3/2 Greg Fallman agrees location could be in Victoria after AAS meeting. Strawman conference. For local consumption first. --------------------- ALMA: Extending the Limits of Astrophysical Spectroscopy G. Stacey chair SOC Remijan and Wootten cochair SOC Conference focus areas: 1) The Atomic Universe: Atomic Spectra as Probes of Cool Gas 2) The Molecular Universe: Cool Dense Star-forming Gas 3) Isotopic Variety in Cool Gas 4) Our Molecular Origins: Prebiotic Molecules 1) I think a big impact from Herschel and from ALMA will be the fine structure lines--Chris Wilson gave us a fascinating tast of this in her talk and ALMA will observe these lines to very high z. I think this is an emerging field and could be an exciting target area for the conference. 2) This could cover all sorts of molecular gas spectroscopy. Often we hear people say 'ALMA will be really great, with its high resolution and its high sensitivity.' That's sort of bland; I'd hope we could emphasize the excellent brightness temperature sensitivity at high resolution. 3) I put 'Isotopic Variety in the Cool Gas' to emphasize the ongoing enrichment of the ISM as well as star formation. I'd like the workshop to explore the idea that isotopes give us probes of dense gas at different opacities. 4) I like the 'bringing the subject home' aspect of this. We want to emphasize the CCU of course also. Clear skies, Al