Welcome to this special edition of Ground Works, created for the a2ru 2019 conference. It serves important functions for both the Ground Works platform and for the 2019 conference.

For Ground Works, it is a prototype—our first opportunity to run through the editorial, pre-flight, and online publication processes. Edgar Cardenas and Joey Orr served as Editors, working closely with Technical Director Daragh Byrne, Managing Editor Veronica Stanich, and peer reviewers. This conference edition also enabled us to begin to refine our understanding of what our publication criteria actually mean in practice, and what constitutes a good fit for Ground Works.

For this conference, the resulting publication is a representation and artifact, but not in the way that a conference proceedings is. It is partial rather than comprehensive. Not everyone in the conference submitted to Ground Works, and furthermore, Ground Works criteria differ from conference criteria (although we did modify the standard Ground Works criteria somewhat for the conference edition). However, the two projects that are featured in the 2019 conference edition of Ground Works are excellent examples of the conference theme of knowledges. In fact, we included Green Light SONATA in the edition even though its creators are presenting different work at the conference, precisely because it embodies the knowledges theme so well. In that way, the Ground Works conference is not just a record of the conference; it adds its own dimension to the conference.

All 37 people whose proposals were accepted to the conference were invited to submit to the special edition of Ground Works…

• 10 people or teams submitted projects to the Ground Works special edition.
• Five submissions advanced through Stage 1 of the review process.
• Three teams submitted projects to Stage 2.
• Two teams were able to complete suggested revisions in our very limited time-frame; their projects are featured here.