Attendees: Venkat Anantharam, Andrew Barron, Vijay Bhargava,
Ezio Biglieri, Sean Coffey, Daniel Costello, Anthony Ephremides,
Thomas Ericson, Dave Forney, Tom Fuja, Jerry Gibson,Hideki
Imai, Kees Immink, Bob McEliece, Steven McLaughlin, David
Neuhoff, Greg Pottie, Ramesh Rao, Shlomo Shamai, Alexander
Vardy, Han Vinck, Sergio Verdu, Steve Wicker, Jacob Ziv
1.The meeting was called to order at 5:11 PM by Thomas Ericson.
Those present introduced themselves.
2. The agenda was approved.
3. Thomas Ericson reviewed decisions of the previous meeting for
follow-up actions. The minutes were then approved.
4. Progress on the special newsletter issue was reported by Tony
Ephremides. It will include quotes from Shannon award winners
and some who know Shannon. It will be mailed as a fifth issue to
all IT members and also 1000 copies will be printed for other
distribution such as at ISIT. The total cost is expected to be
between 15k and 25k. It was suggested it also be posted on the
web. Kees Immink moved to authorize spending of up to 25k for
the special issue. The motion carried.
5. Dan Costello reported on the Golden Jubilee paper awards
selections. Fifteen papers were recommended by the committee to
receive the award. A suggestion was made to create a set of
reprints of the Golden Jubilee and Information Theory Society paper
awards, as a book. The book potentially has significant overlap
with another IEEE press book. Ramesh Rao suggested that we
consider inserting bookmarks in the CD ROM cumulative paper
collection, and investigate putting in some classic IRE papers as
well. Both matters will be investigated by Steve McLaughlin.
6. Jerry Gibson presented the report of the committee for the
Golden Jubilee awards for technological innovations. There are 17
nominees. Thomas Ericson has written letters of congratulations
for both the paper and technological awards, extending invitations
to the awards ceremony to take place at ISIT in Cambridge MA.
Vijay Bhargava expressed the thanks of the BoG for the work done
by the committee chairs.
7. Announcements
i) Andrew Barron reported on Shannon Day at Bell Labs, which
also recognized Aaron Wyner's contributions. The activities
focused on both the early contributions of Shannon, and later
developments. There were roughly 400 attendees; registration had
to be stopped a month before because of the large interest.
ii) Sergio Verdu reported on the KNAW Colloquium in
Amsterdam. This was a three day colloquium with fifteen speakers
and 40 attendees. The small size had the desired effect of
generating considerable discussion on the future direction of
information theory.
iii) Thomas Ericson reported on the proposed Millenium booklet
for the IEEE (intended as a coffee table book). Each Society is
supposed to contribute their views on the next millenium;
interviews will be done by a professional writer. He is soliciting
suggestions on names of Information Theory Society members to
be interviewed.
8. The next BoG meeting will be on Sunday Aug. 16 at 9:00 AM in
Cambridge MA, at the student center (room to be announced).
9. Thomas Ericson presented the treasurer's report. The Society
has a net worth of $1.6M with outstanding loans of $5K to ITW
San Diego, Ireland, and South Africa, $25K to ISIT Cambridge,
and $10K to ITW Metsovo, Greece. The books have been closed
for Haifa and Ulm. It was noted that there is a new grants
department in IEEE TAB, to help conference organizers secure
outside funding. The contact is Karen Galuchie,
k.galuchie@ieee.org.
10. The Information Theory Transactions report was made by Alex Vardy.
i) Increased page budget. The first three issues spanned 1300
pages; the linear projection from this is 3400 pages for the year,
which is far above the page budget of 2600. Thus, there is the
potential for a backlog given the editorial resources, even though
the next two issues appear to be running at a more moderate pace.
Given that increased page count is a long term trend, Dave Forney
observed that we may need to consider going to 12 issues per year.
There was consensus that this is a serious issue requiring some
deliberation. The matter will be considered by the editor and
associate editors, and will be discussed by the BoG in subsequent
meetings.
ii) A report on electronic submission and publication was
presented. The new procedure would enable submission by e-mail
or ftp, and review would also be done by e-mail insofar as possible.
The intention is to speed things up, given the long latency in the
mail system (up to three months in a typical review cycle). Also
proposed was an extra editorial assistant for the editor in chief, in
part to track papers, and in part to deal with new difficulties in
format conversion, etc. entailed by electronic submissions. The
expected additional cost is 35K per year. Also envisioned is a system
for tracking papers on the web, initially internally, possibly later to
enable authors some tracking ability. Bob McEliece proposed
approval of the report, amended to allow up to 40K per year for
additional secretarial support. The motion carried.
iii) The cover text for the Transactions has not changed from 1959,
and reads: "A Journal Devoted to the Theoretical and Experimental
Aspects of Information Transmission, Processing, and Utilization."
A lively discussion was held on whether this text still adequately
describes the purposes of the Transactions, and whether new text
might be appropriate. There was no consensus on the need for
change.
iv) The BoG approved the new associate editors. They are Venkat
Anantharam, Phil Chou, Tom Fuja, Sanjeev Kulkarni, Upmanyu
Madhow, Jody O'Sullivan, and Ronny Roth. The BoG also
expressed its appreciation to Rob Calderbank for his job as the IT
editor in chief, and for the retiring associate editors.
v) Sergio Verdu reported on the special anniversary Transactions
issue. It will have 25 papers with a total length of approximately
600 pages, and will appear in October. A hard-covered version is
being explored with IEEE press, to be structured as a tutorial book.
