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We are delighted to welcome you to 20th ACM International Conference on Multimedia, ACM Multimedia 2012, which is held from October 29th to November 2nd, 2012 in Nara, Japan. Welcome to Japan's ancient capital, the cradle of Japanese culture and final destination of the Silk Road.

Like the Silk Road of ancient times, multimedia today provides a medium allowing the diverse exchange of ideas across many fields including signal processing, information retrieval, machine learning, content analysis, networking, applications, human-centered systems, art and education and many more. Because of this confluence, multimedia has become one of the fastest growing and most interesting areas in Computer Science. It is again in 2012 that Nara, Japan is a final destination, this time for sharing ideas in multimedia. ACM Multimedia is the premier conference and worldwide event bringing together multimedia experts and practitioners across academia and industry. The central feature of the conference, which continues this year as in every year since its inception, is the outstanding Technical Program. This year's conference features both oral and poster presentations covering all aspects of the multimedia field chosen through a highly selective review process. Notably, this year's conference includes special Technical Program activities recognizing the 20th anniversary of ACM Multimedia.

In addition to the Technical Program, this year's conference features a diverse range of activities including Panels, Demonstrations and Tutorials. Additionally, a wide array of Workshops brings focus on new topics for investigation. The conference features also special sessions on Brave New Ideas, a Grand Challenge contest and Open Source Software Competition and includes a Doctoral Symposium for mentoring graduate students. Finally, the conference provides a rich Multimedia Art Exhibition to stimulate artists and researchers alike to meet and discover the frontiers of multimedia artistic communication!

The 20th Anniversary Keynote Talk and 20th Anniversary Panel This year celebrates the 20th Anniversary of ACM Multimedia, which was first initiated by the ACM SIGMM in 1993. To mark this auspicious occasion, the conference features a 20th Anniversary Keynote Talk and a 20th Anniversary Panel. These two events reflect on major milestones and achievements in multimedia as well as discuss promising ideas and directions for the future.

Innovations for this Year's Conference: In attempt to continuously improve ACM Multimedia and ensure its vibrant role for the multimedia community, we have made a number of enhancements for this year's conference:

• The Technical Program Committee defined eleven Technical Areas for major focus for this year's conference, including introducing new Technical Areas for Multimedia Activity and Event Understanding and Social Media to reflect their growing interest and promise.

• Technical Short Papers are presented as plenary posters to make them more visible at this year's conference, which reflects the growing quality of short papers.

• Plenary sessions bring singular focus to conference activities in the morning sessions each day, and afternoon sessions are held in parallel to allow pursuit of more specialized interests at the conference.

• Workshops and Tutorials are held on separate days from the main conference in order to reduce conflict with the regular Technical Program.

• Since Workshops are important seeds for the next generation of multimedia, two complementary workshop registrations are provided for invited talks of each workshop to encourage participation of notable speakers.

• The Multimedia Art Exhibition features both invited and selected artists and is open for two weeks in the satellite venue close to the main conference with good public access, which allows stimulation broadly to visitors to Nara.

• Following the last year's precedent, Tutorials are made free for all participants.

• Recognizing that students are the lifeblood of our next generation of multimedia thinkers, this year's Student Travel Grant is greatly expanded.