Membership meeting Wednesday August 19, 2009 (Supporting slides with additional details are availalbe on the IACR website.) President Bart Preneel opened the meeting at 5:15pm, giving a brief overview of the IACR, its conference/workshops, etc. He reminded the membership that three of the directors have terms expiring this year, and encouraged members to run for office. Treasurer Helena Handschuh gave a report summarizing the IACR's finances. She highlighted the fact that despite the economic crisis, the IACR has a strong financial position. The IACR targets break-even on its events, and tries to keep the overhead budget below 2%. She was happy to report that 2009 is the first year of conference stipends for student speakers being provide by the Marconi grant. Preneel gave a report on the behalf of Membership secretary Shai Halevi. Overall, membership is steadily increasing. Preneel also mentioned our online services, in particular the cryptoDB service. He thanked Shai for his hard work. General Chair John Black was presented with a certificate of appreciation for his excellent running of Crypto'09. Program Chair Halevi also received a certificate for delivering an excellent technical program. Halevi gave a short presentation on the program, thanking the program commitee members and GC Black. Preneel then gave a list of the upcoming IACR conferences and workshops. He noted the upcoming colocated (or almost colocated) events: CHES and Crypto'10, and PKC and EC'10. Preneel announced (again) that Matt Franklin is the new editor-in-chief of the Jounal of Cryptology. On behalf of EiC Franklin, he reminded the membership of an upcoming special edition on applied cryptography, and encouraged members to send their best work. Preneel gave a very brief report on behalf of Newsletter editor Christopher Wolf, highlighting the number of new ideas that Wolf has for the newsletter. Preneel quickly reviewed the IACR Fellows process. Preneel reminded the audience that we have and IACR reading room, which provides free electronic access to all past proceedings of our conferences and workshop. This service is provided by Springer. He also reminded the audience that the IACR provides an archive, and that there is currently a two-year delay between the time proceedings are published by Springer and the time that the IACR can make these available in the archive. The board is lobbying Springer to reduce this delay. He mentioned that there are other publishing models for the future, in particular the Open Access model through Springer (which costs quite a bit of money); another Open Access model is to abandon Springer and follow the model of STACS and Usenix. Preneel asked for a straw poll on receiving proceedings at conferences: Option 1: remain the same (printed proceedings) 27 members Option 2: CD/USB only 61 members A member (Rose) mentioned that Qualcomm has provided a preloaded USB stick at recent Cryptos. He then asked for a second straw poll about the JoC: Option 1: as today, paper version in the mail and reading room access 17 members Option 2: stop sending physical JoC in the mail, giving only IACR reading room access 71 members Phil Rogaway asked if it is possible to receive a "fresh compilation" of papers (up-to-date to the current conference) on CD. President Preneel said that he would look into this. A member suggested abolishing the paper journal altogether. Preneel responded that this would be quite a radical step that may actually cause damage to members' careers. A member added that we should be careful about considering anything that could hurt the reputation of the community. Preneel gave a brief report on the current board activities. In particular: o he gave a summary of the board's progress and continued study of the e-voting issues, o he announced the initiation of rolling program chairs (one junior chair, one senior chair) at the flagship conferences o he discussed opportunities for providing on-line publications to a broader community (e.g. to national associations for cryptologic research for those who request access) The floor was opened for discussion: Tal Rabin expressed concerns about the rolling chair model for program chairs, stating that it could result in a lot of extra work for chairs. Preneel responded that this was discussed at the board meeting, and that we will evaluate the new model to see if it works. Greg Rose mentioned that Qualcomm has be providing student stipends since 2003, and he received the thanks of the audiences. The meeting was closd at 5:30pm.