The symposium "MEGA-90 - Effective Methods in Algebraic Geome­ try" was held in Castiglioncello (Livorno, Italy) in April 17-211990. The themes - we quote from the "Call for papers" - were the fol­ lowing: - Effective methods and complexity issues in commutative algebra, pro­ jective geometry, real geometry, algebraic number theory - Algebraic geometric methods in algebraic computing Contributions in related fields (computational aspects of group theory, differential algebra and geometry, algebraic and differential topology, etc.) were also welcome. The origin and the motivation of such a meeting, that is supposed to be the first of a series, deserves to be explained. The subject - the theory and the practice of computation in alge­ braic geometry and related domains from the mathematical viewpoin- has been one of the themes of the symposia organized by SIGSAM (the Special Interest Group for Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation of the Association for Computing Machinery), SAME (Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation in Europe), and AAECC (the semantics of the name is vary­ ing; an average meaning is "Applied Algebra and Error Correcting Codes").