Minutes of SPCOM-TC Meeting at ICASSP-2006, Toulouse Thursday, 18 May 2006, 12:05-13:50 Pierre Baudis Servanty

Members attending (15): A. Swami, N. Sidiropoulos, H. Boche, P. Duhamel, D. Gesbert, F. Hlawatsch, V. Koivunen, G. Leus, Z.-Q. (Tom) Luo, J. Manton, M. Moonen, B. Rao, P. Regalia, A. Sayed, A. Scaglione.

Members absent (15): N. Al-Dhahir, H. Boelcskei, H. El-Gamal, J. Garcia-Frias, M. Ghogho, R. Heath, Y. Hua, A. Liavas, C. Papadias, S.-M. Phoong, P. Schniter, G. Vasquez. X. Wang, D. Xu, Q. Zhao,

Meeting commenced at 12:05.

• Ananthram Swami introduced the new TC members (Athanasios Liavas, Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo, and Qing Zhao), and proposed a vote of thanks for the recently retired members: Brian Sadler, Luc Vandendorpe, Xiang-Gen Xia. The TC voted unanimously to thank the aforementioned retired members for their valuable contributions to the TC.

• Ananthram Swami reminded members that their participation in voting and review functions is critical, in fact one of their main responsibilities.

• TC representation and coordination matters were discussed; the following were agreed upon:

  Coordinating award nominations: Nikos Sidiropoulos + Franz Hlawatsch (auditor)

  Maintaining web page: Geert Leus

  Maintaining pool of editors: Geert Leus

  Technical Directions Committee: Ananthram Swami

  Publications Board: (unofficial) Ali Sayed

  Conference Board: Ananthram Swami

• The minutes of the TC meeting at SPAWC'05 and the SP-COM TC Chair's reports to the Board of Governors (April '06) and the Conference Board (April '06) were discussed and approved.

• There followed a detailed discussion on SP-COM related Workshops:

  Anna Scaglione summarized hindsights from SPAWC-05. Books have been closed and there has been a 22% profit for IEEE. This was due to a number of reasons, including considerably higher participation than expected (approx. 250 participants vs. 170 originally expected), and the fact that the organizers did a lot of the management work themselves rather than using a reliable but expensive conference management service, as is typical for ICASSP, for example. It was felt that the pressure-for-profit from IEEE was high, especially because third-party contributions / donations to the conference (e.g., from the U.S. National Science Foundation) were included in the profit margin calculation at the direction of IEEE. At the ensuing discussion, TC members voiced concern about this practice (of including third-party contributions in the calculation of the profit margin). It was felt that the profit margin should only be applied to conference registration income. It was noted that SPAWC-99 had a small ($3,000) loss, and SPAWC-03 broke even. It was suggested that a large percentage of the surplus from SPAWC should be carried over to SPAWC workshops in subsequent years.

• Regarding SPAWC-06 Cannes, France, 2-5 July 2006, (http://spawc2006.eurecom.fr/):

  Dirk Slock and David Gesbert summarized the status of SPAWC-06. There were 250 papers submitted, of which half (125) were accepted. The U.S. NSF did not support SPAWC this year, unlike the previous two SPAWC workshops, which were supported by NSF with approx. $20K each. On the other hand, the organizers expect between 10 and 15K in contributions by Texas Instruments and other (smaller) contributors.

  Dirk Slock recounted his experience with the new IEEE regulations regarding compatibility of PDF paper files with IEEExplore / PDFxpress guidelines. He mentioned that the instructions were incomplete and occasionally inconsistent, and the whole process far from being user-friendly. This added to the burden of authors and organizers alike.

  There was a suggestion to post "SPAWC-2-SPAWC" organizing committee information, hints, comments etc on the TC's webpage to help future organizers. For example, simple procedures to ensure compliance with PDFxpress guidelines, experience from using various conference management services, etc. Suggestion was adopted unanimously.

• Regarding SPAWC-07 Helsinki, Finland, 17-20 June 2007:

  Visa Koivunen summarized the status of SPAWC-06 organization. The organizers have opted for using a Finish conference management service that handles all aspects of the workshop (paper submission, review, registration, etc) at approximately 1/3 of the typical cost of comparable services, after much negotiation. Workshop webpage is up and running and all is progressing smoothly. The organizers have secured support from NOKIA, and the NOKIA CTO has agreed to give a plenary talk, which will increase visibility and help strengthen the SPCOM community's links to industry.

