DS Technical Committee Meetings are typically held twice a year at Globecom and ICC. All are welcome to attend. 

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Beijing, China, May 24th, 2008

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Washington DC, USA, Nov. 29th, 2007

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Tiffany Jing Li, Yuanxing Lee, Bruce Wilson, Xinde Hu, Ruwan Ratnayake, Krishna Narayanan, Henry Pfister, Jing Jiang, Fatih Erden, Alvin Wang, Riccardo Raheli, Tolga Duman, Sedat Olcer, Marcus Marrow

1)  TC Recertification: Once in 3 years the technical committee needs to be recertified by ComSoc. Our technical committee passed the recertification, but two areas were recognized as weak, and should be improved

- It is recommended that at least 2 special issue of JSAC (Journal on Selected Areas in Communications) be sponsored by the TC per decade. It has been almost a decade since the TC sponsored a special issue of JSAC. This should be rectified. It is recommended that a new special issue be kicked off soon. Since the process will take 2-3 years, it is essential that the process be started immediately.  

-  Increase activity by organizing workshops at least twice per decade. Efforts are already under way for GLOBECOM 2007. Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are organizing a Workshop on Data Storage with in GLOBECOM 2007.

-  Recognize TC members by successfully promoting them to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow grades.

2) GLOBECOM 2007 report: GLOBECOM 2007 was another successfully organized conference from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

- 14 papers were submitted. 6 papers were accepted and all were presented in one session as part of the General Symposium.

-  Marcus Marrow and Bruce Wilson organized a Workshop on Data Storage as part of GLOBECOM 2007 with 6 invited speakers and attendance of over 20. 

3) ICC 2008 report: Preparations for ICC 2008 (Beijing) are under way 

- DSTC will be represented in the Data Storage Track of the General Symposium. Ned Varnica is the General Symposium co-chair responsible for the Data Storage Track.

- 20 papers submitted in Data Storage. 7 (or 8) will be accepted. The paper selection process is still under way. Authors will be informed once the final decision is made.  

4) Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2008 and onward) the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications)  

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are: 

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing), Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell) and Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University)

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose) and Henry Pfister (Texas A&M University)

-   ICC 2009 (Dresden): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich) and Shaohua Yang (LSI, San Jose)

-   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh)

-   ICC 2010 (Cape Town): Riccardo Raheli (University of Parma, Italy) 

5) JSAC special issue: Sedat Olcer will take the lead role and recruit 4 additional guest editors who will start the process of organizing a JSAC special issue on Data Storage. The proposal is expected to be submitted at the beginning of 2008.  

6) 2006 best paper awards: Two papers were selected as best papers of 2006, ad the awards were presented at this meeting 

-   2006 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

"Iterative Soft-Input Soft-Output Decoding of

Reed--Solomon Codes by Adapting the Parity-Check Matrix,"

by Jing Jiang and Krishna R. Narayanan, IEEE TRANSACTIONS

ON INFORMATION THEORY, vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 3746- 3756,

August 2006.

-   2006 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

"Multidimensional Signal Processing and Detection for

Storage Systems with Data-Dependent Transition Noise,"

by Riccardo Pighi, Riccardo Raheli, and Umberto Amadei.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, vol. 42, No. 7,

pp. 1905-1916, July 2006, 

7)  Inclusion of Storage Area Networks and Security: We are encouraged to actively seek involvement of professionals in the areas of Storage Area Networks and Storage Security to actively participate in the DSTC and publish/present their work at ICC & GLOBECOM conferences. Future calls for papers and conference notifications should be emailed to professionals in these areas. Also, the pending issue of JSAC will seek to include papers in Storage Area Networks and Storage Security. 

