The computing center at the University of Arizona, where all the information submitted via forms on the OPAM web site (i.e., submissions, registration, e-mail list) was being sent, apparently decided to declare the incoming messages as junk mail without notifying anyone of these changes or inquiring into whether the banned messages truly constituted unsolicited e-mail (or saving the messages to a trash folder instead of deleting them). Consequently, we did not receive any of the information submitted yesterday (with the exception of payment information, which is stored on PayPal and will hopefully allow us to reconstruct who submitted an abstract, because submitters were asked to register following submission). The new mail filter (which was not a setting over which I had any control) that barred all OPAM form submissions was only implemented a few days ago. Therefore, it seemed at first as though we were simply experiencing a lull in submissions, and that the bulk of the submissions would come on the day of the deadline. After all, we had successfully received over a hundred submissions over the course of the past year and had only recently tested the system again. So there was no reason to conclude that we weren't receiving messages as usual.

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused anyone. The problem has been mended, and we are now receiving submissions again. The last submission we received before the problem occurred dates from July 23, 2003. The first submission we received after the problem had been lifted arrived at 22:25 (-5:00) last night (i.e., 1:25 a.m. of August 1 according to EST). If you submitted any information between these two points, please re-submit this information. If you have already submitted a payment, DO NOT PAY AGAIN. (Should you erroneously submit a second payment, we will, of course, refund your payment.)

If you have any questions about the problem we experienced or on how to proceed from here, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Again, I am very sorry this happened. With some luck, there won't be any more glitches from here on in.

Apologetically,
Robert