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Looking Back to Look Forward These questions and more strike at the heart of the work we do in composition and technical communication studies. While each year brings new research questions to the field, scholars and instructors still wrestle with many enduring issues. In addition to our quest to understand more about writing, writing instruction, and training new writing instructors, the conference examined the use of datagogy in our field, the continued search for valid and reliable visual and socially networked writing environment assessment methodologies, the exploration of communication through wireless and mobile technologies, the developed integration of open-source tools with system-wide electronic performance support system services, and the increased influence of technical communication on composition. The Townhalls examined the impact of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat on our  field, and how the values of software development are still deeply engrained in the pedagogical and administrative decisions we make. The Graduate Research Network, the Job Forum, and the Mentoring Program were designed to facilitate the entry of graduate students and new faculty into the profession, our community, and the conference itself, in part by foregrounding the professional issues that the presence of communication technologies has raised. Brief descriptions of talks and each of these conference components are published through this web. The list of awards, too, attests to the quality of work of computers and writing netizens.
For the success of C&W2006, we are indebted to a host of people at Texas Tech University as well as many in the Computers and Writing community at large. Such an undertaking depends on the willing cooperation and contributions of many, many people, many more than we know of and can acknowledge. For each contribution, we are grateful. It is clear that as we look forward to ways we can teach reading, writing, and thinking with technology, we need to look at where we've come from at the same time. We encourage Kairos readers to attend the annual conference. See http://computersandwriting.org for information about where the current conference is being hosted, or how to apply to host the conference yourself.
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