TCCC Meeting Minutes - INFOCOM '96

The INFOCOM '96 TCCC meeting was held March 27, 1996 from 6:15 pm to about 7:30 pm. The meeting was called to order by the TCCC chair, Prof. Tatsuya Suda. About sixty people attended, of which six were new members.

Conference and Workshop Activities

The following reports were made concerning our conference activities:

Infocom'96

Infocom'96 had about 651 attendees listening to 176 papers, 6 panels (more than ever), the keynote address, and a plenary session, the latter a new feature of the Infocom conference. 275 registered for tutorials.

It was proposed to add the position of technology chair to the conference executive committee. The technology chair would be responsible for the conference network infrastructure, such as Internet access, electronic publications and audio/video productions.

Given that the technical program of Infocom now runs more or less continuously from 7 in the morning until 6 at night, it was suggested to add a fifth conference track, rather than substantially trim the number of papers. A show of hands indicated general agreement with that suggestion among the attendees.

1996 Workshop on Computer Communications

The IEEE 11th Annual Workshop on Computer Communications will be held from September 22 - 25 at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia. (Note that there is a change in date and place from the previous announcement.) The workshop is sponsored by the TCCC and the George Washinghton University. Contact person for the TCCC is Dr. Guy Omidyar (gomidyar@mailcenter.tsmi.iitri.com).

ICC'96

ICC '96 will be held in Dallas, Texas, June 23-27, 1996. Our TC representative, Ibrahim Habib, can be reached at ibhcc@cunyvm.cuny.edu, phone +1 212-650-7184, fax: +1 212-650-8249. The TCCC committee is now sponsoring 13 sessions (9 full sessions, 4 half sessions).

Globecom'96

GLOBECOM '96 will be held in London, November 18-22, 1996. Our TC representative is Doug Schmidt, schmidt@wustl.edu, phone: +1 314-935-7538, fax: +1 314-935-7302. About 1,000 papers [Note of editor: this has increased to 1,300 as of 5/8/96] have been submitted. There are only time slots for 325 papers.

The new mini-conference Global Internet'96 is taking place in conjunction with Globecom'96 and is organized jointly between TCCC and the Internet TC. This is considered as a possible model for breaking up the extremely large conferences such as Globecom and ICC into a "mall model" of more focused mini-conferences. The TC voted unanimously to suggest to the Board of Governors that mini-conference attendees should only have to register for the mini conference. It was suggested that double registration might turn off potential attendees, e.g., from the traditional Internet community and hence would jeopardize the goals of the mini-conferences.

Infocom'97

Infocom'97 will take place in Kobe, Japan. (Web site in Japan). The paper submission deadline is June 14, 1996. The organizers strongly enourage Postscript paper submission, with guidelines for that to be available by May 20 on the Infocom'97 web pages.

The keynote addresses will be given by Vinton Cerf and a high-ranking executive of NTT Research.

SIGMOBILE

Our representative is Ian Akyildiz.

LAN/MAN Conference 1996

The LAN/MAN conference 1996 will take place August 25 to 28 in Potsdam, near Berlin. The conference will consist of 10 sessions, with a special focus on residential networking. The keynote address will be given by Andy Hopper.

Use of TCCC mailing list

TCCC uses an electronic mailing list at
tccc@cs.umass.edu
for conducting its business between meetings. It has about 480 subscribers and is widely used for announcing conferences, call for papers and positions.

There have been a few instances where the mailing list was used for discussionsn considered inappropriate by many.

The following motion was approved after some discussion:

The TCCC electronic mailing list is for discussion of a technical nature, or issues related to TCCC business.
The chair presented the following motion tabled by Mr. Kazakos:
(...) the recent action of the GERMAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that essentially banned COMPUSERVE from Germany, is a gross violation of many basic AMERICAN principles, and we sould react as a TCCC. Specifically,I propose that as a protest against the GERMAN CENSORSHIP, the management of the TCCC mailing list be removed from GERMANY, and be assigned to another point, in a country that RESPECTS FREE SPEECH.
The chair asked for the motion to be seconded. Nobody seconded the motion and thus the motion was rejected without further discussion or vote. After some discussion, the following motion was approved with one vote opposed:
The TCCC mailing list administrator reserves the right to forward controversial messages to the TCCC officers for review prior to distribution on the mailing list. All messages that are not distributed through the mailing list will be made publically available through the TCCC web page (if the author so chooses).

Other Business

Darlene Fischer announced that the National Science Foundation is looking for a new Assistant Director (CISE/NSF). Further information can be obtained by email.
Written by Henning Schulzrinne.
Last modified: December 12, 1996