Minutes of the Business Meeting at Crypto 2000
Business Meeting Crypto 2000 Santa Barbara 23 August 2000 IACR President McCurley convened the business meeting at 16:35. He reminded conference attendees that they were all members of the IACR unless they had explicitly declined membership. He described the history of the IACR which began in 1983 and has grown to approximately 1000 members, and he described activities of the IACR including its conferences, the Journal of Cryptology, the Newsletter, the e-print server, and the web site at http://www.iacr.org. McCurley then introduced the Officers and Directors of the IACR. ________________________________________________________________________ Election Committee Chair Benaloh then gave a report on the upcoming IACR elections. He indicated that the terms of IACR Directors Tom Berson, Tatsuaki Okamoto, and Paul Van Oorschot were expiring and that nominations were solicited for members to serve on the Board of Directors for three-year terms commencing January 1, 2001. He introduced the members of the Election Committee consisting of himself, Andrew Clark (serving as the Returning Officer), and Kwangjo Kim. He then described the procedures for obtaining nomination forms and submitting nominations. Finally, he described the procedures of the actual election. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then reported on upcoming IACR conferences. Asiacrypt 2000 was scheduled for 3-7 December 2000 in Kyoto, Japan. Tsutomu Matsumoto was the General Chair and Tatsuaki Okamoto was the Program Chair. 45 papers were accepted out of 139 submissions. Tom Berson was scheduled to deliver the IACR Distinguished Lecture. Eurocrypt 2001 was scheduled for 6-11 May 2001 in Innsbruck, Austria. Reinhard Posch was the General Chair and Birgit Pfitzmann was the Program Chair. Andrew Odlyzko was scheduled to deliver the IACR Distinguished Lecture. Crypto 2001 is scheduled for 19-23 August 2001 in Santa Barbara. Dave Balenson is the General Chair and Joe Kilian is the Program Chair. Asiacrypt 2001 is scheduled for 9-13 December 2001 on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia. Ed Dawson is the General Chair and Colin Boyd is the Program Chair. Eurocrypt 2002 is scheduled for May 2002 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Berry Schoenmakers is the General Chair and Lars Knudsen is the Program Chair. Crypto 2002 is scheduled for August 2002 in Santa Barbara. Rebecca Wright is the General Chair and Moti Yung is the Program Chair. Asiacrypt 2002 is scheduled for 1-5 December 2002 in Queenstown, New Zealand. Henry Wolfe is the General Chair and Yuliang Zheng is the Program Chair. McCurley then said that bids were being solicited for Eurocrypt 2003. ________________________________________________________________________ Next, McCurley described the role of the IACR Secretariat and membership services provided by the University of California at Santa Barbara Conference Services. They can be contacted at iacrmem@iacr.org. ________________________________________________________________________ IACR Treasurer Langford then presented a report. She said that IACR dues were remaining constant and were used as follows. - Journal of Cryptology - 73% - Mailing List Distribution - 10% - Secretariat Services - 8% - Student Support - 5% - Other costs (including web costs) - 4% She said that IACR finances were strong with reserves of approximately $260,000 as of 31 December 1999. She reported that Eurocrypt '99 had broken even, that Crypto '99 had returned a surplus, that Eurocrypt 2000 had returned a small surplus, and that Crypto 2000 finances were looking solid. ________________________________________________________________________ Journal of Cryptology Editor Feigenbaum then reported on the state of the Journal. She mentioned that the IACR web site includes a section on the Journal and then described several changes on the Editorial Board. Jacques Stern, Andrew Odlyzko, and Ivan Daamgard were retiring after many years of good service, and Matt Franklin, Ron Cramer, and Arjen Lenstra were joining the Editorial Board. She reported that the backlog (time from completion of the submission, review, and editing process to publication) was long. Due to a recent special issue and increase in the number of pages used, approximately one or two issues were ready for publication and another one or two were nearly ready except for scheduling. She added that the backlog of papers was small and that new submissions could appear within a year of submission. ________________________________________________________________________ Newsletter Editor Cachin then reported on the Newsletter. He said that it was distributed thrice annually and also available from the IACR web site at http://www.iacr.org. Cachin also reported on the e-print archive at http://eprint.iacr.org. He said that there was minimal review of submissions with simple approval by the editor, an automated interface, and opportunities for a submitter to remove or update submissions as well as add comments. A member suggested that ".ps" format was not as good as ".pdf", and Cachin responded that papers could be submitted in either or both formats. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then reported on the Board of Directors meeting. He noted the issue of extending IACR sponsorship to workshops such as Fast Software Encryption, the use of the IACR membership list, and copyrights in IACR proceedings. He referred members to the IACR web site for details on copyright agreements. ________________________________________________________________________ At 17:03, McCurley opened the floor to the membership for new business. ________________________________________________________________________ Cachin asked why IACR Proceedings say that copyright is owned by Springer-Verlag. McCurley answered that there is no legal basis for this as copyright is owned by the IACR. ________________________________________________________________________ Phil Rogaway then presented a transparency about the so-called "Deadline Problem." He noted that paper submission deadlines for the Crypto conference in the years 1996 through 2000 were set at February 14, 13, 7, 6, and 10 respectively and that Eurocrypt deadlines for the years 1196 through 2001 were set at November 8, 4, 11, 12, 3, and 