Membership meeting

President Michel Abdalla opens the meeting at 17:34, giving a brief overview of the IACR, its structure and missions.

Abdalla presents the IACR ePrint archive, and recalls that authors are strongly encouraged to submit their papers.

An attendee asks if publishing conference papers on eprint can be made mandatory. Abdalla responds that it actually is mandatory, but it is not automatic so some authors don't.

Abdalla presents the 2023 IACR fellows (Jung Hee Cheon, Stanisław Jarecki, Marc Joye, Jesper Buus Nielsen, Rafael Pass, Giuseppe Persiano, Reihaneh Safavi-Naini) and Test-Of-Time awards (Efficient Non-interactive Proof Systems for Bilinear Groups, by Jens Groth, Amit Sahai, and On the Indifferentiability of the Sponge Construction, by Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen, Michaël Peeters, Gilles Van Assche).

Treasurer Brian LaMacchia presents the financial report. The IACR continues to have a robust finantial position. Eurocrypt 2023 hits record registration number of all IACR events. FSE 2023 sets a record for FSE. RWC 2023 almost hit RWC record but was stopped by venue capacity.

LaMacchia recommends to keep the current membership fees (50 USD full and 25 USD student).

Membership Secretary Bertram Poettering reports on the IACR membership: its cost, benefits, and various statistics. There has been a general increase in the number of members and conference attendence.

Abdalla presents online services, and upcoming events. Eurocrypt 2023 was organised on shorter notice than usual, Abdalla thanks the organisers for making it happen. Eurocrypt, Crypto and Asiacrypt will happen in:
- 2024 in Zurich, Santa Barbara, and Kolkata, 
- 2025 probably in Madrid, Santa Barbara, and Melbourne.
There was an experiment with FSE this year: 2 locations at the same time (Beijing and Kobe). 
PKC 2023 will happen in Atlanta, CHES 2023 in Prague, and TCC 2023 in Taipei.

Abdalla presents recent topics on which the board of directors has worked: the new eprint website, the new journal, strategic planning, co-sponsorship of the RSA conference Excellence in Mathematics Award.

Abdalla presents topics that has juste been discussed in the strategic meeting: publication system, scaling (how to better handle growth ? triple tracks has an impact on cost), and staying with or moving away from Springer.

Joppe Bos reports on the new journal IACR Communications in Cryptography. Joppe W. Bos and Andreas Hülsing are co-Editor-in-Chief.
Bos sketched the next steps: they hope to be ready for a first submission deadline within one year. A lot of work is being done (Bos and McCurley) on the publishing workflow (LaTeX, metadata...). Bos calls for members to reach him and Andreas for feedback

Abdalla opens the open discussion. An attendee asks about hybrid presentations at conferences (Eurocrypt required in-person presentation this year). This subject was touched during the board meeting. Abdalla thinks virtual talks are fine; it becomes an issue to deal with if there are too many. Changing the publication model is a possible direction to deal with the issue (decorrelating publication and presentations).

A question is asked about dropping Springer and the fact that papers before 2013 may become unavailable. Abdalla encourages again authors to put their papers on eprint, even older papers.

Abdalla polls the audience on the cost of having a third track: with an additional 65K to 70K€, registration could reach 1000 USD. Who would still come? a few hands are raised. Who would not come? many hands are raised. An attendeed asks if shorter talks could be a solution. Abdalla answers that it is a possibility. An attendee says that it is good for the community if conferences are as affordable as possible, to have diversity in the audience. Abdalla responds that indeed, while the increase in prices is shocking even for researchers from rich institutions, it is even worse for, e.g., the Global south. LaMacchia lists some of the levers we have: shortening talks, or lowering the acceptance rate, but these don't sound good. More sponsors? LaMacchia calls for more ideas.

An attendee suggests to increase the fees and increase the number of stipends. LaMacchia notes that general chairs already budget for stipends to support students (registration, hotel, travel); we could push it further but that may actually stop some senior people from coming. An attendee asks what is the most expensive, and LaMacchia answers: catering. Unfortunetely, with the large venues required to host such large audiences and triple tracks, we are not allowed to reduce catering below some threshold. 

Abdalla closes the meeting at 18:38.