Minutes of the Membership Meeting at Crypto 2025
Thursday, August 21, 2025, 16:40, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Michel Abdalla, President of the IACR, opens the meeting with a brief overview of the IACR, its structure, and missions (see slides). Brian LaMacchia, Treasurer, presents the financial report (see slides). Michel Abdalla then reports on the IACR membership (see slides) and recent topics discussed by the Board of Directors (see slides).

The open discussion begins. Abdalla invites comments on potential changes to the publication and conference model and on the possibility of hosting Crypto outside Santa Barbara.

Kalai comments that remote talks are not a great experience for in-person participants. Instead of including them in the in-person program, Kalai suggests simply publishing them online so participants can watch them at their convenience.

Shamir points out an additional advantage of recorded talks available online: authors could be given flexibility in video length and could even create multiple videos (e.g., a 10-minute overview and a 30-minute in-depth presentation). Tools like automatic subtitling are also valuable.

Chevignard asks whether creating a fourth General Conference would help distribute the workload. Abdalla responds that adjusting the number of events has been discussed but does not currently appear to solve scaling issues. Some concerns include increased workload on volunteers and the time it might take (if ever) for a fourth event to be regarded as equivalent to the other flagship conferences.

Yung adds that while the survey is an opportunity to propose new ideas and conference models, the community must keep in mind that implementing these changes will present challenges of its own.

Blocki comments that the proposal to unify all three flagship conferences with a single publication pipeline might also ease travel issues by allowing people to choose where they present, thus mitigating visa challenges.

Kippen emphasizes that ongoing discussions on publications and conferences should prioritize students' needs.

Abdalla closes the meeting at 17:47.