KDD

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 11^th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining -- KDD'05. The KDD conferences provide a forum for novel research results and interesting applications in the areas of data mining and knowledge discovery. The conference series gives researchers and practitioners a unique opportunity to share their perspectives with others and to present new research ideas, applications, solutions, tools, systems, and research directions broadly related to knowledge discovery and data mining.The call for papers attracted 465 research submissions and 73 industrial submissions from around the world. The program committee accepted 40 research papers, 36 research posters, 14 industrial papers and 11 industrial posters. In addition, this year's conference includes three plenary talks and two panels.Putting together KDD'05 was a team effort. First, we would like to thank the authors for providing the content of the program and the program committee and external reviewers, who worked very hard in reviewing papers and providing suggestions for their improvements. Second, we would like to thank the Organizing Committee, who also worked very hard, and, as volunteers, didn't get much for it. I strongly encourage you to thank them, and even, perhaps, to let them get out of the elevator ahead of you. Finally, we would like to thank our sponsor, ACM SIGKDD, for their continued support.Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912) was a partner in the Chicago based architecture firm Burnham and Root. Burnham and Root created the foundation for the modern skyscraper by using a floating foundation of cement that provided a stable foundation even when, as in many Chicago locations, it was not possible to reach bedrock. Burnham and Root was also the lead architect for, and in charge of, construction for the World Columbian Exposition (1893), which celebrated the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus to North America. The World Columbian Exposition was the largest World's Fair to that date and drew 27.5 million attendees at a time when the US population was about 65 million. To achieve this, many logistic obstacles had to be overcome. Burnham's style is nicely captured by a quote associated with him: "Make no little plans. They have no magic to strike man's blood and probably will themselves not be realized.This is the theme we have chosen for this year's KDD Conference. The field of data mining and knowledge discovery is over ten years old, and is now mature enough to begin to make some big plans and to tackle some very difficult problems and challenges. We will begin discussions about these challenges at this year's conference and continue them throughout the year. Over the coming year, please look to the SIGKDD Explorations for further information.We hope that you will find this program interesting and thought provoking and that the conference will provide you with a valuable opportunity to share ideas with other researchers and practitioners from institutions around the world.