Dear TC-11 community, from the ICPR'04 in Cambridge I write you this newsletter over the excellent wifi infrastructure which was set up here. * TC-11 chairing At the meeting of all the TC chairs, the current TC-11 vice chair, Jianying Hu has been proposed as the successor of the current chair, Lambert Schomaker. Furthermore, a proposal has been made for the installation of a new vice chair for TC-11, Apostolos Antonacopoulos. Acceptance of these two proposals is ultimately in the hands of the president of the IAPR. The decision will become available in about two weeks. The two candidates represent new streams of research within TC-11 and I am very happy that we ultimately succeeded in identifying these two very capable candidates who volunteered to take up these positions. Furthermore, in the new setting, both industry and academia are represented by the chairs, as before. * Note: a change in chairs also will have implications for the ICDAR Steering Committee, which consists of the TC-10 and TC-11 chairs and an experienced former ICDAR organizer. The ICDAR Steering Committee monitors the ICDAR organization process in order to guarantee continuity over this important series of conferences. The current members of the ICDAR Steering Committee are: Andreas Dengel, Josep Llados (TC-10) and your TC-11 chair. * At the meeting of TCs, it appeared that the list of TCs is expanding. Potential overlap exists between TC-11 and TC-19 (Computer Vision for Cultural Heritage Applications), since several groups in TC-11 have identified the cultural heritage as their application domain for the coming years. The criterion for paper placement is simple: If it concerns a reading system, the most appropriate place would be TC-11. Other new developments concern Biometrics and Bioinformatics. With Biometrics, there is a small overlap in the area of signature verification and writer identification. These overlaps also may be useful for the dissemination of ideas, as long as all IAPR members are aware of the topical centers of gravity. * Conference hosting 7th ICDAR 2003 Edinburgh, Scotland, Europe 8th ICDAR 2005 Seoul, S. Korea, Asia 9th ICDAR 2007 Curitiba, Brazil, Americas 10th ICDAR 2009 ??[host required]?? ==> Europe ==> please prepare your proposal for election at ICDAR 2005, Seoul 8th IWFHR 2002 Ontario, Americas 9th IWFHR 2004 Tokyo, Japan, Asia 10th IWFHR 2006 Le Croisic, France, Europe 11th IWFHR 2008 ??[host required]?? ==> Americas ==> please prepare your proposal for election at IWFHR 2005, Tokyo * Closing note And now the end is near, I would like to thank all those who supported me during the two terms in which I enjoyed the honour of being your chairman. TC-11 is a strong and big community within the IAPR. This means that the processes involved are quite dynamic! I am confident that the two candidates for succession will be able to implement a flourishing continuation and innovation of the TC-11 research streams. Best regards, Lambert Schomaker