ICC 2002
April 29, 2002
Wider Room, New York Marriott Marquis
New York City, New York
Meeting chair: Sergio Benedetto
Meeting minutes recorded by Mohamed-Slim Alouini
0- The meeting was called to order at 6:05 PM.
1- Sergio Benedetto welcomed all members and thanked Ender Ayanoglu for all his help in ensuring a smooth transition between the past Com Theory Technical Committee and the current one.
2- Conference Reports:
* ICC 2002 (New York City, New York, April 2002)
Communication Theory Symposium (H. Sari) Hikmet Sari addressed the committee. There were 312 submissions (20 % of the papers and 2nd in terms of number of symposium after the Broadband Wireless Symposium). The papers were handled by a technical program committee constituted of 16 members. The acceptance rate was 40 %. The accepted papers were organized in 32 half-sessions (each constituted of 4 papers with very few exceptions of half-sessions with 5 papers). The sessions were very well attended and the quality of papers was overall very good.
* GLOBECOM 2002 (Taipei, Taiwan, November 2002)
General Conference and Communication Theory Symposium (K. Chugg and R. Wesel). Keith Chugg addressed the committee. There were 265 submissions. The highest number of submissions was by far from the US. The technical program committee was constituted of 27 Review organizers. The predicted acceptance rate was 31 %. This relatively low acceptance rate was due to the lack of space (i.e., conference rooms). The Communication Theory Symposium was expected to be the second largest symposium during GLOBECOM 2002.
* ICC 2003 (Anchorage, Alaska, May 2003)
General Conference (T. Duman (ASU, Tucson) and M. Win (MIT, Cambridge) and Communication Theory Symposium (U. Mitra (USC, Los Angeles) and S. McLaughlin (Georgia Tech, Atlanta). Steve McLaughlin addressed the committee. The technical program committee was set-up. The review process was planned to start on Sept 1. Authors of papers in the area of communication theory had the choice to submit their paper either to the Communication Theory Symposium or to the General Conference. Papers submitted to Communication Theory Symposium can end up in the general conference.
* GLOBECOM 2003 (San Fransisco, California, November 2003)
Sergio Benedetto was planning to attend the meeting scheduled for Tue April 30, 2002 (during ICC 2002). After ICC 2002, Alex Haimovich (NJIT, Newark) and Helmut Bolcskei (ETH, Zurich) volunteered as Communication Theory Technical Committee representatives for GLOBECOM 2003.
* ICC 2004 (Paris, France, June 20-24, 2004)
Hikmet Sari is the technical program chairman of ICC 2004. He addressed the committee indicating that a meeting was scheduled for Tue April 30, 2002 (during ICC 2002). ICC 2003 will be in the form of symposia. After ICC 2002, Moe Win (MIT, Cambridge) and Stefan Kaiser (DLR, Germany) volunteered as Communication Theory Technical Committee representatives for ICC 2004.
3- Workshop Reports
* Workshop 2002 (Sundial Beach Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida, May 21-22, 2002)
Gordon Stuber addressed the Committee. 50 people registered at that time.
* Workshop 2003 (Superstition Springs, Arizona, 6-9 April 2003). The general chair is W. Ryan of the University of Arizona. Bill Ryan addressed the Committee. The room rate is $ 99 per night for regular rooms and $ 109 per night for suites. The Workshop website is at: http://www.ece.arizona.edu/~ctw03/
* Workshop 2004. This workshop will be held on the East Coast. The exact location was going to be discussed during the Workshop 2002, Sundial Beach Resort in May 2002.
4- Committee Representatives to Conferences: Problems and Policy
Sergio Benedetto addressed the committee regarding some recent problems for Committee Representatives to Conferences. In particular, there has been a conflict in appointing the Chairs for the Communication Theory symposium at ICC 2003. The ICC TPC (Ian Akyldiz) appointed Urbashi Mitra and Steve McLaughlin, whereas the Communication Theory Technical Committee chose (independently, and without knowing of each other's choice) Tolga Duman and Moe Win. All was due to a series of unfortunate coincidences. After clarifications, Urbashi and Steve will chair the Symposium, while Tolga and Moe will support the ICC TPC for the General Conference. In addition and almost in parallel to this, Sergio Benedetto became aware of a message from the Globecom 2003 TPC (Willie Lu) asking for candidates to Chair the Conference Symposia, which also included the Comm. Th. Symposium. The message also contained a list of prerequisites that a potential Chair should satisfy, and invited candidates to submit their CVs. In this case, after few e-mail exchanges, Sergio Benedetto came to an agreement with Willie, and the GLOBECOM 2003 TPC will choose the Chair(s) among the list that the Communication Theory Technical committee will provide.
Khaled Ben Letaief commented from his experience in the Personal Communication Technical Committee that there is no memory in the system and about the inconsistency of the rules which lead to confusion for both organizers and authors. He suggested to put forward a set of rules to be used consistently by the symposium technical program chairs and the communication theory technical program committee. Hikmet Sari commented that in some symposia more than one committee is involved and as such what may be applicable to the Communication Theory Technical Committee may not be applicable to other committees.
Sergio Benedetto concluded that previous cases are symptoms of a real problem, in Committee representatives to conferences. On one hand, the TPC of a conference has the right of deciding the conference layout; in particular, that of choosing the number and kind of Symposia. Sergio Benedetto added that he feels that the TPC also has the right to say the final word on the acceptance of the Symposia Chairs. In addition, the Committee, on the other hand, has (almost) always proposed candidates as committee representatives and Symposium Chair(s). Also the representatives and Chair(s) have always relied on Committee volunteers to help them in handling and reviewing the papers, which is a key issue for the Conference-Symposium success.
In conclusion, it was decided that in the future, to avoid misunderstandings and problems, the officers of the Communication Theory Technical Committee will make sure to participate to the conference advanced preparatory meetings and to collaborate with the conference TPC in appointing the best possible people as representatives and chair(s) based on names proposed by the Committee Chair.
5- Committee Website and Mailing-list
Sergio Benedetto mentioned that the Communication Theory Technical Committee Website and Mailing-List are being updated on a regular basis. In particular a new section on Volunteers was added on the Website at: http://www.comsoc.org/~comt/
It currently reads as follows:
The Committee relies on volunteers offering their time and skills for organizing Symposia and/or for representing the Committee at the various conferences of the IEEE Communications Society Conferences : ICC, GLOBECOM, and MILCOM.
Interested candidates may send a message of availability (including explicitly the conference of interest) and CV to the Committee at: alouini@ece.umn.edu. To be considered as a candidate, a volunteer must:
1. Be a Committee Member 2. Have reached a reasonable "visibility" in his/her research field 3. Intend to participate to most (if not all) of the conferences (ICC and Globecom) that precede the one he/she is interested in 4. Devote the due time to work with the TPC of the conference for the success of the event, and with the Committee Officers for the visibility of the Committee in it. Based on the offers, nominations for symposia organizers and Committee representatives will be put forward at the Committee meetings in due time.
Future conferences for which the Committee still needs candidates:
GLOBECOM 2004 (Dallas, November 2004) ICC 2005 (June 2005)
6- Sponsorships
After a vote the Communication Theory Technical Committee endorsed the following two conferences/symposia in order to get ComSoc sponsorship:
* 5-th European Workshop on Mobile/Personal Satcoms (25-26 September 2002, Lago Maggiore, Italy).
* 3-rd Symposium on Turbo Codes (1-5 September 2002, Brest, France)
7- The meeting adjourned at 7:05 PM.