Steve McLaughlin reports that CRC press and Springer-Verlag are
both interested, although IEEE Press has not yet committed.
11. Vijay Bhargava reported that the Claude E. Shannon Award
committee will be meeting during ITW Ireland, and will come to a
decision prior to the banquet at ISIT.
12. Ezio Biglieri gave the report of the awards committee. The
committee has nominated an Information Theory Society member
for the Japan prize. Additionally, the committee has selected two
papers to be nominated for the IT paper award. A mail ballot will
be issued to the BoG to decide on the Information Theory Society
paper award by August 1.
13. Fellows committee. The nomination process is well under way;
the nominations will shortly be forwarded to IEEE.
14. Digital Library Project.
Steve McLaughlin reported on progress in getting the complete IT
Transactions on a set of CDs. Testing of the proposed format is
being conducted via the web site, and critical comments are being
solicited so that the first version of the disks will be as high-quality
as possible. A proposed business plan was circulated. The cost of
CDs to IT Society members will be $200, and non-IT IEEE
members will be $250, which will include IT Society membership
for two years, and some web access for updating. For libraries and
other institutional buyers, the price will be $1500. The institutions
would not be entitled to web access. Sales will hopefully finance
an upgrade to a version 2.0, and if sales are strong, updates to a
supporting web site. IEEE has been approached for marketing
support. A further $60,000 is requested to complete the project,
due to increased cost of producing the disk set, and some additional
costs in the project, such as new features (searching abstracts),
more pages than additionally estimated, etc. The Signal Processing
Society has expressed some interest in undertaking a similar
project, and it should be relatively easy to provide cross-links later
between the databases of sister Societies. The IT Society will
consider some pro bono distribution of disks (e.g., third world
countries). The IEEE electronic library project is moving from
CDs to the web, and the IT Society's library may be included in this
project, with considerable revenue potential. Progress in this area
will shape the IT Society's approach to the web, including update
mechanisms for the electronic library. The disks have been
formatted to have a simple technical path to placing it on the web,
but there are numerous issues concerning access costs and
operations. A further and related long run item is the issue of
electronic publication, and its myriad financial and procedural
implications. A motion to approve the additional funds carried.
15. David Neuhoff proposed that there should be a historical marker
in Claude Shannon's home town of Gaylord, MI. The town has
considerable tourist traffic year round, and would appear to have a
suitable site for a marker. The Society would contribute towards its
construction. The BoG expressed support for David Neuhoff
moving forward with discussions with the city and state
governments, and producing a cost estimate by the next BoG
meeting. An appropriate member of the town will be invited to
attend historical and award ceremonies at ISIT in August.
16. Membership development
Tom Fuja reported that we have 5670 members, down from peak of
7000 members in 1992. A variety of programs were discussed at a
membership development retreat in Baltimore on how to improve
recruitment, but none seemed to be directly applicable. Vijay
Bhargava noted the importance of overseas membership in the IT
Society, and the need for region 8 and 10 members on the
membership development committee. Hideki Imai and Han Vinck
agreed to serve. He stressed the need to arrange local activities, e.g.
through the distinguished speakers program, and establishment of
local chapters.
17. The symposia and workshops report was presented by Tom Fuja
i) IT Workshop on Detection, Estimation, Classification, and
Imaging, Santa Fe, NM, Feb 24-26, 1999. The call for papers is
out, and includes details on the conference. The three plenary
speakers are Andrew Barron, Vince Poor and Michael Miller. A
web site is up.
ii) Julia Abrahams is organizing through DIMACS a conference on
Codes and Trees: Algorithmic and Information Theoretic
Approaches, Rutgers U., Piscataway, NJ. The focus is on source
coding. Technical co-sponsorship was requested, without financial
support. A motion to provide this sponsorship carried.
iii) ICPWC'99 Feb 17-19, 1999, Jaipur, India. Vijay Bhargava
requested technical cosponsorship and circulated the call for
papers. The BoG approved the request.
iv) IMA workshop in Aug 1999 for Codes, Systems, and Graphs.
Dave Forney reported that this is a two-week workshop, which is
run by the IMA. One week is focussed on systems, the other week
on codes and graphs. Co-sponsorship is not requested; a link has
been established on the IT website.
v) IT workshop, March, 2000, British Columbia. A proposal is
being developed by Steve Wicker and Vijay Bhargava, and will be
presented at the next BoG meeting.
vi) Proposal for ISIT 2001, U. Maryland, DC. Prakash Narayan
has given a brief summary of what will be proposed at ISIT in
August. Other proposals for ISITs in 2001 and 2002 would be
welcomed.
vii) Metsovo and South Africa 99. Han Vinck reported that
announcements, technical programs and schedules will be
coordinated to avoid overlap and ease travel.
18. ISIT 98. Dave Forney reported that the only major change
since February was to include a session on Friday afternoon and
reduce the number of parallel sessions to six. A party is scheduled
for Friday night. The website includes abstracts, which can be
downloaded. 82K in support has been raised from government and
industry. Consequently, travel support can be supplied to all who
applied. The MIT dorms are full, so there is no more budget
accommodation. This follows an unexpected change in MIT's story
on dorm availability. Other hotel bookings have been somewhat
slow, forcing some rooms to be given up.
19. A decision on the logo contest will be made at the next BoG meeting.
20. Joint awards. Ezio Biglieri has contacted the Communications
and Signal Processing Societies regarding establishment of joint
awards. There has been little real progress thus far.
21. The meeting adjourned at 8:50 PM.