Passed: unanimously, subject to corrections in item 10 in the temporal terms and the match between persons and offices.
I. Report from National The national was pretty quiet over the summer, so there isn't that much to report. 1. The next national board meeting will be held October 21-22 in the Rocky Mountain meeting at Metropolitan State College of Denver. 2. Ernie Ferguson is now the chair of the National Vendor Program. 3. The CCSC Website has moved (because of hackers), but the URL is the same. 4. Susan Dean is now CCSC President-elect. 5. There has been much discussion at National about how the national vendor program should be run. I have put this issue on the agenda for further discussion. II. Future Conferences 1. 2007 Conference at R.I.T. The 2007 CCSCNE conference will be held April 20-21, 2007 at R.I.T. Paul Tymann will give a short report on the facilities at R.I.T. 2. Future Conferences Several colleges have shown interest in hosting future meetings. Here is a table of these possible hosts and contact persons. POSSIBLE HOST CONTACT Pace University Narayan Murthy Ramapo College Whoever Salem State College Edward Wilkens Wagner College Adrian Ionescu Williams College Jim Teresco I would like some guidance as to which to select and in what order. Publicity for CCSCNE Year X March Year X-1: Prepare cfp. It is best to have the deadline for paper submission one week after SIGCSE notification deadline. You can get this information from SIGCSE conference chairs. For SIGCSE 2006, the notification deadline is Nov 7, 2005. April Year X-1:Distribute cfp at the CCSCNE X-1 conference. End of April Year X-1: One week after the X-1 conference and before everyone leaves for the summer, send an email to the CCSC list and SIGCSE list with a copy of the cfp. July year X-1: Sometime in July send an email with cfp to CCSC and SIGCSE lists. September year X-1: Immediately after SIGCSE paper submission deadline (usually the first week of September, for SIGCSE 2006 conference it is September 9, 2005) another call for paper should be sent to the CCSC and SIGCSE mailing lists. November Year X-1: Immediately after SIGCSE’Äôs notification date (For SIGCSE 2006 it is Nov 7, 2005) a call for papers should go to the CCSC and SIGCSE mailing lists. February Year X: Around Mid Feb, a call for participation announcing the Preliminary program should be mailed to the CCSC and SIGCSE lists. At this time all registration forms should be available on the conference web site. The preliminary program should be ready by this time. End of February/Early March Year X: The program should be available for distribution at SIGCSE. At least some sort of call for participation should be distributed at SIGCSE highlighting some events and talks, if the program isn't ready. April Year X: Two weeks before the early registration deadline, an email should go to the CCSC and SIGCSE lists alerting all of the early registration deadline and the cutoff date for the hotel.
Re future hosts: it was agreed that of the five possible future hosts mentioned above, the top candidate is Williams College.
Karl, any progress with this? Just as a reminder for everyone, Ingrid had looked into the system used by FLAIRS and passed contact information to Karl.Karl reported that each reviewer will get their own password protected directory.
