Minutes of the MMSP TC Meeting July 10, 2006, at ICME, Toronto Attendance: Andrea Cavallaro (AC) (dial in) Chang Wen Chen (CWC) Ingemar J, Cox (IJC) Jean-Luc Dugelay (J-LD) Adriana Dumitras (AD) (dial in) Touradj Ebrahimi (TE) (dial in) Ling Guan (LG) Mark Liao (ML) Ching-Yung Lin (C-YL) Shri Narayanan (SN) (dial in) Mihaela van der Schaar (MS) Anthony Vetro (AV) Wenjun Zeng (WZ) Also in attendance (non-members): Mercy Kowalczyk (MK) Joern Ostermann (JO) A quorum was not present. Minutes: 1. The minutes were “approved” unanimously. However, it was pointed that official approval requires a quorum. 2. Shri Narayanan (SN) provided an update of preparations for MMSP 2007, to be held in Chania, Crete on October 1-3, 2007. A committee has been formed. A draft Call for Papers is to be sent to Mercy Kowalczyk for approval by the IEEE before general distribution. The budget and hotel contract are in the final stages of negotiation. The organizing committee is in contact with the IEEE with regard to these items. There is a preliminary website www.mmsp2007.org. The Committee is in contact with the organizers of MMSP 2006 for advice and assistance. It is intended to run Special Sessions at MMSP 2007. Ingemar Cox agreed to send the MMSP TC an email requesting suggestions of topics, with the understanding that these will undergo a regular selection process. Ling Guan (LG) raised the issue of attendance due to the proximity of MMSP 2007 to ICIP 2007 (approximately two weeks). SN responded that MMSP is broader than ICIP and they expect 100 attendees. C-YL raised the issue of travel to Chania. SN responded that there were direct flights from Athens as well as connections by boat. CWC asked what the deadlines were for the Call for Papers. SN stated that the deadline for submission will be April 6, 2007, with notification in June and camera-ready copy due in July. CWC commented that this is a shorter review cycle than ICME and MK asked whether the workload for the Technical Committee was manageable given both ICIP and MMSP. SN responded that they will rely on the TC to recruit ad hoc reviewers to supplement the TC. CWC noted that MMSP 2006 only had 50% of papers reviewed by their deadline and therefore recommended that there be a backup plan to deal with late review. ICME 2006 had such a plan and CWC will provide it to SN. 3. There was then a lengthy discussion regarding the implications of the recent vote by the MMSP TC to run the MMSP Workshop back-to-back with ICME. LG raised a procedural point that for a vote to take place there needs to be a motion, seconder, discussion and then a vote. AD responded that for MMSP it was more usual for the moderator to run the vote and for members to wait until the voting process was concluded before bringing up other topics for discussion. After some discussion it was decided to focus not on whether the vote was valid, but to discuss the implications of the vote and how best to implement the proposed arrangement. CWC questioned the normal procedure for the final voting is not closely followed. By normal procedure, he means that all other TCs he attended have three steps: motion, second, and discussion. In this case, the discussion part was not given before final vote. IJC noted that discussion was given in the previous run of voting. However, CWC cautioned that the implication of the results was not fully discussed. Concern was raised by CWC regarding the format of the MMSP. In particular, he was concerned that the current 3-day Workshop would have to be reduced to 1 day. TE also thought that sustaining a 3-day Workshop back-to-back with ICME would be difficult. IJC noted that this needed to be discussed more and depended on proposals for future MMSP Workshops. C-YL suggested a 2-day format of very high quality based on 8-page submissions, which would complement ICME. MK commented that the SP community would not want to lose MMSP and did not expect that MMSP would be sacrificed to the interests of ICME. However, she noted that when ICASSP and ICSS (*** is the correct?***) were held back-to-back, it resulted in the largest attendance for both conferences. MK suggested we maintain a 2-day Workshop but noted that if the Workshop was of general interest it would appear too similar to ICME. She therefore suggested that MMSP become more targeted and hoped that this would encourage more senior people to attend ICME. MK also pointed out that the TC vote did not require us to surrender the MMSP 2-day workshop and further noted that we need not run the Workshop in the same hotel. In fact, we could consider running it in a nearby city, perhaps with a one day gap from travel between ICME and MMSP. One advantage of this arrangement would be to reduce the travel time. In response to MK’s comments, CWC noted that ICME is getting stronger, with several distinguished guest lecturers. Moreover, the ratio of students attending ICME 2006 had reduced from approximately 40% to 20%, indicating that senior researchers were attending more. MK was pleased with this news but voiced concern regarding whether this ratio would be maintained at ICME 