From GIW website :

The First GIW was held at Kikai Shinko Kaikan, Tokyo during December 3-4, 1990 as an open workshop just before the Japanese Human Genome Project started in 1991. Thus it has a history of twelve years. Since 1993, GIW changed to an international conference and Genome Informatics Series has been published from Universal Academy Press, Inc.). Here is the history of GIW. GIW 2000 had more than 500 participants and it is no longer a "workshop". From 2001, the first year of 21st Century, the name of this annual meeting is changed to "International Conference on Genome Informatics" while keeping GIW as its nickname because the name GIW has well-settled in the community.

Information on the previous conferences and their proceedings are available online, from 1996 to 2003.