Actual Expenses Conference Bookkeeping 2005 -Providence College as of September 1, 2005 Number Per Item BUDGETED ACTUAL INCOME Registrations-Full 130 $120 $15,600 13080 109 LATE 1950 13 *4 Registrations-Student 120 $40 4,800 5440 136 Registration-Prog Contest 30 $50 1,500 1600 32 Extra Meals 5 $30 150 270 9 banquets 45 3 lunches ($15 each) *8 Extra Proceedings 5 $10 50 250 25 National Vendor 2 $100 200 100 IBM *1 Vendor's Registration 6 $200 1,200 1000 5 vendors Vendor Presentations 2 $100 200 100 Microsoft *2 Vendor Contributions for breaks/social 500 500 Microsoft *3 Vendor Best Paper Sponsorship 300 0 *3 Vendor Student Poster Sponsorship 150 0 *7 Programming contest sponsorship 600 0 Host College Contribution 1,000 no money transfers hands for this Microsoft Donation in April 2003 2,000 Profits from 2003 conference 8,000 TOTAL $36,250 24335 EXPENSES *11 Consortium Head Tax 130 $41 5,330 5002 121 regular attendees Consortium Membership 1,000 1000 *10 Steering Com. Ex. $2,920 1738.56 Postage $0.00 0 handled locally Office Supplies $0.00 0 handled locally Duplication $250.00 0 handled locally *5 Speakers Expenses 2 $450 900 600 honoraria only Meals - *1 Breaks 3 $600 1,800 7986.15 (all food lumped into one bill) Banquet 250 $25 6,250 - Luncheon 190 $15 2,850 - *2 Social Hour 1 $1,000 1,000 - Prog contest breakfast 1 $400 400 - Prog contest luncheon 1 $400 400 - *3 Best Paper Awards 1 $300 300 300 *3 Best Posters Awards 3 $50 150 150 Student Volunteer Awards 5 $40 200 0 *7 Programming Contest Awards 615 615 *6 Conference Hosting Expenses $400.00 0 all handled locally *12 Gratuities $100.00 100 for Lynne Demasi Web site expenses $100.00 80 10th year gifts 300 $27 $8,100.00 8045.05 TOTAL $ 33,065 25616.76
1. My major task has been to set up and test the mailing list of all CCSC members who've asked to receive CCSCNE mailings. The list that I extracted from the CCSC database had 708 names, 55 without email. I filled in half of the omissions, corrected obvious typos, and tested 685 addresses. About 15% of the mail bounced, and I was able to look up and correct about half of the failures. So far 15 people have asked to be taken off the list (one said she'd retired 10 years ago and had tried before to have her name removed). Of the others, 24 have no email addresses and another 44 addresses are still bad. There are 626 presumably good addresses, and I'll send out a conference announcement shortly. 2. With a lot of help from Larry, who did at least half the work, I have lists of 480 computing department chairs at two- and four-year colleges in New England, NY, NJ, and PA. I haven't tested them, and expect a number of failures when I do, since surely some of the web pages from which we got names are out of date. Particularly in the two-year colleges, it was sometimes hard to identify a department chair, and we resorted to picking a random faculty member or a dean. Unfortunately, maintaining these lists will be almost as much work as creating them, since we're not likely to get many updates from departments that change chairs. Next time, I'll encourage more volunteers to help with the states. It would be nice if each department would have a "cs-chair" email alias, but I don't expect that to become widespread. 3. With Karl's help, we'll set up major-demo lists at the CCSCNE site. I propose to have one membership list and two others for chairs of two- and four-year colleges. The latter will be broken down into sublists by state for (relative) ease of maintenance. I think it is appropriate to restrict access to these lists in two ways. Although the chairs list was compiled from publicly available information, the membership list was not, and we should therefore not allow people, even list members, to obtain a list of all the addresses. In both cases, we need to avoid proliferating unwanted email, which by being annoying to the recipient, would potentially undermine the utility of the lists. I propose that only a few people be able to send to these lists: the president, the membership chair, and the annual conference chair or chairs. This restriction could be implemented either by having an annual short list of senders, or just by routing all the messages (not many) through me. 4. Once the membership list appears stable, I'll send my corrections and updates to Brent Wilson at the national office. For the moment, therefore, I think it best that all "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" messages go through me. In the long run, I'd be happy to open them up to allow people to join or leave ad lib. 5. (In case we get as far as #16 in the agenda) I think that we should definitely not use the membership list for a mailing about the ACM programming contest. It might be appropriate to send it to the dept. chair list, since chairs may be expected at least to consider contest participation. I'd be happier, though, if the ACM or SIGCSE would maintain its own lists of department chairs.
There had been some confusion as to the election date for the Treasurer position. It turns out that we should have elected a Treasurer at the last meeting. We must then have an election at this meeting, with the term to run until April 2008.Motion (VP/FF): That Amruth Kumar be elected Treasurer for the term April 2005 -- April 2008.
