Sunday May 22nd, 2005 IACR Board of Directors Meeting Aarhus, Denmark *** EXECUTIVE SUMMARY *** Reports were received by the board regarding EUROCRYPT 2005, ASIACRYPT 2004, PKC 2005, CRYPTO 2005, ASIACRYPT 2005, EUROCRYPT 2006, CRYPTO 2006. The board also received a Treasurer's report, Newsletter Editor's report, and Membership Secretary's report. The fellowship committee announced the naming of three new fellows. The board appointed a new elections committee for 2006 elections. Malaysia will be the venue for ASIACRYPT 2007. New York will be the PKC 2006 venue with PC chair Moti Yung, and General Chair Tal Malkin FSE 2006 will be in Graz Austria with PC Chair Matt Robshaw, and General Chair Vincent Rijmen. EUROCRYPT 2007 will be in Barcelona. CHES 2006 will be in Yokohama. The board voted to ask Moni Naor to be PC Chair for EUROCRYPT 2007. Moni subsequently accepted. Ivan Damgaard will give the IACR Distinguished Lecture at ASIACRYPT 2006. McCurley gave a presentation on Electronic Publishing. *** DETAILED MINUTES *** The meeting was called to order at 10am by President Andy Clark. In attendance were President Clark, Vice President Preneel, Secretary Black, Treasurer Handschuh. Directors Berson, Cachin, Cramer, Knudsen, Lenstra, and Matsumoto. General chairs Benaloh, Damgaard, Haber, Rangan. And Membership Secretary McCurley. Absent were Directors Dawson, Quisquater, Wright, Newsletter Editor Hughes, General Chairs Lebedev, Pei, and JoC Editor-in-Chief Maurer. President Clark held Hughes' proxy. Benaloh held Wright's proxy. Matsumoto held Dawson's proxy. --- The agenda for the meeting was approved. The minutes from the last board meeting (August 15th, 2004 in Santa Barbara) were approved by the board. ====== General Chair Damgaard reported on the status of EUROCRYPT 2005: 360 prepaid registrants, many more non-prepaid--expect maybe half of these to show, thus 380 or 390 expected in total. This is less than last year, perhaps we lost some Americans due to a weak dollar. Damgaard predicted we will roughly break even. A discussion ensued regarding the non-prepaid registrants. It was noted that one could register with one's details and then abort the process without entering payment info. Haber suggested this was non-intuitive and perhaps it should be made clearer. Preneel asked if we should charge an even higher rate for on-site payment to discourage this behavior, and noted this is very hard for the general chair to manage. Clark suggested that complications to the system should not be introduced unless they benefited our membership. Pandu indicated that in his institution they would like to register immediately upon acceptance of a paper, but that obtaining funding takes quite a long time, so a non-paying registration is needed. He further noted that the higher registration rate (after the early registration discount) would not be covered by any agency funding travel. Clark noted that such circumstances could be handled explicitly by the general chair. General Chair Lebedev arrived at 10:16am. EUROCRYPT 2005 PC Chair Cramer gave his report: 190 submissions, 33 accepted, and a handful of double submissions. There was a one-day PC meeting in Amsterdam on Jan 22nd. It was noted that CRYTPO 2005 PC Chair Shoup used www.softconf.com software in preference to setting up the Leuven software normally used for conference reviewing. Pandu noted that softconf will also be used this year at ASIACRYPT 2005. Haber noted that the softconf hosting service was about $600. Pandu noted he was planning to use this for ASIACRYPT because hosting in Madras was somewhat unreliable, especially in the wake of the Tsunami last year. --ACTION ITEM-- Discuss possible hosting of Leuven software by an IACR-controlled machine, thus relieving the PC chair of setting it up himself/herself. This might be at Leuven. To be further discussed by McCurley and Preneel. Damgaard noted there were approximately 25 student stipends granted for EUROCRYPT 2005. ======= Treasurer Handschuh's Report: Handschuh noted there was a current budget surplus of $441,000. It was suggested that this be increased to our (approximate) annual expenditures of $711,000 for the 3 conferences and workshops. The board discussed this and concluded that the current surplus was a sufficient and growing amount that did not warrant further explicit efforts at increasing. Handschuh is therefore not considering any membership fee increase at this time. ====== The board approved Newsletter Editor Hughes' report. The board heard a summary of JoC Editor-in-Chief Maurer's report: Springer is increasing our page allowance at no cost, but we are currently under negotiations with Springer anyhow. Maurer would like to increase Journal frequency from 4/year to 6/year. Clark is meeting with Springer representatives tomorrow (May 23, 2005). ===== Membership Secretary McCurley's Report It was noted that we need a new Membership Secretary and that nominations should be submitted to the board. McCurley's report was received by the board. The board expressed its gratitude for McCurley's work. McCurley suggested that with the new system, UCSB should perhaps take on management for all 3 