8) Elections: Alek Kavcic ended his term as Chair of the Data Storage Technical Committee. The following were the nominations for the officers of the Technical Committee 

Chair: Yuan Xing Lee (automatic promotion from vice chair position)

Vice-Chair (industry): Bruce Wilson

Vice-Chair (academia): Tiffay Jing Li (continuation)

Secretary: Haitao Xia (continuation)

Treasurer: Fatih Erden 

9)  Election results:

Bruce Wilson:        for (13)  against (0)     abstained(1)

Fatih Erden:            for(12)          against(1)      abstained(1)    

10) Newly elected officers:  

Chair: Yuan Xing Lee (automatic promotion from vice chair position)

Vice-Chair (industry): Bruce Wilson

Vice-Chair (academia): Tiffay Jing Li (continuation)

Secretary: Haitao Xia (continuation)

Treasurer: Fatih Erden 

11.  Misc: None.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Alek Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, June 24th, 2007

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Yuanxing Lee, Bruce Wilson, Moon Ho Lee, Edward Au, Hua Hu, Sedat Olcer, Mehmet Seskinoz, Lara Dolecek, Stefano Galli

1)  Name Change: The board of Governors approved the name change for the technical committee from "Signal Processing for Storage Technical Committee" to "Technical Committee on Data Storage". The new name will better reflect all technical areas represented by the community.

2)  TC Recertication: Once in three years the technical committee needs to be recertified by ComSoc. Our technical committee passed the recertification, but two areas were recognized as weak, and should be improved:

 - It is recommended that at least two special issue of JSAC (Journal on Selected Areas in Communications) be sponsored by the TC per decade. It has been almost a decade since the TC sponsored a special issue of JSAC. This should be rectified. It is recommended that a new special issue be kicked off soon. Since the process will take 2-3 years, it is essential that the process be started immediately.

-  Increase activity by organizing workshops at least twice per decade. Efforts are already under way for GLOBECOM 2007. Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are organizing a Workshop on Data Storage within GLOBECOM 2007.

-  Recognize TC members by successfully promoting them to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow grades.

3)   ICC 2007 report: ICC 2007 was another successful conference from the perspective of our Technical Committee.  

 - 35 papers were submitted. All 12 accepted papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee appeared grouped in 2 contiguous sessions (one oral session and one poster session) in a single day. No data storage papers appeared in scattered sessions throughout the conference.

- The co-chairs Yuan Xing Lee, Thomas Conway and Haitao (Tony) Xia did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions within the General Symposium.

- The following paper was selected as the Best Paper in Signal Processing and Coding for Storage at ICC 2007.

R. Todd and J. R. Cruz, "Computing Maximum-likelihood Bounds for Reed-Solomon Codes over Partial Response Channels", University of Oklahoma

4)   GLOBECOM 2007 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC, USA) are under way  

 - TCDS will be represented in the Data Storage Track of the General Symposium. Alek Kavcic is the General Symposium co-chair responsible for the Data Storage Track.

- Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are co-chairing the Data Storage Workshop within GLOBECOM 2007. Talks by invited speakers will be presented at the workshop.

5)   Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications) 

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are: 

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing): Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell Semiconductor) and Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University). 

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Henry Pifster (Texas A&M University). 

- ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich), Shaohua Yang (Marvell Semiconductor)

-   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh). 

6)   JSAC special issue: Sedat Olcer will take the lead role to recruit 3-4 guest editors who will start the process of organizing a JSAC special issue on Data Storage.  

7)   IEEE promotions: Yuan Xing Lee will recruit an IEEE Fellow from the ranks of the TCDS to start a committee that will nominate TCDS members for promotions to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow Ranks.  

8)  2006 best paper awards:  Two award committees have been formed

- 2006 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Alek Kavcic (University of Hawaii) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by an official ComSoc plaque.

-  2006 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Tiffany Jing Li (Lehigh University) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by a $400 prize and an official ComSoc plaque.

- Award announcement date: October 2007.

- Award presentation date and place: At the TC DS meeting at GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington DC.

9)  Miscellaneous: None.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Alek Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, San Francisco, USA,   Nov. 29th, 2006

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Yuanxing Lee, Zhiyuan Yan, Zhengya Zhang, Lara Dolecek, Bruce Wilson, Shaohua Yang, Marcus Marrow, Haitao Xia, Sedat Olcer, Ksenia Lakovic, Tiffany Jing Li, Jae Moon, Henry Pfister, Ghurunwruhan Ganesan, Shayan Srinivasa, Shashi Chilappagani, Sun-How Jiang, Nedeljko Varnica

1)  Recertification: Once in 3 years all TCs are graded on their activity.

