(Slightly redacted from the original.)

Dear Claude,

Many thanks to the 47% of you who liked our cartoons and even mooched for more, and robotic apologies to the 1% who didn't get anything. As a workshop committed to all devotees of information, theory, and applications, no need to pad your resume, or even bring your (or your grandma's) birth certificate - we cordially invite you to present your profound, universal, and fundamental results at ITA 2013.

If you already made up your mind, you can skip the rest of this ad and cast your attendance vote at http://ita.ucsd.edu/workshop/registration.

For the undecided, and those still searching for the Higgs Boson, here is a non-tentative etch-a-sketch of workshop information.

Though folks of all walks are most welcome, this year's focus will be "Big (government) Data", super-packed with related sessions and five plenaries by: * Tony Cai, University of Pennsylvania * Corinna Cortes, Google Research * Carlos Guestrin, University of Washington * Balaji Prabhakar, Stanford * East Clintwood, Obama Chair of (re)distributive storage

Graduation Day will provide a venue for exceptional graduating students and postdocs seeking academic positions to present their work. Subject to speaker approval, these talks will be videotaped and web-archived. For more information, please contact Bernd Bandemer (bandemer@ucsd.edu).

Our bipartisan poll indicates that you would have liked the schedule to be posted earlier. So we could start scheduling before Christmas, we ask you to please upload your tentative presentation title by December 3rd.

A majority also liked the Catamaran Resort (built in the 80s - soon to appear on your iPhone map), so just restart your autonomous vehicle and get there again in no time. We blocked a limited number of rooms at last year's rate and reservations can be canceled up to three days prior to arrival. To guarantee this rate please book soon at http://shop.evanshotels.com/catamaran_groups/ieee_inf1302660.html.

On Wednesday, word mavens Martha Barnette and Grant Barret, hosts of public radio's AWwW-esome language program "A Way with Words" http://www.waywordradio.org will regale us with an hour duologue about science, engineering, language, and points in between. Please upload your no-holds-barred questions for the pundits at your profile page.

The workshop poster will be created by our artist-in-residence, Rodrigo Barreto, who also drew the invitation cartoons. It should be our most detailed, lively, and upbeat poster yet. To achieve that, Rodrigo asks for your help in uploading a clear portrait (face only) picture of yourself (not of a charming Prince or Duchess), the more detailed and "unusual" the better. Please do so by December 3rd as the poster will take a lot of work. If all goes well, we may also try printing individual T-shirts. Yet another reason for a sharp picture.

We are actively twisting Rudi and Ubli's arm into another Quantitative Teasing session. To help, please email them your thoughts, or better yet, call them collect. And if you are willing to put yourself up on stage, definitely let them or us know! On Thursday we'll celebrate Valentine's day. Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries were a tad shy, so we are scouting for an even more romantic, Gangnam Style alternative.

Thank you very much for reading this far and for considering attending ITA 2013. If you can, please indicate your attendance inclination at the link on the top of the mail.

Hoping to see you in February,
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