Let us pick the year 1972. The incoming president of the Society (then the IT-Group) was Tom Cover receiving the baton from his predecessor, Bob Gallager, on February 1 at 8:00 p.m. at the Asilomar Conference Grounds of the Pacific Grove, California in conjunction with the ISIT that was taking place during that week. The roster of the Board members present included, among others, E. Berlekamp, N. Blachman, S. Golomb, F. Jelinek, R. Kennedy, R. Lucky, J. Omura, the late D. Sakrison, D. Forney, A. Viterbi, A. Wyner, and J. Wolf. Absent were I. Bar-David, D. Costello, T. Kailath, L. Kanal, and J. Ziv. Quite a list! Have the standards changed today or is there hope for the current Board members instead?
Here are some of the highlights of the meeting. Bob Lucky reported on a poll-survey of the Society members. The poll showed that the members at least browse through the Transactions, but that Information Theory is not...their main interest! Bar-David, reporting on behalf of J. Ziv, announced that plans for the next Symposium in Ashkelon were underway and that hotel room costs with full board would be ... $ 15 (indeed!) per single room. The Board then discussed the need to revise membership dues. Bob Gallager moved to raise dues from $ 5 to $ 7. The motion failed. Sakrison moved to raise them to $ 6. The motion passed. De ja vu?
Dave Sakrison reported on the Asilomar ISIT. Nearly 350 people registered (200 were expected). Dan Costello proposed that the 1974 ISIT be held in the mid-west. The invitation of representatives from the People's Republic of China to the next ISIT was then discussed. (Recall that Richard Nixon -- ``you have to admit that this is a truly Great Wall" --had just made his historic visit to China.)
Dave Forney, then Transactions Editor, reported that the journal would reach 800 pages during the year. The question of blind reviewing of submitted articles was discussed but it was decided not to change the present procedure. Finally, A. Viterbi, as chair of the awards committee, presented the papers nominated by the committee for the IT-Group Outstanding Paper Award.
Minutes of the meeting were dutifully taken by then secretary D. S. Sullivan. The meeting was adjourned at an undisclosed time.
Since the aforementioned membership survey that Bob Lucky brought forth must have sparked some interest to many, here is more. As part of IEEE's urge to societies to formulate long-range strategic plans (it seems that this is a constant concern with IEEE), the IT-Group mailed a questionnaire to its approximately 5000 members (we have not grown much through the years). There were 239 replies -- a reply ratio considered (by whom?) extraordinarily high. The summary of key highlights of the responses follows.
With respect to the Transactions, 53 % of the respondents admitted they had not read any paper at all, while 32 % had read one paper each. Interestingly, 16 % of those responding had ever had a paper published in the Transactions and only 12 % had ever reviewed a paper (with a mere 6 % stating they enjoyed doing so). An amazing 61 % felt that papers ought to be ``blindly" reviewed (i.e., without disclosing the authors' names to the reviewer) and an interesting 2 % felt that the papers published in the journal were not sufficiently mathematical.
The Newsletter was read regularly by 38 % and occasionally by another 50 %. Those reading this column, please send me a note!
With respect to conferences and meetings, 88 % of the respondents indicated they had never attended any IT Symposium and only 3 % (that makes a whopping 7.5 people) had attended more than one IT Symposium. The only question that received 0 % (yes, zero) favorable answers was the one that suggested that the Symposium consist in its entirety of invited sessions only. Conference locations in Europe were favored by 10 %, in Israel by 8 %, and in Japan by 6 %. Haven't we come a long way since then?
With respect to the perceived viability of the IT-Group (a very pertinent question vis-a-vis the recent panel discussion on the ...``morbidity" of the field in the last issue of the Newsletter), 6 % felt the Group was stagnant, 30 % said ``yes, somewhat," 23 % stated ``no, not really," 10 % offered ``no, not-at-all," and a cautious 31 % had no opinion.
A majority favored keeping the Society strictly technical (without venturing, that is, into social consciousness activities) and a five-to-one (!) majority favored remaining a ``group" rather than becoming a ``society" -- o tempora, o mores!
As Lucky reported, 81 % indicated that they did not consider IT their ``main" interest area. As far as the specific orientation of the members' interests were concerned with respect to the then existing technical fields within IT, 16 % indicated interest in coding, 39 % in communications, 37 % in detection and estimation (the det-est-ables according to Sakrison), 18 % in pattern recognition, 3 % (you read that right!) in Shannon Theory, and 12 % in stochastic processes.
Finally, the composition of the respondents revealed that 11 % were under 25 years of age and 3 % above 55. About 37 % had Ph.D. degrees and 5 % had no degree at all. Finally, 22 % were from academia, 12 % from industry in management positions, 19 % in research institutes, 6 % were students, and a solid 41 % were from industry in R & D (probably ...``your true voice''!).
Isn't it time for another survey? I itch to see the results.
In the next issue, we'll continue the exploration of the archives.
__________________________________________________________________