- Outcomes: (1) Recertified (2) 1-year probation (3)Termination.

- Criteria: (1) Regularity and attendance of meeting; (2) Conference co-sponsorship; (3)Transparency of officer elections/web-site; (4) Recognition of members of community: best paper awards, nominations to IEEE senior members and fellows, distinguished lecturers; (5) Organizations of journal special issues.

- Self-evaluation: (1) Positives: meetings, conferences, best paper awards; (2) Improvements needed: promotions, distinguished lecturers, organization of journal issues, officers.

2)  Globecom 2006 report (by Nedeljko Varnica): Globecom 2006 was a success from the perspective of

    our Technical Committee.

 - The papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee had been grouped contiguously into two oral sessions of 12 papers and poster session of 3 papers in General Symposium.

-  Nedeljko Varnica and Erozan Kurtas did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions.

3)   ICC 2007 report (by Yuanxing Lee): Preparations for ICC 2007 (Glasgow, Scotland) are well under

      way.  

 - At ICC 2007, SPS Society is allowed to have a separate symposium. Dr. Yuanxing Lee is the Symposium Chair, Prof. Tom Conway is the Co-Chair, and Dr. Haitao Xia is the TPC Chair.

- 27 papers were submitted and reviews were organized. Every paper received at least 3 reviews.

- 12 papers will be accepted and organized into one oral and one poster sessions.

4)   Election for new officers:  

 - Vice President for Academia: Since previous Vice President, George Matthew, went to industry, a new Vice President from academia was needed. Two candidates, Prof. Tiffany Jing Li and Prof. Bane Vasic were nominated, Prof. Tiffany Jing Li has been elected as Vice President.

- Vice President for Industry: Erozan Kurtas resigned, and election for new Vice President for industry will be held at ICC 2007. A call for nominations will be sent out and criteria for nomination will be announced.

5)   News from GITC:  

 - In future, the symposia names will be fixed (but slow evolving), by which GITC tries to avoid drastic name changes and avoid thematic overlaps.

- Where does DATA STORAGE fit, Signal Processing Symposium or General Symposium? 

  All the attendees chose General Symposium as the location where future data storage papers need to be submitted.

6)   Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) there will be a  reorganization of Symposia by the GITC. Alek Kavcic will be on the GITC work group that will reorganize the Symposia structures.  

Our representatives for the future conferences are: 

-   GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC): Alek Kavcic (Harvard University), Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Marcus Marrow (Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA).

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing, China), Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University) and Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell Semiconductor).

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Henry Pifster (Texas A&M University). 

-   ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich), Shaohua Yang (Marvell Semiconductor). 

7)   Name change for SPS technical committee (TC):  

 - Because of the phrase "signal processing" in the name of our committee, conference organizers always try to put us in the Signal Processing Symposium.

-  The paper statistics for our paper submission: Coding (45%), signal processing (35%), circuits (10%) and others: information theory, storage networks, (10%)

  All the attendees agreed to change our committee name into Data Storage Technical Committee. 

8)  Paper Awards:  

-   2005 best paper award:

Awardees: Aleksandar Kavcic, Xiao Ma, Nedeljko Varnica

Paper: A. Kavcic, X. Ma, N. Varnica, "Matched Information Rate Codes for Partial Response Channels," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, pp. 973-989, March 2005

-   2005 best student paper award:

Awardee: Shaohua Yang

Paper: S. Yang, A. Kavcic, S. Tatikonda, "The Feedback Capacity of Finite-State Machine Channels," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, pp. 799-810, March 2005.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Haitao Xia

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Istanbul, Turkey, June. 14, 2006

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Sedat Olcer, Mehmet Seskinoz, Fatih Erden, Bane Vasic, Tolga Duman, Joseph O’Sullivan, Riccardo Raheli, Erozan Kurtas

1)  ICC 2006 report: ICC 2006 was a success from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

 - For the first time in years, the papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee appeared grouped in two separate sessions. One session was in the Communication Theory Symposium, and the other session was in the Signal Processing for Communications Symposium. 10 papers were presented in these sessions, and no paper overlapped.

