The growth in the use of the internet and related technologies for teaching and learning brought together a variety of distance and e-learning specialists from Europe, and the United States, working mainly in the fields of publishing and tertiary level education.

The range of speakers and interests was impressive:

• Richard Wheeler from Belgium on a Third World distance-learning “medical school”
• Jeff Rydberg-Cox of Chicago on the work of Perseus, online database in Classical Studies
• Toni Beardon of the Cambridge University Department of Education on the Maths Millennium Project
• Michael Holdsworth of the Cambridge University Press on the vicissitudes of IT and academic publishing
• Roger Schank, aritificial intelligence and e-learning pioneer
• John Naughton, author of A Brief History of the Future: the origins of the internet
• David Livesey, University of Cambridge on the future of university education

Before an audience of some eighty academics, education and technology professionals, a number of controversial themes were aired by the ten speakers.