Minutes of the IT Society Board of Governors Meeting, June 26, 1995, Rydzyna Castle, Rydzyna, Poland

Alexander Vardy

BOG Members in Attendance:

Richard Blahut, Daniel Costello, Anthony Ephremides, Thomas Ericson, Tom Fuja, Jerry Gibson, Bruce Hajek, Te Sun Han, Chris Heegard, Hideki Imai, Jim Massey, Stuart Schwartz, Shlomo Shamai, Paul Siegel, Henk van Tilborg, Alexander Vardy, Sergio Verdu

Others in Attendance:

Rudolf Ahlswede, Ezio Biglieri, Meir Feder, Witold Holubowicz, Rolf Johanneson, Prakash Narayan, Jakov Snyders

1. The meeting was called to order at 20:15 in the Library Room of the Rydzyna Castle, Rydzyna, Poland.

2. The agenda for the meeting was approved.

3. The minutes of the March 22, 1995 BOG meeting were approved.

4. President Bruce Hajek reported on the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) meeting, held on June 24-25, 1995 in Washington, DC. The items included the following:

- TAB approved a new method to fund the IEEE Technical Acitivities Department (TAD). A greater portion of TAD services, such as help with conference organization, will be charged to Societies on an as use basis. Additional income for TAD will be generated by a tax levied on Societies in proportion to income from the Transactions Publications packages. The IT Society share of this tax is about 2% of the total, which will amount to about $13K in 1996. These two methods of funding TAD replace the current ad hoc method based on income from sales of conference proceedings through the Book Broker program. TAD also receives funding ($4.78/regular member/year) as a share of IEEE general membership dues.

- TAB approved the new package of "communications" publications, which includes the IT Transactions, to be offered to libraries at a 20% discount. See item 10c of the March minutes for details.

- The Neural Networks Council withdrew a proposal to become a new IEEE society under the name Society for Computational Intelligence. The NNC will further consider options for its future. Andrew Barron, Anthony Ephremides, Bruce Hajek, and Anthony Kuh attended the June Administrative Committee meeting of the NNC.

5. The status of past and future Information Theory workshops and symposia was discussed by the Board. The following issues were addressed.

5a. Sergio Verdu reported that the books for the Information Theory Workshop in Moscow have been closed.

5b. The disposition of the remaining 30% of the surplus (90096 NOK) from ISIT'94 held in Trondheim was discussed. Following a request by Rolf Johanneson, a motion was made to transfer these funds to the guardianship of Thomas Ericson and Rolf Johanneson, for the purpose of supporting low budget Information Theory meetings in Scandinavia. The motion passed unanimously.

An issue of the remaining unpaid bill, in the amount of roughly 3000 US dollars, from ISIT'94 in Trondheim was brought up. Jim Massey moved to pay the bill (up to US $3500) entirely from the IT Society funds. The motion was approved. Chris Heegard and Torleiv Maseng will forward the bill to Bruce Hajek.

5c. Bruce Hajek reported on the IT Workshop held April 19-21 in St.Louis. The workshop was well attended (about 100 registrants), the presentations were excellent and engendered much discussion, the social events went very well. The workshop will return to the IT Society a net surplus of $2250 on a total budget of about $8000.

5d. Witold Holubowicz submitted a written report on the IT Workshop in Rydzyna. The workshop was a great success. As planned, there were 7 full sessions, each with 6 invited speakers, as well as a recent results session. The workshop attracted 85 participants from 18 countries, 22 of them from Eastern Europe. The organizers hope to break even, using the total financial support of $15000 from the IT Society, the IBM, and the NSF. Stu Schwartz moved to convert the $5000 loan from the IT Society to the workshop into a grant. The motion passed. However, if the workshop generates a surplus, it will still have to be returned to the IT Society.

5e. A written report by Vijay Bhargava on the preparations for the upcoming Information Theory Symposium in Whistler was discussed. A question was raised whether the ISIT awards ceremony should take place at the banquet or at some other time, such as a special awards lunch. The Board felt very strongly in favor of having the awards ceremony at the banquet.

In recognition of his contributions to Information Theory, the BOG approved a motion to invite Mark Pinsker as a special guest of honor at the ISIT in Whistler, on the occasion of his 70-th birthday, and to pay all his expenses. The motion passed unanimously.

5f. Shlomo Shamai and Meir Feder submitted a written report on the status of the 1996 Information Theory Workshop in Haifa, Israel. The preparations for the workshop are on schedule. The organizers have so far collected funds from the Israeli government and industry in the total amount $18500 to help support the workshop, and additional support is being applied for. This support will facilitate a reasonable registration fee of about $300-350, as well as reduced registration fees for students and local engineers (not including social events). The organizers hope to finalize the technical program for the workshop (a plenary lecture by Jacob Ziv, 9 invited sessions, each with 5-6 speakers, and a recent results session) by the end of August 1995. The social events will include a banquet, an excursion to Jerusalem, and a special reception in honor of Jacob Ziv at the Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities.