-  Bane Vasic and Erozan Kurtas did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions.

-  There was a glitch with one paper by Singla and O’Sullivan. The paper was accepted and appeared in the advanced conference program, but in the end the paper was not included in the proceedings. Alek Kavcic agreed to follow up with the conference organizers.

2) Globecom 2006 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco) are well under way.  

 - Initially, SPS TC was allowed to apply for a separate symposium at GLOBECOM 2006. The nominated Symposium Chair was Erozan Kurtas, and the nominated TPC Chair was Nedeljko Varnica.

- 30 papers were submitted and reviews were organized. Every paper received at least 3 reviews.

- Because the number of submissions did not warrant a full symposium, the papers in Signal Processing will be folded into the General conference, and organized into contiguous sessions.

- 15 papers will be accepted and organized into oral and poster sessions.

 3)      ICC 2007 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2007 (Glasgow) have started

 - SPS TC was allowed to apply for a separate symposium at ICC 2007. The nominated Symposium Chair is Yuan Xing Lee, and the nominated TPC Chair was is Haitao (Tony) Xia.

- If we do not get enough papers for a symposium, we will fold the papers into the General Conference. 

4)  Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) there will be a reorganization of Symposia by the GITC. Alek Kavcic will be on the GITC work group that will reorganize the Symposia structures. The criteria for organization will be:

 - Symposia titles will need to have continuity (thus far only a few symposia, such as the Communication Theory Symposium and the Signal Processing for Communication Symposium) have maintained the stability of Symposia titles.

- Overlap of topics should be avoided between the symposia and sessions should be organized so as to avoid mid-session migrations of attendees.

- Topics that do not generate large numbers of submissions (such as Data Storage) should be organized in the General Symposium. 

Our representatives for the future conferences are: 

-   GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Marcus Marrow (Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA)

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing), So far, Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University) has volunteered.

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): No representatives from SPS TC have been named yet. 

5)      Paper Awards: ComSoc has allowed every technical committee (TC) to present two paper awards per year. Most TCs do that by presenting a best paper award within their Symposia at GLOBECOM and/or ICC. Since our TC is small, and since we do not generate many paper submissions, we present two annual awards: 1) The best paper award, and 2) the best paper student award. 

-   2005 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Steven McLaughlin (Georgia Institute of Technology) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by an official ComSoc plaque.

-   2005 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Tolga Duman (Arizona State University) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by a $400 prize and an official ComSoc plaque.

-   Award announcement date: October 2006.

-   Award presentation date and place: At the SPS TC meeting at GLOBECOM 2006 in San Francisco.

 6)  Technical Committee Recertification: Every three years ComSoc needs to recertify all Technical Committees (TCs). The main criterion for recertification is activity of the TC. Inactive TCs will cease to exist. Alek Kavcic is involved in preparing the activity report for the SPS TC to present to ComSoc. The report is due in August 2006. 

7)   Elections of SPS TC officers: The SPS-TC officers elections are scheduled to take place at the SPS TC meeting at GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington DC. We will start accepting nominations a year prior to the elections.  

8)    Miscellaneous: The following miscellaneous topics were raised at the meeting.

 -   Increasing the activity of the SPS TC:

1.    Organize tutorials or workshops at one of the next ICC or GLOBECOM conferences. The issue raised though is that ComSoc views tutorials and workshops as a revenue-generating activity. Hence we need to organize a tutorial or workshop if the conference is organized at a site that can guarantee industry presence (such as the Silicon Valley, or Colorado area).

2.    Broaden the scope of activities to general ISI channels. This may not fly with ComSoc because ComSoc wants to avoid the overlap of topics. So, if we start organizing sessions that encompass general ISI channels, they will almost certainly overlap with Communication Theory or Wireless Symposia.