2007 in Beijing, where the initial planning indicated that a high number of registrations are expected to be from students. Further discussion ensued regarding the future format of MMSP. MK commented that the length of the Workshop could remain the same. AD agreed and suggested a more focused Workshop that reduced the redundancy with ICME. SN added that MMSP can highlight exciting new topics and invite researchers from outside of the MMSP community to participate and share their perspectives. The themes of MMSP could be selected by the MMSP TC. C-YL was also optimistic regarding scheduling MMSP and ICME back-to-back. He added that many people only had funding for one international conference per year, which often presented a dilemma regarding which conference to attend. C-YL suggested that keeping MMSP and ICME close by might improve attendance. AD supportedthe idea of possibly scheduling MMSP and ICME such that they are a few days apart and within manageable distance (as are MMSP and ICIP in 2006, within a weekend and with flight-distance from Canada to the US). However, AD indicated that such planning would be sufficient to address travel budget constraints and would not require transforming MMSP into a satellite of ICME by reducing its length and impacting the technical content. AD also indicated that there have been no technical arguments (other than travel arguments) so far in favor of downsizing MMSP., LG suggested that holding MMSP and ICME at different times and locations provided more choice for TC members. And CWC noted that the budgetary saving was only the cost of the flight (not hotel and other costs). WZ raised the issue of submission to MMSP and/or ICME and emphasized the need to differentiate MMSP from ICME. C-YL agreed and proposed that MMSP highlight new trends and maintain very high quality. AV commented that the format of MMSP would be very important. He also noted that other formats were possible. For example, VLBV is a not very competitive conference, but it also provides very useful panel discussions and keynote speakers. AD added that MMSP 2006 had arranged a number of talks from very prominent senior researchers as well as 6 overview talks from leading experts in the field and two panels. CWC noted that the implications of the TC’s vote were not clear. Furthermore, it appeared that other TC’s were also considering running satellite Workshops with ICME. LG suggested that a sub-committee be established to examine these implications. C-YL supported this suggestion requesting that the subcommittee discuss how best to arrange the new MMSP and report back its recommendations to the TC. CWC cautioned that MMSP is not broken and we should progress slowly. JO also supported the creation of a subcommittee, with full implementation to begin in 2009 or 2010. IJC expressed concern regarding this timeframe. A discussion of the role and timetable of this subcommittee then ensued. It was considered unlikely that the subcommittee would have sufficient time to produce its full recommendations in time for them to be incorporated for MMSP 2008. AD and IJC supported implementation by 2008. SN suggested that a partial implementation might be appropriate, e.g. the MMSP Workshop is run separate from ICME, but we implemented some number of format changes in anticipation of a full change in 2009. It was eventually agreed that a subcommittee would be formed. This subcommittee would be the existing MMSP TC Conference subcommittee, provided its current membership represented the voting pattern of the TC as a whole. Otherwise a new subcommittee would be formed consisting of 2 members who voted “for”, 2 members who voted “against” and 1 member who voted “other”. The immediate responsibility of this subcommittee would be to draft a Call for Proposals for MMSP 2008. This Call would include details of a number of possible format changes that have been proposed for MMSP and would request that proposers address one or more of these issues in their response. It was noted that MMSP 2008 would not entirely abandon the current MMSP format. Rather one or two days would be given over to the new format and the remainder would consist of the current format. Whether the new format would be one or two days would be left to the discretion of the Proposer. It is hoped that this CfP would be ready by August or September at the latest. Proposals would be due in November or December 2006 and a decision would then be made by the TC in early 2007. CWC feels strongly that the TC should give the subcommittee enough time to work on since this change is very significant and all possible outcomes should be considered. LG requested that the MMSP TC vote be made available to the TC. IJC agreed that this would be done. MK noted that the vote should not be made public outside of the TC. LG also raised the issue of when the TC should begin election for the TC Chair-Elect. IJC commented that he believed this needed to occur towards the end of this year, so that the Chair-Elect had one year of overlap with the current Chair. IJC agreed to confirm this with Yu Hen Hu, the Past-Chair.