It is no secret that Mathematica has a big user community that is alive and kicking. It may, however, surprise you that the global user community has successfully organized 10 international Mathematica conferences around the world. It all began 20 years ago in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, about two meters below sea level, where Wolfram Research had organized the Mathematica Days. The Mathematica Days were a small sibling of the larger annual Mathematica Conference, which in those days had its venue 8,800 km farther west in the Bay Area. Among the participants in Rotterdam were Peter Mitic (The Open University, UK), Gautam Dasgupta (Columbia University, New York), Pertti Näykki (Finland), Klaus Sutner (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh), Robert Kragler (Fachhochschule Ravensburg, Weingarten, Germany), and Veikko Keränen (Rovaniemi Institute of Technology, Finland). Most of them met for the first time and came from different walks of life, but they all shared the same enthusiasm for algorithmic mathematics. The lack of an academic conference targeting innovative work in, with, and about Mathematica triggered Peter Mitic to propose the idea of a symposium. His new friends very much supported the endeavor, and in 1994 Stephen Wolfram became the godfather of the new event by suggesting the name "International Mathematica Symposium" (IMS). In July 1995, the first IMS in Southampton, England, began an uninterrupted streak of biannual, and for some years even annual, symposia. In contrast to the Wolfram Developer/Technology/User Conferences with their venue in Champaign, Illinois, the IMSs have roamed the world. The second IMS took place in Rovaniemi near the polar circle in northern Finland, followed by Hagenberg near Linz in Austria, Tokyo in Japan, London—the one in England, Banff in Canada, Perth in western Australia, Avignon in the south of France, Maastricht in the Netherlands, and Beijing in China.

I get to show off the power of Wolfram|Alpha, Mathematica, and our other technologies to lots of interesting people, but last Friday was more interesting than usual, as David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, came to our European headquarters. [caption id="attachment_9824" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron with Conrad Wolfram"][/caption] We have been growing consistently, and our UK location finally ran out of room for the extra staff that we were hiring, so we built a brand new set of offices on a former film studio site (I am told an underwater scene from one of the Superman movies was filmed under my office location). The Prime Minister came to perform the official opening.

Are you looking for a great way to spend your summer? We are happy to announce the Mathematica Summer Camp 2012! Held at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, students will have the opportunity to learn Mathematica’s language, apply their skills in other disciplines, and program their very own Wolfram Demonstrations! Students will also work individually and in groups to hone their Mathematica skills.

For 22 years, Wolfram Research has been developing technology to allow subject matter experts to bring their ideas and documents to life with interactivity. This week, as part of his keynote at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, Theodore Gray, Co-founder of Wolfram Research and Founder of Touch Press, gave the first demonstration of how we're bringing the full power of our publishing systems to mobile devices. Here's a video excerpt of his announcement of the Computable Document Format (CDF) for iPad:

The Wolfram Science Summer School (formerly the NKS Summer School) is now accepting applications for its 10th season, to be held June 25–July 13, 2012, at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, United States. We are looking for highly motivated individuals who want to get involved with original research at the frontiers of science. Our participants come from diverse backgrounds but share a common passion to discover and explore cutting-edge ideas. Over the past ten years, participants have included graduate students, undergraduates, professors, industry professionals, artists, and even a few exceptional high-school students.