Welcome to Florida. It's 70-something degrees, the sun is shining and there are a whole lot of people converging on the Miami Beach Convention Center. I wonder what they'll see and what they'll think of it?

The 2006 edition of Graphics of the Americas and Xplor kicks off today in Miami Beach. Fueled by caffeine, the conference tracks start early, with sessions for Xplor and the PDF and XML Forums running all day. Xplor special interest groups and conference sessions will continue through the weekend, with the trade show floor opening on Friday, so attendees can get the most out of both sides of the event. We begin our onsite coverage today with a quick overview of the show and what some what some vendors are planning. We'll recap some of the conference sessions on Friday. Additional coverage of GOA, Xplor's JTC presentations, and some exclusive interviews will follow next week.

It's gotten to be a standard operating procedure to have sections of a show floor dedicated to specific technologies or offerings. GOA is no exception with a variety of areas targeting different types of attendees.