(Slightly redacted from the original.)

Dear Invitee,

Defying superstition, '13 proved a great year for innovation. The Yahoo! logo tilted left, the new iPhone came in 50 shades of space gray, plus another way for NSA to get our grubby fingerprints, and big data gave way to big brother meta data.

But even if the wheels of government are screeching to a halt, the panda-cam shut down temporarily, and Stockholm isn't quite calling, don't despair. If your CEO still allows tele-work, cheer up: ITA is on, and you're as welcome as the new Royal prince and Roman papa! We invite you (multiple times) to present a talk at the 9th annual ITA Workshop, at San Diego's Catamaran Resort Sunday-Friday, February 9-14, 2014. As usual, we ask you to please indicate your attendance intention and upload a tentative title by Dec. 2nd.

The plenary speakers will be Bill Bialek (neuroscience), Yann LeCun (perception with deep learning), Jeff Lichtman (neural circuits), Muriel Medard (applications of network coding), and David Tse (information theory for biology).

To honor Jim Massey who passed away last June, we will hold a session on his 80th birthday, Tuesday 2/11. If you are interested in presenting a talk related to Jim's research please indicate so on the website when you submit your tentative title. You are also welcome to directly contact the session organizers Dan Costello and Gerhard Kramer.

To break early and lengthen the breaks, we are experimenting with voluntary short (10-minute) talks. Short talks will be scheduled at the same sessions as long ones, and opting for them is completely voluntary and does not reflect on the talk quality. Please indicate your preferred talk length at your profile page.

Graduation Day will again provide a venue for exceptional graduating students and postdocs seeking academic positions to present their work. With speaker approval, these talks will be videotaped and web-archived. If you have excellent student speakers in mind, please let our graduation guru Yonatan Kaspi know.

Once again we are planning individualized T-shirts and mugs featuring our most important invitee... you! So please upload your best and clearest picture on the website by December 2nd.

The Catamaran holds a limited number of rooms at last year's $135 rate. Reservations can be canceled up to three days prior to arrival. Please book soon at http://shop.evanshotels.com/catamaran_groups/1700.html

Everyone loved last year's videos summaries. You can see a compilation, and the originals. As last year, we encourage all presenters to produce 2-minute video introductions of their talks. Prizes will be awarded to the most creative videos. For more information on creating and submitting your videos see your profile page, or contact our Board of Directors: Pulkit Grover and Bobak Nazer.

Here are some special sessions and events:
Tuesday: Landing your dream job, a panel organized by the student and outreach committees.
Wednesday: ITA for the birds - Interactive entertainment with San Diego's premier stand-up comedians.
Thursday: Valentine's Day with Sidharth Jaggi and friends.
TGIF: A food-wise fun and frolic farewell fanfare at Tony Roma's.

To facilitate participation by researchers with small children, we'll help coordinate and subsidize childcare during the workshop. For more information, please email ita@ucsd.edu.

Thank you very much for reading this far and for considering attending ITA 2014. Please remember to indicate your attendance inclination, and to upload your tentative title Dec. 2nd at the link above.

Looking forward to seeing you in February!

ITA