical presentations will be given by top researchers from both academia and industry. Don't miss the keynote address, "Scaling File Service Up and Out," by Garth Gibson of Panasas and Carnegie Mellon University.

If you have a provocative opinion you would like to share or a cool idea that's not quite ready for publication, please submit a Work-in-Progress report (WiP). We are particularly interested in presenting students' work.

FAST '04 promises to be an exciting conference presenting the best of current research and a strong vision of the future. I hope you will join us in San Francisco. Please explore this Web site for more information.

Chandu Thekkath, Microsoft Research
FAST '04 Program Chair