3.    Broaden the scope of topics to include: nanotechnologies for storage, optical storage, probe storage, etc. This is a suggestion that can be implemented immediately in the next call for paper.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, St. Louis, MO,   Dec. 1, 2005

Attendees:

Aleksandar Kavcic, Tiffany Jing Lee, Jin Xie, Shaohua Yang, Zheng Zhang

1) 2004 Best Student Paper Award: By the decision of the student award committee, the best student paper award for 2004 in the area of signal processing and coding for data storage was awarded to Zheng Zhang who recently graduated form Arizona State University, for the paper:

 "Achievable Information Rates and Coding for MIMO Systems over ISI Channels and Frequency-Selective Fading Channels",

  by Zheng Zhang, Tolga M. Duman, Erozan M. Kurtas, IEEE Transactions on Communications,   vol. 52, p. 1698, October 2004.

The winner was presented with a plaque and a $400 monetary prize. 

2) Best paper award: From 2006 onward, the SPS TC will award an annual best paper award, in addition to the student paper award. Thus, in the future, SPS TC will award two papers per year, one in the general category, and the other in the student category. Calls for nominations will be distributed in early 2006.

3) Conference organization: At GLOBECOM 2005, all data storage papers appeared in scattered sessions. This is perceived by the TC as a serious problem. Efforts are under way to prevent this from happening in the future. At ICC 2006, all papers will appear in contiguous sessions. From GLOBECOM 2006 onward, there will be a separate symposium on signal processing and coding for data storage, thus all papers in this area will appear in thematically grouped sessions. Erozan Kurtas and Nedeljko Varnica are in the process of organizing the symposium.

4) SPS representatives at conferences: The following people will represent the SPS technical committee at future conferences

      -   ICC 2006 (Istanbul), Erozan Kurtas, Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA

     -   GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco): Erozan Kurtas (symposium chair), Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA, and Nedeljko Varnica  (TPC chair), Marvell, Santa Clara, CA.

    -   ICC 2007 (Glasgow) Yuan Xing Lee (symposium chair), Hitachi GST, San Jose, CA and Haitao (Tony) Xia (TPC chair), Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA

5) Scheduling of talks at GLOBECOM and ICC: Shaohua Yang stated that it would be best if data storage papers appeared closer to the coding sessions. Unfortunately, it was not clear how to implement this suggestion because the talk scheduling is not in the hands of the SPS TC. We will make efforts in the future to better schedule the talks. Already at ICC206, Erozan Kurtas has taken on the task to organize the sessions for signal processing for data storage.

6) Review process: Tiffany Jing Lee asked whether the review process could be shortened because it is too long. This decision is not in the hands of the SPS TC, but in the hands of conference organizers. Alek Kavcic has agreed to raise this issue at the next GLOBECOM and ICC meeting.

7) Next meeting: at ICC 2006 in Istanbul.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Seoul, Korea,   May, 18, 2005

Attendees:

Zhi Ding (from the Globecom2006 Organizing Committee), Tolga Duman, Aleksandar Kavcic, Jaekyun Moon

1) Technical committee activity: The activity of the technical committee is dangerously low.

- There is a lack of coordination between the technical committee and Globecom and ICC organizing committees. The result is a scattering of papers in data storage among may different symposia, often in overlapping sessions.  The committee needs to delegate dedicated members to represent the committee at future conferences. This means that the delegate will need to visit 2 ICCs/GLOBECOMs prior to the one he/she is responsible for, and the one he/she is responsible for. This also means that the representative will need to visit the organizing meetings, and actively campaign to have a separate symposium on Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage. If such a symposium is not possible, then the representative should campaign for contiguous sessions that cover papers for data storage. The representative should also make sure that ALL papers in data storage be sent to him/her for review, regardless of which symposium they are submitted to.

-  SPS TC must actively co-sponsor symposia at ICCs and GLOBECOMs.

-  The student paper award has not been awarded for 2 years. The student paper award needs to be reinstalled. Efforts are under way to identify the best student paper in 2004. The winner will be announced by GLOBECOM 2005.

