INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications
Meeting Minutes
Business Meeting
INFORMS Cincinnati
May 2, 1999
(Minutes taken by S. Raghavan, Member-of-Council, INFORMS Technical Section
on Telecommunications).
Attending:
Joakim Kalvenes (University of Texas at Dallas), Richard Wong (AT&T
Laboratories, Middletown), S. Raghavan (University of Maryland, College
Park), Stefan Voss (Technical University Braunschweig), David Shallcross
(Telecordia Technologies, Morristown), Youngho Lee (Korea University),
Bob Cooper (Florida Atlantic University), Les Servi (GTE Laboratories),
Xiuli Chu.
1. Meeting called to order
The meeting was called to order at 6:15 p.m. by Joakim Kalvenes (Section
secretary), acting as meeting chair in the absence of June Park.
2. Agenda
The proposed agenda was approved unanimously.
3. INFORMS Salt Lake City, May 21-24, 2000
a) Will TST sponsor a cluster?
It was unanimously agreed that the Section would sponsor a cluster at the
Salt Lake City Meeting.
b) Election of cluster chair
Since none of those present volunteered to chair the cluster, the meeting
agreed to solicit a cluster chair for the Salt Lake City Meeting by email
to the Section membership. Joakim Kalvenes makes sure that the email is
sent out.
4. Membership fees for 2000
Current fees are:
$5 for regular INFORMS members
$5 for student and retired INFORMS members
$7 for non-members
Joakim Kalvenes presented the Section Officers' recommendation that the
fees not be increased. Bob Cooper suggested that given the Section's
relatively healthy financial position (this was not confirmed since the
Section treasurer was not at the meeting, and the section financial
statements were not available from INFORMS (see next item)) Section fees
not be raised for 2000. A vote was taken and unanimously passed to not
increase the Section fees for 2000.
5. TST's current financial position
a) No financial information was available at the time of the business meeting.
The meeting decided that a summary of the financial position will be sent
out by email to the TST membership.
b) INFORMS (11%) subdivision tax status
Les Servi reported that the 11% subdivision tax proposal has been dropped
by INFORMS.
6. Boca 1998 financial status
a) Excluding the select conference proceedings, the estimated result is a
surplus of $1,006.
b) Final cost for select proceedings is still pending.
7. Boca 2000, March 5-8, 2000
a) Contract has been signed with Sheraton.
Bob Cooper reported that a contract had been signed with the Sheraton at
Boca Raton for the INFORMS Telecommunications conference from March 5-8,
2000. There had been some complaints from meeting attendees about the
hotel at the 1998 meeting. Bob reported that the hotel is under new
management, with substantial renovations taking place. The new management
is keen for our business and is willing to work closely with us to ensure
our satisfaction with the facilities. As reported by Bob Cooper, Brunilde
Sanso, the general chair for the meeting spoke with the hotel management
and is also satisfied with the arrangements being made.
b) New amenities (e.g. computer access).
As decided during the previous business meeting, the conference organizing
committee will decide at its discretion which new amenities should be
added for the benefit of the conference attendees. Section members are
encouraged to send suggestions to the Boca2000-info email address listed
below.
c) Call for papers
Joakim Kalvenes passed out the call for papers for the 2000 conference.
Iraj Saniee is the editor of the select proceedings of the conference.
Bob Doverspike is the Plenary Sessions Chair, and Ed Sykes is the
exhibitions Chair. Joakim is the conference arrangements chair, and
asked that any special requests be e-mailed to him at the Boca2000-info
email address below. The CFP is available on-line at
http://www.crt.umontreal.ca/GERAD/boca2000.
d) Plenary sessions
In the absence of Bob Doverspike, this issue was not discussed.
e) Exhibitions
In the absence of Ed Sykes, this issue was not discussed.
f) Paper submission
The select proceedings are to be published by Baltzer Scientific
Publishers. Submission guidelines will be available at the conference
website.
All submissions and refereeing will be handled electronically
Submission deadlines:
August 1, 1999, for session submissions
September 1, 1999, for paper submissions
g) Information services
Information regarding the Boca 2000 conference can be obtained by sending
an email to one of the following addresses:
Boca2000-info@crt.umontreal.ca
Boca2000-program@crt.umontreal.ca
Boca2000-webmaster@crt.umountreal.ca
h) Discussion of strategies for making Boca 2000 successful
- Encouragement of paper and session submissions, tutorials, special
sessions, keynote speakers.
Joakim Kalvenes encouraged all present to suggest keynote speakers to
the program committee. All present agreed that members of the society
should encourage their colleagues to attend the Boca meeting and to
submit sessions, tutorials, etc.
- No-show avoidance tactics
Some suggestions that had come up at the previous business meeting at
Seattle were, (i) charge a non-refundable upfront amount along with the
abstract submission, (ii) blacklist individuals who do not show up
(unless they notify the organizers ahead of time). After some
discussion it emerged that at the previous meeting there were
approximately 20 no shows out of the 200 papers (approximately 10
percent). Bob Cooper reported that the majority of the no shows were
by authors from Korea. He also emphasized that it appeared that most of
these no shows were due to hardship (related to the Korean economy at
that time). A general consensus emerged against the blacklist proposal,
but in favor of a $50-$100 non-refundable fee for accepted papers. No
vote was taken, and it was left to the organizing committee to take a
final decision on this. A brief discussion also related to the
Wednesday sessions. Raghavan suggested that if there were Wednesday
sessions these sessions be held all day on Wednesday. Otherwise, those
attending the conference from the United States typically would leave
on Tuesday night. Stefan Voss suggested that perhaps we organize some
of the featured speakers on Wednesday to combat this problem. Joakim
Kalvenes pointed out that until we received the submissions, accepted
them, and organized the papers in tracks we could not know the extent
to which we could schedule featured speakers, and sessions on Wednesday.
- Conference registration fees.
At Boca 1998 the fees were $190 for pre-registered members, $225 for
pre-registered non-members. The fees for onsite registration were $65
extra. Several questions were raised (i) whether the same fees would be
sufficient to cover the Sections conference expenses? (ii) the number
of non-INFORMS members attending the meeting? (iii) how high the
difference in registration fees between members and non-members should
be? A comparison of fees was made with the annual telecommunications
conference arranged in Nashville by Professor Gavish. Finally, while no
formal decisions were made the consensus was to keep a similar
registration fee structure to the previous INFORMS Telecommunications
conference.
8. Announcements
Joakim Kalvenes announced the following two conferences that are also
being sponsored by the Section:
a) ICTS in Nashville, March 9-12, 2000 (back-to-back with Boca 2000)
Typically many individuals have attended the Boca conference and the
ICTS conference (especially people from overseas), hence they are
scheduled back to back.
b) INFORMS/KORMS in Seoul, Korea, Summer of 2000.
9. Miscellaneous
Bob Cooper asked about the status of the 1998 meeting select proceedings.
No information was available (since Les Servi had to leave early) at that
point.
10. Meeting adjourned
The meeting was adjourned at 7:15 p.m.