It was noted that email to the treasurer should go to both Scott and Amruth for "a while".
We held an email vote about the plaque issue. I realize that there was some dissent as to whether such votes should take place. I feel that it is in our best interest to have the flexibility to have an email vote on a pressing issue. We should decide if we want to allow such votes in the future and if so, what the procedure should be.Motion (VP/FF): That we use the new rules for email voting adopted by National.
Motion (FF/DH): That CCSCNE change to the SIGCSE formats so as to agree with National's guidelines.I have tried to contact John Meinke about this issue, without success. But to summarize the issue. John Meinke has provided manuscript guidelines for all CCSC regions. The CCSCNE board took issue with these guidelines in two respects. First, the suggested page limit of six pages is much shorter than our current page limit of 12 pages. Second, there are no instructions as to font size and margins in John's guidelines. A question that was raised is how the CCSC guidelines compare to SIGCSE. SIGCSE guidelines are 5 pages, single spaced, 9 pt font size (I'm only considering the body of the paper), page margins at 0.75". CCSCNE guidelines are 12 pages, single-spaced, 12 pt font, 1.35" margins. If you look at the corresponding ratios then 12/9 x 1.35/0.75 x 5 = 12. So that 5 pages with the SIGCSE font size and margins equals 12 pages under CCSCNE formatting (more or less, there are issues with figures that affect this calculation). In other words, our current guidelines are basically the same as those for SIGCSE. Since the current CCSC guidelines are too vague too implement (unless I receive a clarification from John), I see two possibilities (other suggestions are welcome): (1)Keep the current formatting rules (2)Change to SIGCSE rules. That way we would basically keep the same length for articles, and also conform to the current (vague) CCSC rules. This proposal came from Mike Gousie.
It was informally agreed that authors are to be reminded that they cannot exceed our 12 page limit. There was much discussion on page length and on whether there should be a uniform appearance of the Journal from the various regions. Larry was asked to take up this matter with National. For the present, NE will continue with the 12 page limit.
I was tasked to ask National about the issue of bonding and insurance. I will look into this at the October CCSC board meeting.There was a general discussion of financial matters. No positions were adopted, either formally or informally.
I wanted to look into ways of improving the conference, including who was supposed to be doing what and when they should be doing it. Amruth did a good job of this, thank you Amruth. This is on our Webpage, so all officers and committee members should take a look at this. Furthermore, Ingrid came up with a timeline for publicity, thank you Ingrid. I think this is very important to pay attention to as we try to increase the number of faculty presenting and participating at our conference. I have included Ingrid’Äôs report at the end of this document. I would like to discuss who should be doing these various publicity tasks.
The national board has agreed in principle to placing ads for CCSC and the regional conferences in journals such as CACM and inroads. The consensus seems to be for placing half-page ads. One idea is to place the ads twice a year in CACM (one for Fall conferences and one for Spring conferences). The cost of a half-page ad in CACM is $3860, so its not cheap. Are there any suggestions as to the content of the ads?
Paul Tymann made a request to send out an announcement about the ACM programming contest to our list. This request seems to fall within our mission (in my opinion). But I realize that we must be very careful in using our list for announcements. I would like to discuss this issue both from the point of view of the specific request and more generally.
The following remarks were made and were informally agreed to:This topic may have been discussed at the conference meeting or in David Hemmendinger's report. We now have a database of CS chairs at the large majority of the two and four year colleges in the following states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Thanks David! The question is, how should we use this database to publicize our conference? Namely, what should we send these chairs and when?
