It is well known that stellar winds are variable, and the fluctuations are often cyclical in nature. This property seems to be shared by the winds of cool and hot stars, even though their outflows are driven by fundamentally different physical mechanisms. Since very similar models have been proposed to explain the cyclical wind variations observed in a wide variety of stars, the time was ripe for astrophysicists from many different sub-disciplines to present the state of the art in a concise form. The proceedings will provide a useful, up-to-date overview of the observations, interpretation, and modelling of the time-dependent mass outflows from all sorts of stars.

There is abundant evidence that essentially all luminous hot-star winds contain time-dependent and anisotropic structures. IAU Colloquium 169 was convened to review the observations of variability and asphericity, to discuss the physical processes that might cause such behavior and to look for evolutionary consequences. The topics included OBA stars, Be stars, Wolf-Rayet stars, Be stars, and luminous blue variables (LBVs). The role played by rotation in shaping the stellar wind was a recurrent theme. Photospheric pulsations and/or magnetic fields are particularly appealing mechanisms for triggering the formation of recurrent wind structures.

This specialized workshop was conceived during the workshop on "Non isotropic and Variable Outflows from Stars", which was held at the Space Telescope Science Institute in October, 1991. At that meeting, the four of us collectively decided that the time was ripe for an even more focussed discussion of the basic issues in the area of hot-star wind instability and its observable manifestations. Not that the big problems have been solved! Rather, we are currently in a phase of rapid development, both with regard to the models and to the observations. The key issue at this new workshop would be to decide how the time-dependent structures observed in hot-star winds (e. g. , NACs, DACs, blobs, clumps, filaments, shells, puffs, jets, etc. ) relate to radiative and other instabilities. Further questions concern the role of turbulence and the nature of its driver, and the effect of stellar rotation, pulsation, and magnetic fields on time-dependent phenomena in hot-star winds. Of no less importance is the impact of stellar wind variability on the derivation of mass-loss rates, on stellar evolution, and on momentum/energy deposition in the interstellar medium. To attain our goal of maximum confrontation (in the positive sense!) we decided: (1) to limit the workshop to the observers and theoreticians most active in this field in the world; (2) to insist that virtually all participants present a talk, thereby avoiding the distraction of poster sessions; and (3) to allocate approximately half of the allotted time to discussion.

It is well known that stellar winds are variable, and the fluctuations are often cyclical in nature. This property seems to be shared by the winds of cool and hot stars, even though their outflows are driven by fundamentally different physical mechanisms. Since very similar models have been proposed to explain the cyclical wind variations observed in a wide variety of stars, the time was ripe for astrophysicists from many different sub-disciplines to present the state of the art in a concise form. The proceedings will provide a useful, up-to-date overview of the observations, interpretation, and modelling of the time-dependent mass outflows from all sorts of stars.