Minutes of the Business Meeting at Crypto '99
Business Meeting Crypto '99 Santa Barbara 18 August 1999 IACR President McCurley began the meeting at 4:34pm. He briefly described the functions of the IACR beginning with IACR sponsored conferences EuroCrypt, Crypto, and (starting in 2000) AsiaCrypt. He then described the Journal of Cryptology, the IACR Newsletter, and the website at http://www.iacr.org. McCurley then individually introduced the members the IACR Board of Directors and told of upcoming elections for three director positions which are currently held by Brassard, Maurer, and Preneel. Nominations are solicited by the Nominating Committee consisting of IACR Board members Landrock, Biham, and Franklin (chair). Journal Editor Feigenbaum then spoke briefly about the Journal. She said that the current backlog is less than one year and asked that people volunteer to referee. She also described a long special issue on secure distributed computation that was edited by Oded Goldreich and will appear in the winter of 2000. McCurley then spoke about the IACR Newsletter. He said that its purpose includes news, announcements, and other items of interest to the community. It's e-mail address is newsletter@iacr.org, and the deadline for the next issue is 30 September 1999. He then thanked Newsletter Editor Cachin for his work in completing the transition of the Newsletter to electronic form. McCurley then addressed the financial status of the IACR. He introduced Upton as the Treasurer and asserted that the IACR's assets are healthy but modest. He said that conferences generally either return a profit or break even, and said there was no recommendation to raise the membership dues (currently $80 for regular members and $40 for students). He said that most of the dues goes to pay of the Journal and that a full report could be found in the Newsletter. McCurley then described the discussions the board has had regarding a cryptology pre-print server and invited members to express their opinions to Cachin and/or Biham. McCurley then gave brief announcements of upcoming IACR sponsored conferences. EuroCrypt 2000 will be held 14-18 May 2000 in Brugge, Belgium. The General Chair is Joos Vanderwalle and the Program Chair is Bart Preneel. The deadline for paper submissions is 3 November 1999. Crypto 2000 will be held the third week of August 2000 in Santa Barbara. The General Chair is Matt Franklin and the Program Chair is Mihir Bellare. The deadline for paper submissions is 10 February 2000. This will be the twentieth Crypto conference. It should be noted that the UseNix Security Conference is scheduled for 14-18 August 2000, so there may be a conflict. AsiaCrypt 2000 will be held 3-7 December 2000 in Kyoto, Japan. The General Chair is Tsutomu Matsumoto and Program Chair is Tatsuaki Okamoto. The deadline for paper submissions is 25 May 2000. This will be the first IACR sponsored AsiaCrypt. McCurley then presented a plaque to Michael Wiener for his work as Program Chair of Crypto '99. General applause was given. McCurley then presented a plaque to Don Beaver for his work as General Chair of Crypto '99. General applause was given. Wiener then offered various statistics about Crypto '99 paper submissions and acceptances. 167 papers were submitted (mostly electronically) of which 38 were accepted yielding a 23% acceptance rate. Of the electronic submissions, the following statistics were given for acceptance rate for top-level domains. .edu 14/37 .com 9/32 .jp 2/21 .fr 3/12 .kr 0/10 .il 5/9 .de 0/9 .uk 0/5 .in 1/4 .au 0/3 .ch 0/3 .se 1/2 .nl 1/2 .dk 1/2 .it 0/2 .net 0/2 .sg 1/1 .tw 0/1 .ru 0/1 .yu 0/1 .br 0/1 .gov 0/1 .ca 0/1 .es 0/1 Also, none of the four paper submissions received were accepted. Acceptance rates were also given according to the number of words in the title. 2: 0% 3: 38% 4: 36% 5: 38% 6: 38% 7: 11% 8: 2% [sic] 9: 0% 10: 16% 11: 25% 12+: 24% Beaver then offered statistics on registration for Crypto '99. There were a total of 510 registrants. Of these, 82 were students. There were also 22 guests. The fees were $415 for regular members of IACR, $495 for non-members, and $230 for students. In addition, there was a late registration fee of $75 and a guest fee of $130. Revenues collected were as follows. 22 supported students each paid $0. 54 other students each paid $230. 6 late registering students each paid $305. 85 regular members each paid $415. 14 late registering regular members each paid $490. 269 non-members each paid $495. 60 late registering non-members each paid $560. 22 guests each paid $130. The breakdown of registration by country was as follows. 249 USA 31 Germany 30 France 30 Japan 24 Canada 15 Netherlands 15 UK 13 Israel 10 Switzerland 8 South Korea [sic] 7 Australia 7 Belgium 7 Sweden 5 Czech Republic 5 Korea [sic] 5 Norway 4 Denmark 4 Italy 3 Brazil 3 China 3 Romania 3 Singapore 3 South Africa 2 Argentina 2 Croatia 2 Ireland 2 Saudi Arabia 2 Spain 1 Austria 1 Egypt 1 Finland 1 Hungary 1 India 1 Mexico 1 Peru 1 Republic of Korea [sic] 1 Russia 1 Scotland [sic] 1 Slovakia 1 Taiwan 1 Turkey 3 Elbonia [sic] Clark then asked for a show of hands for people who had purchased the proceedings CD-ROM but had not yet received it. A few hands were raised, and people in this situation were asked to contact Clark at vicepresident@iacr.org. McCurley then mentioned that an errata for this work is available at http://www.iacr.org/cd. In response to a question, McCurley said that any new version of the proceedings CD-ROM would, due to space limitations, likely contain only corrections and no new material. It was then asked if CDs of current conferences could be produced. McCurley answered that there were format and cost concerns but that this might be worth pursuing. In response to another question, McCurley stated that the BibTeX file for the proceedings CD-ROM is already on the CD-ROM. Another question referred to an analysis showing that IACR conference costs have risen beyond the rate of inflation. It was suggested that efforts be made to limit conference cost increases to the inflation rate and consider differential fees for academic and industry-based participants. Beaver answered that approximately $13,000 was spent on student support but that no support was given to post-docs or academics. The elimination of the group photograph was mentioned as one way in which costs had been reduced. A related question asked about the possibility of corporate sponsorship. Beaver observed that CertCo had provided much of the student support this year, but that other sponsorship and government grants have not been pursued. One member asked how many people support a differential fee structure. Another proposal suggested allowing individuals to apply for subsidies. Neither proposal was ever voted on, although one member volunteered to be "chair for life" of the committee disbursing funds. Corporate sponsorship of subsidies was suggested as well as the possibility of asking members to make voluntary contributions (perhaps $20-30 on the registration forms) to support subsidies. There was uncertainty over the question as to whether such voluntary contributions would be tax deductible. In response to a related question, Beaver noted that the total amount spent on the pocket knife "gift" for participants was approximately $3,000, and he again noted that CertCo had contributed more than that to support students. In a straw poll, an overwhelming majority of participants wanted to continue to receive t-shirts. In separate polls, few people expressed support for no memorabilia whatsoever, many expressed support for a t-shirt but no other memorabilia, and few expressed support for a t-shirt and other memorabilia. It was suggested by a member that participants could take unsupported students home as memorabilia. Andrew Klapper (General Chair of Crypto '98) enunciated how difficult it is to predict the conference budget in advance and that the cost of small trinkets may be lost in the noise. A suggestion was made that we officially adopt the coat of arms found on the Crypto '99 folders. An alternative suggestion was made that we adjourn -- the latter suggestion winning out at 5:19pm. Respectfully submitted Josh Benaloh IACR Secretary
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