BoG Members in Attendance: Rob Calderbank, Tom Ericson, Tom Fischer, Jerry Gibson, Joachim Haganauer, Chris Heegard, Shlomo Shamai (Schitz), Paul Siegel, Sergio Verdu, Steve Wicker,
Others in Attendance: Dave Forney, Bob Gallager, Amos Lapidoth, Vince Poor, Mitch Trott, Alex Vardy,
1. The meeting was called to order in a meeting room of the Dan Carmel Hotel in Haifa, Israel.
2. The agenda for the meeting was approved with the addition of consideration of a 1999 Workshop in Greece and a Workshop sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1998 under the Workshops and Symposia section.
3. The minutes of the March 20, 1995 BoG meeting at Princeton were read and approved as amended.
4. President Jerry Gibson made the following announcements: a. The IT Society Review by TAB will be held in Denver, Nov. 4-7, 1996. The material for the review is not due to the TAB committee until the end of September and will be distributed to the BoG for comments prior to submission. b. At the upcoming TAB meeting in late June, several new publications are being proposed for approval by various societies, including IEEE Communications Letters by the Communications Society, IEEE Journal on Biomedical Information Technology, the Neural Networks Council will split their Transactions and a new Transaction on Evolutionary Computation, and Internet Computing Magazine by the Computer Society. Chris Heegard stated that there should be a mechanism for ceasing publication of dated journals, and that need should be established before approval of new publications. Sergio Verd\'{u} expressed concern about the total cost for subscription to all Communications Society publications.
5. Behnaam submitted a written Treasurer's report indicating that our previous large surplus seems real, after an analysis by Behnaam and Tom Fuja. Chris Heegard suggested that we move money into long term investments. As to how much, we need to ask Behnaam how much we need to keep for operations. The 1997 budget has been prepared according to IEEE Guidelines by Behnaam Aazhang and coordinated with the past Treasurer, Tom Fuja. The nonmember subscription price of the IT Transactions was increased by $10 per year based upon IEEE recommendations and the fact that we did not raise this price last year.
6. Workshops and Symposia a. Shlomo reported on the ongoing 1996 IT Workshop at Haifa. 215 registered with 185 in attendance thus far and 50% of the attendees local. Financially the Workshop is in good shape and the IT Society loan will be repaid. Ten European students received $500 travel grants and ten U.S. students received $500 travel grants from NSF. Sergio Verd\'{u} lead the acknowledgment of Shlomo's efforts in planning, organizing, and running the workshop. Dave Forney noted the large number of local participants at the Workshop. b. Via an e-mail to Jerry Gibson, Mike Pursley reported that due to last minute "no-shows" at ISIT '95, he has $1500 in unspent travel funds and another $160 in indirect costs, that is left in the ONR travel support grant. He would like to ask ONR if this money can be used for travel to ISITA '96 in Victoria. c. A report on ISIT '97 in Ulm was presented by Joachim Haganauer. Suggestions for plenary speakers were solicited. Budgeted for 660 attendees. Web sites in place. Jim Massey's help with the software was noted. Significant amounts of local industry support has been received. The program will be finalized in December. d. Dave Forney and Bob Gallager reported on the organization of ISIT '98 and that after full consideration of other sites, MIT will be the location and the tentative dates are August 16-21 so that the campus and facilities will be available to us. Two buildings will be used for sessions, the Student Center and the Auditorium. The Board approved the site and dates. e. ISIT 2000 will be held in Italy as Sweden has withdrawn its competing proposal. Sergio Verd\'{u} read e-mail from Ezio Biglieri giving details of the symposium organization and venue. f. Steve Wicker reported on the consideration of an IT Research directions meeting. The goals are unclear and need to focussed. Some skepticism was expressed and more details will be developed. g. Sergio Verd\'{u} reported on the request via e-mail by Kees Immink that we participate in a special workshop organized by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. This would be in 1998 and would not be one of our IEEE workshops. Generally, positive feedback was given and Sergio Verd\'{u} will respond to Kees. It was noted that he should be aware of the IT Society sponsored workshops and symposium that year (January in San Diego, June in Ireland, and August in Boston). Chris Heegard suggested that it could be scheduled adjacent to the Ireland workshop.
7. Jerry Gibson reported on Membership development for Ubli Mitra. She is tracking membership trends and cross memberships of our members with other IEEE Societies. There seems to be a non-trivial drop in membership in the last few years, and this is being investigated. This material will be reported in the Newsletter.
8. Editor-in-Chief Rob Calderbank reported on the IT Transactions. Publications Editor Steve McLaughlin has his new computer operational. The November special issue is in good shape. We get about 95% electronic submissions. The page budget for 1997 is 2150. It was proposed that we go over the budget for 1996 by 100 to 200 pages. This was approved. Rob and Steve attended the Editors' meeting in Piscataway. One of their measures for performance is delay. The IEEE chose a single issue when their electronic publishing was producing maximum delay. Rob and Steve computed the delay over two years. Our computed delay is about 22 months for regular papers and 21 months for correspondence. Rob Calderbank reported on the new IEEE publication charge mechanism. He and Steve calculated the charges to us by the IEEE for the last two years had the new structure been in place. Based on this calculation, assuming 90 % electronic submissions, we should pay a little less per page than in the past. A special issue of the IT Transactions is being planned for 1998 to celebrate the publication of Shannon's original paper. Suggestions for topics and authors to appear in this issue are solicited from the BoG and contributors to the field.
It was noted that Michelle Effros has the Newsletter in good shape. The web page is being updated and improved by Ramesh Rao.
8. Sergio Verd\'{u} reported on the Best Paper Award. The BoG accepted the nominations of the Awards Committee. Following the Society by-laws, Jerry Gibson will submit a ballot to all voting members upon return to the U. S. Results will be tabulated and distributed in late summer.
9. Jerry Gibson mentioned the possibility of using CD-ROM for our Shannon lectures and other conference plenaries, etc. Sergio Verd\'{u} suggested this medium for preserving the tutorial articles from IT Newsletters and other such articles. There was also a discussion of compiling a cumulative index. Such a possibility was considered before but apparently dropped because of costs.
10. New Business: Discussion of the possibilities of afternoon BoG meetings, multiple meetings, etc. to allow more time for discussion. This was a review of an e-mail discussion conducted by Julia Abrahams, which tended to support the present approach. During the discussion, it was suggested that alternatives be regularly considered depending upon the workshop or symposium venue.
11. Meeting adjourned at 11:00 PM.