Minutes of the MMSP TC Meeting October 4, 2006, at MMSP, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Attendance:
Ingemar J, Cox (IJC)
Li Deng (LD)
Adriana Dumitras (AD)
Jay Kuo (JK)
Christine Guillemot (CG)
Shri Narayanan (SN)
Fernando Pereira (FP)
Anthony Vetro (AV)
Zhengyou Zhang (ZZ)

A quorum was not present.

Minutes:

1. The minutes were “approved” unanimously. 

2. MMSP 2006

Adriana Dumitras (AD) discussed this year’s MMSP Workshop. AD noted 
the change in format, especially the overview talks. AD will provide 
feedback for next year’s organizing committee.  ZZ praised the Overview 
talks. LD noted that such talks required a lot of effort. He had received 
very positive feedback on their tutorial nature and the high quality speakers. 
SN noted that the audience were not asking many questions. LD hoped that this 
would change, especially during the Panel sessions.
AD noted that the Overview Talks were mini crash courses. The speakers were 
booked a year in advance. The third keynote speaker dropped out at very 
short notice and suggested that next year’s organizing committee discuss 
the reliability of proposed keynote speakers with the MMSP-TC. AD also 
noted that the topics were chosen first and then the speakers were 
identified. LD noted that they did not provide an honorarium, or travel 
support for overview speakers. However, a small gift was presented and 
hotel accommodation was provided.
AD noted that Belle Tseng did a very good job re: finances, meeting the 
IEEE requirement of a 20% surplus.

3. MMSP 2007

Shri Narayanan provided an update on progress for MMSP 2007. The format 
of the workshop has not yet been decided and will depend on the feedback 
received at this year’s MMSP. Also, MMSP07 still needs to identify themes. 
LD asked about transportation to Chania, Crete and was assured by SN that 
there are regular flights as well as a ferry service. 

4. MMSP 2008
Ingemar Cox noted that the Call for Proposals was sent out and responses 
were due at the end of the month.

5. MMSP 2009

It is proposed that MMSP09 be the first year in which the Workshop is 
run in conjunction with ICME. A sub-committee of the TC has been 
established to examine the issues related to this discussion. It 
is chaired by Anthony Vetro. AV summarized the initial progress 
of the sub-committee. He explained that the sub-committee needed 
to understand the implications of the TC’s decision to hold MMSP 
in conjunction with ICME. Issues included how will the Workshop 
look? Will it be a 2-day workshop? Acceptance ratio? Single session? 
Theme-based? Timing? Relation to ICME? How to differentiate MMSP 
from ICME?

AV raised the need to coordinate with the ICME Steering Committee 
and proposed a very tight coupling (common budget, integrated accounts). 
SN observed that such a tight coupling was common in ACM but a looser 
coupling was common to ICASSP.

AD noted that IMDSP ran a similar workshop with a strong theme a few 
years ago. Then every other year, then every third year, as it was 
difficult to find people to arrange the meeting. AD also noted that 
if MMSP is too tightly coupled to ICME, then attendance may only be 
from people who attend ICME.

ZZ pointed out that ICME 2007 will have an associated workshop on the 
topic of video analysis. 
A discussion ensued. LD favored the demo/expo component of ICME. SN 
asked what the identity of MMSP was. AD proposed that MMSP would be 
better affiliated with ICIP rather than ICME. LD commented that MMSP 
always has a sufficient number of attendees to be self-supporting. 
ZZ claimed tat co-location will kill MSSP. FP noted that the key 
issue is quality.

6. Membership

The membership subcommittee is seeking names of candidates for election 
to the TC. IJC reminded the TC that there was general agreement to reduce 
the size of the TC to 24 (from its current size of 32). He proposed that 
this be done by recruiting 6 rather than 8 news members from now on. 
There was agreement on this.

7. Co-sponsorship

IJC reported that the TC had been asked to provide co-sponsorship to the 
Sixth International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal 
Processing (ICICS 2007) to be held in Singapore in December 2007. Linda 
Skeahan of the IEEE had approved subject to the TC’s vote. A lively 
discussion concluded that IJC sould seek more guidance from the IEEE 
on both the process and rules/criteria that the TC should base its 
decision on.

8. Best paper nominations

Nasir Memon has sent email seeking nominations for Best Paper and 
Best Student Paper. However, there has only been one nomination in each. 
FP proposed that it be mandatory that each TC member nominate one paper. 
This was supported by SN. JK also felt that it was important to spell 
out the responsibilities of TC members to nominate papers and provide reviews. 
SN also noted that we should consider nominations for Technical Achievement 
in MMSP.

9. Longterm planning meeting at ICIP

IJC reported that the TC Chairs would be attending a Longterm Planning Meeting 
during ICIP. He asked the TC for any suggestions/issues/comments.  

FP noted the problem of reviews, observing that a rejected paper is often 
sent to many journals. JK noted that the Asian market is new and while the 
current quality is poor it is rapidly improving. He suggested that local 
Chapters need strengthening in order to improve quality.