Financial arrangements for the workshop were discussed by the Board. A preliminary budget for the workshop will be prepared before the next meeting.

5g. The first draft of the Call for Papers for the Information Theory Symposium in Ulm, Germany, was distributed to the members of the Board. The symposium will take place from June 29 till July 4, 1997. Joachim Hagenauer and Henk van Tilborg will co-chair the Program Committee for the symposium, while Dan Costello, Bernhard Dorsch, and Han Vinck will be the three general co-chairmen.

5h. The future Information Theory Workshop in Ireland was briefly discussed by the Board. The workshop will be held in June of 1998.

5i. The written proposal by Torleiv Klove, Tor Helleseth, and Oyvind Ytrehus to have an Information Theory Workshop in Longyearbyen, Norway, on June-July 1998 was discussed by the BOG. The general feeling of the Board was that this is an interesting and worthwhile proposal. Dan Costello and Stu Schwartz suggested that the Workshop should be moved to the summer of 1997, possibly right after the ISIT in Germany, in order to avoid possible conflict with the 1998 Information Theory Workshop in Ireland.

5j. Dan Costello expressed the desire of the Conferences & Workshops Committee to have an International Symposium on Information Theory in the Fall of 1998 in North America. Although the closing date for submission of proposals for the 1998 ISIT has already passed, no specific proposals have been received so far by the Committee.

5k. Thomas Ericson requested feedback from the Board, regarding the possibility of having an International Symposium on Information Theory in the year 2000 in Sweden. The Board members had no objections to this. Bruce Hajek noted that proposals for ISIT'2000 would be considered at a later date.

6. Jerry Gibson submitted a written report from the Awards Committee, concerning the 1995 IT Society Paper Award. The committed consisted of Julia Abrahams, Ezio Biglieri, Richard Blahut, Jerry Gibson (chair), Bruce Hajek, Hideki Imai, and Saleem Kassam. The committee recommended the following paper for the 1995 IT Society Paper Award:

A.R. Hammons, P.V. Kumar, A.R. Calderbank, N.J.A. Sloane, and P. Sole, "The -Linearity of Kerdock, Preparata, Goethals and Related Codes", IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol.40, March 1994, pp.301-319.

A motion was made to approve this recommendation. The motion passed unanimously.

7. Tom Fuja submitted the traditional Treasurer's report:

- The net worth of the IT Society's assets as of April 30, 1995 was $596.4K. This represents a gain of $42.3K since January 1, 1995.

- The value of the long-term investments as of April 30, 1995 was $460.8K, representing a gain of $39.4K since January 1, 1995.

The BOG approved the report. The issue of raising individual non-member subscription fees for the IT Transactions by 5.7% was discussed.

8. The Board discussed the Membership Development Report, submitted in writing by Roger Cheng. Accurate membership count is still not available from the IEEE.

A letter mailing went out in June to all IEEE members who are not IT members, but have identified the IT technical interests in their Technical Interest Profiles. Each mailing includes i) a letter inviting them to join the IT society for the rest of the year at the half-year rate; ii) the front and back covers of the May issue of IT Transactions on a 2-sided page; iii) the cover and the inside cover of the March issue of IT Newsletter on a 2-sided page; iv) a response postcard; v) a return envelope. There were altogether 4548 mailings for estimated cost of $3644 (printing $1595.67, mailing $1846.00, and labor $202.81).

9. Richard Blahut reported on the current status of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. The Transactions are in good health. The May issue of the Transactions was on time (actually received at the beginning of May!), and the July issue should be on time as well. Both the backlog and the number of pages per issue have decreased. The special issue on Algebraic Geometry Codes, which was scheduled to be published in January 1995, will be hopefully closed soon. Members of the Board expressed a wish to see the special issue published before the year 1996.

The BOG conveyed its appreciation to the outgoing Editor-in-Chief Richard Blahut and the Publications Editor Jody O'Sullivan, whose term ends on August 31, 1995. The excellent job done by the outgoing Editors was noted with a burst of applause.

10. Bruce Hajek reported on the recent activities of the Neural Networks Council, and the discussions at the IEEE TAB meeting regarding the matter.

11. The next BOG meeting will be held on Tuesday evening, September 19, in Whistler, British Columbia (in connection with the 1995 ISIT).

12. The meeting adjourned at 23:30.