6, respectively. [Note that the Eurocrypt '99 deadline was apparently actually October 12.] He added that Asiacrypt deadlines in 1999 and 2000 were May 20 and 25, respectively. Rogaway then noted that the time from the Eurocrypt deadline to the Crypto deadline averaged 94 days while the time from the Crypto deadline to the Eurocrypt deadline averaged 271 days (102 days on average from Crypto to Asiacrypt and 169 days on average from Asiacrypt to Eurocrypt). He argued that this imbalance causes the Crypto conference to receive a smaller number of high-quality submissions then does Eurocrypt and that without a change the parity in the conferences would be lost. McCurley responded that people like conferences during warm weather and that he would like Eurocrypt to be scheduled earlier but that many scheduling difficulties exist. Benaloh asked about the possibility of artificially early deadlines for Eurocrypt, and the membership expressed a resounding dislike for this option. Yvo Desmedt claimed that this schedule had been affected by having Proceedings completed in time for the conference. Arjen Lenstra suggested that people would like to move Crypto from Santa Barbara. The membership expressed a strong preference for staying in Santa Barbara. Nigel Smart suggested moving the date of the Crypto conference. Jimmy Upton replied that UCSB's academic schedule prevents moving Crypto later. A member suggested that the conference structure could be changed to either add more conferences or combine some. Whit Diffie suggested the addition of a "Southern Hemi-Crypt". Niels Ferguson suggested changing the emphasis of the conferences. McCurley replied that the three "premier" IACR conferences are intended to be general in nature. Rich Schroeppel suggested that giving up printed conference proceedings would allow submission deadlines to be delayed. Members generally expressed a preference for having proceedings available at the conference. Dan Simon asked why this was an issue asserting that it doesn't matter if the quality of the conferences are not in parity. Rich Schroeppel asked about submission counts and was told that there had been 150 submissions to Eurocrypt 2000 and 120 submissions to Crypto 2000. Tal Rabin asked about making the submission deadline for Eurocrypt artificially early. Yvo Desmedt responded that this would impose risks on authors. Niels Ferguson said that Eurocrypt used to be considered a bit weaker than Crypto and asked why this mattered. Phil Rogaway asked that a poll be taken of the membership on the suggestion of requiring at least four months between submission deadlines. A rough count of the membership in attendance showed that about 12 supported the proposal, about 50 opposed it, and about 40 did not care. Stuart Haber suggested simply moving Eurocrypt earlier in the year. Yvo Desmedt agreed. Greg Rose said that he thought adequate time for revision and resubmission were important. ________________________________________________________________________ A member then asked about the possibility of on-line proceedings. Feigenbaum said that she would like an electronically published Journal but that the change is happening slowly. She added her view that the IACR should not take on the publisher's role. McCurley referred members to Andrew Odlyzko's home page for a report from the American Physical Society. He said that IACR's ownership of copyrights was now clear and that we can do whatever we, as an organization, want. He observed, however, that there were complaints that tenure hearings often give favor to paper publications. A member asked if we could not just post the proceedings on the web. McCurley suggested that this would likely cause Springer-Verlag to bail. McCurley then asked how many people were unhappy with Springer-Verlag. Feigenbaum then asked who we would get instead. Hilarie Orman then asked if we could renegotiate with Springer-Verlag. McCurley responded that we had already done so. Niels Ferguson and Jacques Stern both observed that authors can just post papers on their own web sites. McCurley offered that this is why the IACR now owns the copyrights and that the IACR has no policy on what authors do with their own papers. Whit Diffie asked if Springer-Verlag could give IACR members electronic access to IACR publications. McCurley responded that Springer-Verlag did not want to maintain and enforce a membership database. A member asked about IACR running a proxy server. McCurley responded that the IACR community was too paranoid to do this. Greg Rose observed that the IACR may not want to provide on-line authentication services. Rich Schroeppel suggested that the IACR could encourage authors to place papers on the IACR e-print server. McCurley responded that authors are free to do whatever they want with their papers. Nigel Smart asked how many members were happy with the status quo, and most members present responded that they were. Rich Schroeppel indicated that he wanted coffee. ________________________________________________________________________ Crypto 2000 Program Chair Bellare then presented information on the conference. Bellare said that web submissions were allowed and no hardcopy submissions were received. He said that there had been 120 submissions of which 32 were accepted (for a 26% acceptance rate). He observed that Crypto '99 had received 169 submissions and that Eurocrypt had received fewer. Bellare said that most submissions were in Postscript format but that there are many varieties of Postscript and that some had worked better than others. He added that a few submissions had been in Microsoft Word or other formats and that the Word format had been a problem. He then gave his thanks to the many people who helped him with the program. McCurley and the audience gave their thanks to Bellare for his work as Program Chair and to Franklin as the General Chair. Plaques were given to both. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then thanked the membership and encouraged them to volunteer. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley moved the Business Meeting be adjourned, Van Oorschot seconded the motion, and the meeting adjourned at 17:48. ________________________________________________________________________ Respectfully submitted Josh Benaloh IACR Secretary
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