Proceedings of the 2004 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries

This is the 20th Annual conference of South Africa's Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. It is thus fitting to reflect a bit on our history. In 1982, twelve good men and true (including one woman) got together over a (few) bottles of wine and decided to form a scientific body dedicated to promoting the interests of computing research in this country. The people were:Stef Postma (RAU), Judith Bishop (Wits), Pierre Visser, Gideon De Kock (UPE), Niek du Plooy (CSIR), Doug Laing (IBM), Ken MacGregor (UCT), Phil Roets (NRIMS), Trevor Turton (IBM), Gerrit Wiechers (UNISA), Trevor Winer, Roelf van den Heever (UP) and Derrick Kourie (UP).The enduring legacy of this group of legends in computing has been the SA Computer Journal, and the Annual SAICSIT conference. Each year the conference chair chooses a theme for the conference, and this year "Research in a changing world" aptly sums up where we are now, and where we want to be. We live in a world of rapid technological, economic and social change, and to foster world class research in this environment is both the Institute's aim and challenge. Fittingly, this year's conference was marked by several real changes.Paper submission and entry were handled by the conference system. 60 submissions were received and 30 full papers were chosen after a stringent refereeing process which involved three referees per paper from an internationally representative programme committee, plus an online discussion to select the top papers, and a second round of checking that the referees' comments had been adhered to. For many on both sides of refereeing, such care and control was quite new, and I salute everyone who adapted so easily to the system --- the 22 members of the IPC, the 34 members of the Review Panel, and the over 150 authors. In particular, thanks are due to Dirk Peters of the University of Leipzig, who ran the Paperdyne system with such technical efficiency and user-friendly support.Then we did away with the "short paper" category, as well as the student paper day, instituting instead a poster session. Ten posters were received, and they were all reviewed and accepted.