-   In 2006, all technical committees of the Communications Society will be reevaluated. They need to demonstrate activity and accomplishments in order to be allowed to exist. It is crucial that the SPS TC be able to demonstrate a satisfactory level of activity in order to be recertified.

2) Technical committee representatives: Representation at future conferences must be improved. The representatives MUST attend organizing committee meetings at 2 ICCs and GLOBECOMs prior to the actual conference. They also MUST campaign for the causes of SPS TC: the paper review process must be handled by SPS TC representatives, papers need to appear in contiguous sessions, conferences need to be advertised. The following are the SPS TC representatives at future conferences:

        -  GLOBECOM 2005 (St. Louis): Shaohua Yang, Hitachi Global Storage, Almaden Research, Almaden CA

-   ICC 2006 (Istanbul), Erozan Kurtas, Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA

-   GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco): Erozan Kurtas (symposium chair), Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA, and Nedeljko Varnica (TPC chair), Marvell, Santa Clara, CA.

-   ICC 2007 (Glasgow) Representative has not been identified yet. Also, it is still not clear whether ICC 2007  will  allow a symposium on data storage, or whether data storage will need to co-sponsor other (lager) symposia.

3) Student paper award: The best student paper award has not been awarded for 2 years. This trend needs to be reversed immediately. The student paper award committee was inactive for 2 years, and a new student paper award committee has been formed in 2005. Efforts are under way to award the best student paper award for 2004 

-   Harvey Freeman, the Vice President of ComSoc for Technical Affairs, has urged the Technical Committees, to spend the $500/year. SPS TC will try to use the $500 as a monetary award for the best student paper.

-   A motion has been made to award the best paper award, rather than the best student paper award. Inquiries with ComSoc will be made.

4) Poster Sessions at ICCs and GLOBECOMs: At future ICC and GLOBECOM conferences, there will be poster sessions. This was a top-down directive from ComSoc, aimed at increasing the revenues at ICCs and GLOBECOMs. The acceptance rate of papers will go up to 45%-50% in future ICCs and GLOBECOMs. Papers designated for poster sessions will NOT be selected based on quality and there will be NO distinction between oral and poster paper in the conference proceedings.

5) Next meeting: at GLOBECOM 2006 in St. Louis.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Dallas, USA,   Nov. 29, 2004

Meeting scheduled, but only the SPS-TC Chair attended. As a result, elections were successfully held via email.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Paris, France,   June 24, 2004

No officers able to attend to chair meeting.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, San Francisco, USA,   Dec. 4, 2003

Attendance:

Ajay Cholakia, Yuan Xing Lee, Stefan Schmermbeck, Martin Hassner, Oke

Ugweje, Saeid Taheri, Andre' Immink, Jing Li (Tiffany), Vijayakumar

Bhagavatula, Ron P. Smith, Chimming Qiao, David Berman, Michael Melas, gReg

Silvus

1) Monetary Award for Best Student Paper

 Alek reported to gReg before the meeting that it looks like no monetary

award will be given. Ron Smith suggested that a gift be given instead. His

experience is that Comsoc is much more amenable to gifts because under a

certain value, there are no tax ramifications. Tiffany suggested the award

should be an internship. The group thought her idea good, but wondered how

we would secure guaranteed corporate sponsorship.

2) Globecom 2003 Report (Yuan Xing Lee)

 Yuan Xing felt Globecom 2003 was poorly organized. His e-mails to the

organizers were not returned; his duties were strictly to organize the

reviewers. He was not even informed which papers were accepted or rejected.

This is contrary to the way ICC 2001 was done. He knows that 9 papers were

submitted, but the vice chair assigned papers to sessions. Many of these

assignments were questionable. Kumar's paper on Timing Recovery for Storage

Channels ended up in a session entitled "Billing & Misc." Also, overlap in

interest between sessions was high. Thursday afternoon often had three

papers of interest in the same slot. Clearly, this is unacceptable.