• SPAWC'08: Informal preliminary presentations of two bids were subsequently made:

  There is interest from a team in Brazil to host SPAWC-08 in Recife, on the north-east coast of Brazil. The proposal was presented by Prof Paulo S. R. Diniz, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Recife is a city of approx. 3 million, and a prime tourist destination. Brazil offers high-quality accomodations at very competitive prices, and the proposed venue is in front of the beach. There are many direct flights from major European and U.S. cities. After the presentation, Ali Sayed mentioned that one consideration that is worthwhile taking into account is the need to encourage signal processing communities around the world. Brazil has a large SP base, and national SP-related conferences are regularly organized there.

  Geert Leus presented an informal proposal to host SPAWC-08 in Perugia, Italy. The organizing team will include Robert Heath, Geert Leus, and Paolo Banelli. The prospective organizers have already talked to local munincipal authorities to secure a suitable auditorium and poster facilities at very low cost, if any. Perugia has direct flights to and from Milan, and a fast train service from Rome.

  The plan is to have formal presentations of these two bids at SPAWC-06 and e-vote after SPAWC-06.

• AE Nominations: Geert Leus announced the results of the TC vote regarding AE nominations. It was decided to forward the top four nominations (X. Ma, G. Matz, D. Palomar, Q. Zhao - endorsed by tha majority of the members who voted) to Alle-Jan v.d. Veen, EiC of TSP.

• Awards: There was an update and reminder by Nikos Sidiropoulos about IEEE and SP Soc. awards and associated procedures and deadlines.

• Deadlines for award nominations:

  1 May to SPS, for Distinguished Lecturer: Nomination of Georgios Giannakis was forwarded by Ananthram Swami.

  25 May ICASSP Student Paper Awards: e-vote to select 6 awards from 9 finalists.

  30 June: deadline to submit reviews for Best Paper Award (BPA) and Young Author BPA (YBPA) to Nikos Sidiropoulos and Ananthram Swami. Nominations to be submitted to SPS by 1 September.

  1 July to IEEE, for the IEEE Fink Award (Tutorial published in 2005 in Magazine or Proceedings; our TC has never submitted Fink nominations in the past.)

  1 Oct to SPS, for Education, Service, Society, Technical Achievement awards.

• The following issue was discussed next:

  Should papers considered in the previous year be automatically reconsidered (subject to eligibility)?

  After discussion, it was decided unanimously that up to two papers (the two top vote-getters) per category (BPA, YABPA) will be automatically reconsidered, subject to eligibility. Remaining papers from the previous year (or the year before) can always be explicitly renominated by any TC member.

• Ananthram Swami mentioned that the TC's nomination for the Best Paper Award was successful; the TC voted to congratsulate Roberto Lopez-Valcarce (TSP March 2004, Realizable Linear and Decision Feedback Equalizers: Properties and Connections). The TC's nomination for the Young Author Award was also successful; the TC voted to congratsulate Tobias Dahl, and co-authors Nils Christophersen, and David Gesbert (TSP Sept 2004; Blind MIMO Eigenmode Transmission Based on the Algebraic Power Method). The TC also congratulated Geert Leus for a BPA and Ali Sayed and Naofal Al-Dhahir for a YBPA (submitted through other TCs).

• There was a discussion of the outcomes of the Genoa BoG meeting, in particular the creation of the Speech and Language Processing Council, and what this means for SPS and other TCs. It was felt that this development probably / naturally leads to a future split of the Speech and Language community and ICASSP. The pros and cons of such a chain of events were debated.

• Ananthram Swami noted that 5 members will retire and 11 will be eligible for re-election this year. In addition, some members have stayed inactive; he will privately ask them to step down from the TC to make room for new people that have the time and energy to contribute to the TC. He also suggested early elections.

• The new IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing was announced and the TC was briefed on its scope. Members were encouraged to consider organizing special issues. Lee Swindlehurst is the founding EiC.

• Reflections on ICASSP 2006: 420 papers (vs. 408 in '06, 360 for '04, 320 for '03) were submitted to SPCOM-TC; 204 were accepted. There were 8 Lecture and 13 Poster sessions. The TC was appreciative of the hard work of Luc Vandendorpe and Pierre Duhanel.

• On ICASSP Student Awards: Ali Sayed suggested that the number of ICASSP student paper awards be reduced, in order to improve prestige and visibility.

• Ananthram Swami updated the TC on ICASSP 2007, Hawaii: Tutorial and special session proposals are due 4 August (8 Sept); full papers are due 29 September; notication of acceptance 14 December. The review period will be 10 October - 1 December (approximately).

Meeting adjourned at 2:00pm.

Transcribed & submitted by

N. Sidiropoulos and A. Swami