Minutes of the MMSP Technical meeting on May 16th 2006 at ICASSP In attendance: Ingemar J. Cox (IC) Li Deng Pascal Frossard Ling Guan Shri Narayanan Beatrice Pesquet Popescu Stefano Tubaro Also in attendance (non-members) Kang Liu Jose Moura (SPS President-elect) Alex Potamianos Jian Zhang Minutes: 1. MMSP Li Deng provided a summary of organization of MMSP 2006. The deadline for completion of reviews has expired. Currently only 50% of the reviews are complete. A request was made to encourage MMSP-TC members to complete their reviews. Ingemar Cox agreed to send an email reminder Shri Narayanan and Alex Potamianos provided a summary of their proposal to hold MMSP 2007 in Chania, Crete. This is the only proposal for next year. A vote was taken and all members unanimously supported the proposal. However, a quorum was not present. It was agreed to discuss this further as it is highly desirable to formalize the decision asap in order to begin advertising the Workshop at the forthcoming ICME conference on July 9-12. Jian Zhang provided a brief summary of a proposal to host MMSP 2008 in Cairns, Australia. Please see attached. Due to the situation regarding MMSP 2007, it was agreed that it is imperative that we agree on a formal timetable for requesting and approving proposals. 2. ICME Pascal Frossard provided an update regarding ICME. Pascal is Chair of the Steering Committee which is in the process of changing its charter and seeking full support from the four Technical Societies it is associated with (Signal Processing Society, Computer Society, Circuits and Systems, and the Communications Society). Ingemar Cox requested comments from the TC regarding whether they wished to continue to support ICME. He pointed out that (i) the number of MMSP-TC members attending the key conferences – ICASSP, ICIP, MMSP, ICME – is insufficient to provide a quorum, (ii) the ICME does not have as strong an impact rating as ICIP and (iii) it was unclear how ICME differed from MMSP. For these reasons IJC asked whether we should consider no longer supporting ICME and consolidating our efforts within the remaining conferences. Ling Guan agreed that ICIP has a better reputation but expressed the opinion that ICME can reach this level. He pointed out that this year ICME has received over 460 submissions. Li Deng felt that the demonstration/exposition component of ICME compliments MMSP. However, Ling Guan noted that this was no longer a strong component to ICME. Shri Narayanan thought that the Expo should be emphasized more. Ingemar Cox agreed to poll MMSP-TC members on their opinions. 3. Policy to handle request to sponsor non-IEEE events. Ingemar Cox agreed to contact Mercy and post clear instructions from the IEEE with regard to this. Problems have arisen in the past, most recently with regard to the Multimodal User Authentication Workshop (MMUA 2006) which was held just before ICASSP. 4. Bylaws It is desired to amend the bylaws to (i) eliminate the class of liaison membership, (ii) to permit email voting, and (iii) to formalize the overlap between the Chair, Chair-elect and Past Chair or the MMSP-TC. This was not possible as there was not a quorum. 5. AOB Ingemar Cox raised the issue of increasing the number of proposal we receive for MMSP and ICME. Jose Moura commented that perhaps it was less important to seek competition but rather to assist and guide the development of strong proposals. Ingemar Cox asked how the TC could strengthen the membership of the TC. Shri Narayanan suggested that all TC members indicate their specific areas of expertise (based on edics) and that recruitment focus on those areas that are under-represented. IC suggested that nominations should be discouraged from within the same institutions. Beatrice Pesquet Popescu suggested that we consider new trends when appointing new members. Jose Moura (JM) informed the TC that there would be a 2-day meeting of the Long Range Planning Committee during ICIP. Day 1 will be open to all TC chairs, and Board members. Day 2 will be restricted to the Board of Governors. JM requested that the MMSP-TC try to develop a long range plan. He asked us to consider where we want our TC to be in 5-10 years. What technical directions are promising and exciting? How can we broaden our membership?