Minutes of the Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee Meeting MMSP 2008, Cairns, Australia Thursday, October 9, 2008 Attendees: John Apostolopoulos (phone), Yen-Kuang Chen (phone), Jean-Luc Dugelay, Ling Guan, Yun He (phone), Ching-Yung Lin (phone), Stefano Tubaro (phone), Anthony Vetro, Wenjun Zheng (phone) Guests: Marco Cagnazzo, Carl Debono, David Feng, Dinei Florencio, Chia-Wen Lin, Marco Tagliasacchi (phone), Jian Zhang The meeting was call to order at 12:10 pm. 1. INTRODUCTIONS 2. REVIEW AGENDA 3. REPORT OF THE CHAIR - Vice-chair election Plan to call for nominations for vice-chair very soon, i.e., next week or so. Need to make selection prior to the end of this year. - TC web site Site has been recently updated to SPS template; comments welcome. 4. WORKSHOP REPORTS - MMSP 2008 [report by J. Zhang, D. Feng] Total number of submission was 325, of which 180 were accepted (51 oral and 129 posters). Acceptance rate of 55% (higher than past years). 198 registered attendees. Sponsorship for best paper awards from industry (Microsoft, Cannon, NICTA). 12-15% surplus is projected. Organizers will follow up with IEEE to close books on the workshop. This years workshop ran two tracks for first two days, one oral and one poster, then all oral on last day. Somewhat different from previous years that had dedicated poster slots running all days. Suggest minimal overlap between poster and oral going forward and running posters every day. Action Item: question about regional distribution of submitted and accepted papers; this is Useful for future planning. Organizers asked to provide data. - MMSP 2009 [report by D. Florencio] Main update is that contract for conference venue has been signed (Sheraton in Rio). Dates are Oct 5-7, 2009. Starting to look at invited speakers. Joe Paradiso (MIT Media Lab, working on virtual life projects) has confirmed. Considering ways to highlight outstanding papers at the workshop, e.g., special designation in program, long paper vs short paper. Suggestions welcome. 5. MMSP 2010 PROPOSALS - Brittany, France [presented by M. Cagnazzo] Theme focused on entertainment, gaming and virtual reality. Workshop format similar to MMSP 2006/2007, including six plenary talks, two demo sessions and one panel session. Posters to be schedule to have minimal or no overlap with oral sessions. Two locations: Rennes and St. Malo. 2 hours by train from Paris, one additional hour to St Malo. Many accomodation options. Registration for Rennes is less than that for St Malo since facilities fee not needed for congress center. Strong local support of research community and companies. Questions/Discussion: Program format - how many oral/posters given plenary, demo, panel? Proponents asked to provide detailed timeline along with numbers. It seems the budget needs to be adjusted to account for 20% surplus. Request sample hotel information in area including distance and prices. Sponsorship from regional institutes is planned. - Como, Italy [presented by S. Tubaro and M. Tagliasacchi] Theme focused on multimedia analytics and content protection. Venue in the Como city center. Workshop format similar to MMSP 2006/2007, including two keynotes, one panel and a show-and-tell session. Posters to be scheduled to have minimal or no overlap with oral sessions. Registration fees calculated with 20% surplus as part of budget plan. Lunch not currently included, but budget has 8K reserved that might be used for this. With a university in the city, it is possible to get local support from student volunteers. Questions/Discussion: Sponsorship - current budget does not include, but proponents would work on getting some to support paper awards and enhance other aspects of program. Not clear if 1 hour would be sufficient for lunch, depends on restaurants in vicinity and service. May either consider extending time for lunch or including as part of registration package. Request sample hotel information in area including distance and prices. - General remarks and action items The TC expressed its sincere thanks to both teams for putting together such high quality proposals. Anthony to summarize feedback and requests, encourage further discussion among TC and call for vote in upcoming weeks. 6. SUBCOMMITTEE ACTIVITIES - Awards [reported by J-L. Dugelay] The following nominations were endorsed by the TC and sent to the SPS Awards Board on October 1: * Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award: An Introduction to Compressive Sampling, by Candès and Wakin, March 2008. * Technical Achievement Award: Aggelos K. Katsaggelos, For outstanding contributions to the field of multimedia processing. * Education Award: Bede Liu, For outstanding contributions to graduate and undergraduate education and mentoring in signal processing. Jean-Luc's term will be expiring by end of this year, so need for new volunteers. Send email to Phil and Anthony if interest in participating. Lack of participation in nomination and voting process was noted. 53% of TC voted on paper awards and 80% voted on major awards. Also, just a few people involved in actively nominating. Reminder that this is a major duty of all TC members. Action Item: Anthony to follow up with those that have not been participating regarding early retirement from TC. Se also detailed report prepared by Phil Chou. - Conference & Workshop [reported by C-Y. Lin and Y-K. Chen] Call for workshop proposals at ICME 2009 has been made to TC. One submission from YK has been put forward on the topic of multi-core architectures. Plan is for mix of tutorial and latest research results. Two options: focus on one topic, or try to expand to include two topics or other presentations, e.g., from TC members, past paper awards. Regarding timing, it is most likley that this workshop will be in parallel with ICME. Action Item: subcommittee to make written recommendation to TC on workshop format (multicore session and possibly other topics to be worked out later), timing with main ICME sessions, registration package, etc. - Membership [reported by Y. He] Issued call for nomination of new members. Due date is Oct 31. A few items noted regarding major duties of members. All voting members should be aware of lack of representation from region 10 in the TC. Request TC members to consider this in nomination and voting process as well as topic needs. Depending on number of candidates, new voting process will be announced. Action Item: subcommittee asked to provide an analysis of topics that might be under-represented. Action Item: it was suggested that nomination include EDICS area covered by candidate, region, etc. subcommittee should discuss and announce any changes or additional requirements for nomination forms. - Technical Directions [reported by A. Vetro] New EDICS for ICASSP 2009 has been drafted. Slight revision to major topics, and elaborates on major topics. Encourage review and input from TC. 7. NEXT TC MEETING The TC will hold its next meeting at ICASSP 2009 in Taiwan. Exact date to be announced later. 8. AOB Thanks to IBM for hosting the phone conference. 9. ADJOURN The meeting adjourned at 2:00 pm.