conferences and workshops of the IACR at the same cost. He also indicated that the new system is mostly, but not completely documented, and that he would try and finish this by August. --ACTION ITEM--: Discuss possible rate renegotiation with UCSB (Clark) ===== Damgaard reported that three new IACR fellows were named. Clark noted that the board needed to form a new elections committee. Berson, Benaloh, and Lenstra volunteered. It was noted that three Director positions would be voted on this year given the terms of Dawson, Wright, and Quisquater are all expiring. The board recessed from 11:25am to 11:37am ====== ASIACRYPT steering committee report: Malaysia will be the venue for ASIACRYPT 2007 PKC steering committee report: New York will be the 2006 venue with PC chair Moti Yung, and General Chair Tal Malkin; no PKC 2007 as yet. FSE steering committee report: FSE 2006 in Graz Austria was proposed, with PC Chair Matt Robshaw, and General Chair Vincent Rijmen. The board voted to approve. CHES steering committee: The board decided to await Quisquater's arrival, expected later in the day. ====== Conference/Workshop Reports: ASIACRYPT 2004: Matsumoto gave the report in General Chair Kim's place. PKC 2005: Clark took the report as having been read. CRYPTO 2005: Haber has already sent a few invitation letters. Reiterated that this must be done early. ASIACRYPT 2005: Pandu noted that Microsoft has agreed to co-sponsor the conference, and this money will help to subsidize local Indian attendees. Lunch break at 12:40pm -- 1:26pm ====== The board was pleased to receive two excellent proposals for EUROCRYPT 2007: Barcelona (Spain) and Mykonos (Greece). After viewing both presentations and discussing the proposals, the board voted narrowly to accept the Barcelona proposal. ===== Break 2:52pm -- 2:58pm The board revisited the topic of possibly accommodating a reduced rate membership. It was decided we did not want to consider new types of membership and it would be best for the General Chairs to make arrangements for local attendees who could not afford conference attendance fees. Some board members supported a proposal to grant $5000 per conference to the General Chair to sponsor the IACR membership fee for local attendees. It was also expressed that most board members hoped for a decoupling of (now mandatory) IACR membership and JoC subscription. Clark reiterated that he would discuss this matter with Springer the following day (23 May). ==== EUROCRYPT 2006 General Chair Lebedev reported that the dates were now fixed, the hotel was fixed, but that some pricing issues were still being negotiated. CRYPTO 2006 General Chair Benaloh announced that the conference would be held August 20th--24th. ==== Quisquater arrived at 3:37pm The board voted to ask Moni Naor to be PC Chair for EUROCRYPT 2007. Moni subsequently accepted. The board voted to ask Ivan Damgaard to give the IACR Distinguished Lecture at ASIACRYPT 2006. Damgaard later accepted. ===== The IACR email policy was discussed. The board was strongly in favor of limiting email as much as possible, but allowed for sending out notifications for conference registration announcements and submission deadline announcements, given that members may now opt out of either. Cachin agreed to work with McCurley to construct proper wording reflecting limits on the amount of email sent out per conference/workshop. ==== Lenstra proposed several minor amendments to the IACR Bylaws. Clark said he would later circulate amended bylaws reflecting these changes and the board could review them via email, voting at the next board meeting in Santa Barbara. Lenstra proposed one further amendment, asking that only elected board members vote on selection of PC chairs in future. This discussion was deferred until the next board meeting. ===== Break: 4:52pm--5:04pm Quisquater reported on CHES 2006: proposed venue is Yokohama, Oct 10 to 13th, 2006. The board voted to accept the proposal. ===== McCurley gave a presentation on Electronic Publishing. No action was proposed at this time, but McCurley suggested we begin considering issues raised. In particular: Should the JoC be electronic? Would proceedings have more impact if indexed online? He specifically noted that the JoC editor, ePrint administrator and archivist need to be involved in these efforts if/when they are undertaken. Quisquater noted that impact is measured by citations, and a citation may not be included for on-line libraries if only published electronically by the IACR. This could affect tenure and promotion cases, in particular. Clark summarized ownership of JoC and terms of agreement with Springer for proceedings. The main point of the debate was to discover (1) what should be the board's position with Springer and (2) what is the proper way to bring this debate to our membership. Clark summarized the roles of the archivist. Berson suggested Clark ask Springer what their vision of paper publishing is in future. ===== The President then brought two issues to the attention of the board dealing with communication he had received from two members. ===== All action items were reviewed by the President. The meeting was adjourned at 6:20pm.