The group agreed that guidelines for the upcoming organizers would be

desirable. That is, when someone agrees to run the SPS session, they would

be given a checklist by this TC, and would meet (perhaps on the phone) with

the previous year's organizer to learn of things which should be watched

for and deadlines that must be met. The guidelines would also offer

resolution techniques. For example, if e-mails are not returned, one

resolution technique might be to get the TC chair or other officers

involved.

Action: Yuan Xing said he would contact Tolga Duman to discuss some of

these issues.

Action: gReg said he would make a rough draft of the guidelines to be added

to and approved by the TC.

Tiffany volunteered to organize ICC 2005 in Seoul, Korea.

3) We further discussed ways to improve the visibility of the SPS at these

conferences. Here are some ideas:

a) Suggest that the conference use a paper and keywords to create the

sessions and make sure that overlap

b) Drive toward letter the TPC leads help organize the sessions and approve

the final list and scheduling of papers.

c) Demand more sessions. Have stats ready to argue the case.

d) Know when the TPC organizers meeting announcement should occur; inform

new organizers that they should expect this meeting to happen.

4) Regarding ICC 2005, we voted to participate in the Symposium "Signal

Processing for Communications." Other options included being in the general

session and being in the "Communications" symposium. We opted out of the GC

to avoid having our papers spread everywhere. We decided on Signal

Processing because most attendees felt that Sig Proc included

Communications, but not vice versa.

5) Action: Kumar took the action to talk to Jaafar (the organizer of

Globecom 2004) about how to intercept papers that should go to SPS.

6) Ron Smith spoke about the TAC meeting:

a) IEEE Books is looking for ideas on manuscripts

b) Are we aware of online tutorials? Do we have ideas for new ones?

c) Do we know about "Emerging Technologies" and new Communications Society

Magazine?

7) Ways to further our cause:

a) Find out how we get articles into IEEE Proceedings (Kumar mentions that

it's about time for that to happen again).

b) How do we get more visible? (only a little discussion followed, nothing

concrete)

c) Organize tutorials and workshops at the conferences

d) JSAC overview articles

 Adjourn

 ----------------------minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Taipei, Taiwan,  Nov.19, 02

A SPS Technical Committee meeting was held on November 19 during Globecom
2002 at Taipei. There were nine in attendance. I wanted to alert you about
the decisions and discussion at this meeting.

1. My term as the chair of SPS has ended. Greg Silvus was elected at the
meeting as the new chair --- congrats, Greg! This is in line with our
tradition of chairs alternating between academia and industry.

2. Other officers remain in their current offices. At the meeting, Erozan
Kurtas was nominated to fill the Vice Chair position that Greg is vacating.
I have contacted Erozan and am waiting for his answer.

3. Dieter Arnold was given the 2001 best student paper award. We should
include a little blurb on this on our web site. Greg should be able to
supply the material. I presented to Dieter a homemade certificate that
wasn't too shabby, but we should try to get a few dollars from COMSOC to
support this award. Once again, thanks to Alek Kavcic for pushing this idea
forward and to the Award Committee (Greg Silvus, E. Eleftheriou and G.
Mathew) for the excellent job they have done. I am happy to report that the
award committee will continue for two more years.

4. Here are the SPS reps to upcoming conferences.

ICC 2003 ---- Bane Vasic
Globecom 2003 ---- Yuan Xing Lee
ICC 2004 ---- Tolga Duman

5. It seems that COMSOC is going back to having a "General Conference" in
addition to symposia in the ICC and Globecom after Globecom 2003. That is
good for us since then we may be able to have a session devoted to "Coding
and Signal Processing for Storage" unlike the current situations where the
papers are diffused into multiple sessions.

6. The "Nigeria/Congo" e-mail solicitation problem is plaguing all COMSOC
mailing lists, not just ours. They don't have a clear solution, as far as I
can tell.

7. SPS clearly needs to increase the membership. We should think of
expanding the scope (e.g., channel hardware, NASD, Raid, etc.). Anyway, we
need to  start a discussion on ideas towards this goal.
 

------minutes prepared by Prof. Vijayakumar Bhagavatula <kumar@ece.cmu.edu>
 

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Helsinki, Finland June 11-15, 2001