The advances of computer technologies have empowered efficient provision of multimedia services over diverse infrastructures. Not only the traditional services, such as telephone calls, postal mails, etc., can be offered in a new way, but also many creative ideas have come materialized to enrich people’s lives. With the modern communication facilities, an exquisite PDA (personal digital assistant) allows one to confer with colleagues, rendering ubiquitous connectivity possible. As new applications incorporate consumer electronics, an integrate agent can schedule all the daily works by taking voice or gesture commands.

However, due to the strong competition among leading vendors and players, little consensus has emerged over the integration and provision of multimedia services. A unique, simple, yet versatile multimedia system becomes very difficult to design. Most efforts are drained to eliminate the incompatibility, leveling off the aggregate advantages of individuals. To conquer these intermediate barriers, a unified middleware framework can be a useful means to reach maximal interoperability. In particular, the management of distributed media resources demands comprehensive knowledge of each specification. Yet, resources utilization requires intelligent scheduling strategies to meet respective criteria. Consequently, researches that explore principal groupware features and foster seamless integration of software components will have a strong impact towards multimedia research societies. We encourage original works and innovative researches to submit a paper in contribution of this important area. Ingenious ideas and visions can be thus shared and discussed in this session.

Best papers of the sessions will be suggested by the special session chairs and the IMMCN'2000 workshop chair, to be published in a special issue of one of the three Information Science Journals, subject to a quick review by the program committee of IMMCN'2000.