It was agreed that Larry would make sure that National understands that we in the NE do not wish to be short-changed by any national vendor program as we have been in the past.The following proposal was discussed but never brought to vote at National. It will probably be discussed at future national board meetings and this issue is important. So I wanted to see what the feelings of our board were on the national vendor program. What the program provides: To vendors National vendors pay a fee of $2700 for a "1 conference rotation" membership (could be little more or less than a year, depending on conference dates; i.e., they get to attend every conference once). This membership will provide them with: *Invitations to participate gratis in any of the 9 regional conferences during their conference rotation. The National Vendor Chair (NVC) will extend invitations including all requisite information (vendors need not spend time surfing our site to learn dates and regional details), and requesting an RSVP. This participation will include usual vendor table display and access to all sessions. *A national vendor participating in a regional conference will have priority access to: 1) preferred display areas, 2) technology resources, 3) invitations to sponsor (or other vendor participation in) special conference events (Note: amongst national vendors, access will be first-come, first served according to RSVP date) *Acknowledgment of national sponsorship: - on placards at all regional conferences, - in all CCSC Journal publications. - on the CCSC web site, - in all national CCSC advertising, including but not limited to 2 half page ads in the "Communications of the ACM" To regions *Each region which hosts a national vendor will be credited the usual vendor rate (so that this can contribute to the "surplus" that Bill said regions can draw upon). *Regions will also benefit from the two ads in the Communications of the ACM, timed to just precede and to advertise the fall and spring conferences. *Any surplus of funds from the national vendor program after ads and regional vendor fees are paid shall be credited equally amongst the regions (again, to potentially count toward the surplus that regions can draw against) Oversight of program: There needs to be a National Vendor Chair with the following responsibilities: - recruit additional national vendors - extend invitations to the national vendors to participate in each conference - educate regional conference vendor chairs vis a vis national vendor program, and coordinate efforts; make sure that regional vendor chairs "take care" of national vendors who attend, especially acknowledgment with highly visible placard or banner and acknowledgment in printed program - facilitate coordination between regional vendor contacts and national vendor contacts Cost of program: Assuming: - correctness of ad price @ $2700 and that exactly 2 ads are placed - every national vendor attends all 9 regions conferences - each region is charging $200 per vendor registration then the program needs 6 vendors to be self -sustaining. This seems to be a reasonable objective, although a year or two of running at a loss should be expected. 19. Other vendor issues This is something that should be relatively easy to do. The CCSCNE Web page needs to have more information for vendors. First of all, I think that national vendors should be mentioned on our home page (and probably the conference home page too), together with a link to that vendor's web site. Secondly, there should be a Web page for vendors (just as there are for authors and presenters). This Web page should describe the opportunities and benefits for vendors and the procedure for signing up as a vendor. It should not recruit vendors to become national vendors.
As regards mentioning National vendors on our NE web page, it was agreed that we should ask National to maintain a page for such vendors and that out NE page should merely link to it.This is something that should be relatively easy to do. The CCSCNE Web page needs to have more information for vendors. First of all, I think that national vendors should be mentioned on our home page (and probably the conference home page too), together with a link to that vendor's web site. Secondly, there should be a Web page for vendors (just as there are for authors and presenters). This Web page should describe the opportunities and benefits for vendors and the procedure for signing up as a vendor. It should not recruit vendors to become national vendors.
There was much discussion of these matters. Some suggestions for NE were:I checked out what different kinds of events are done at other meetings. Here is a summary of what I found:
Web Design Contest (Southeastern) Student papers (South Central) Cool Assignments (Rocky Mountain) Nifty Assignments (Central Plains) Birds of a Feather (Northwestern)
Research papers.
Birds-of-a-feather sessions.
Dinner versions of birds-of-a-feather sessions, whereby some (but not all) of the dinner tables have as assigned topic allowing attendees to select the table at which a topic they are in is to be discussed. There would be be some tables for which no topic would be assigned.
Plenary speakers might be asked, by the Speakers' Chair, if they would lead one table of the dinner version of birds-of-a-feather sessions.
It was agreed that the third suggestion would be implemented for 2006 and that there would be four such tables. Karl volunteered to create an email alias bof@ccscne.org.
Motion (DH/IR): That the CCSCNE Board will not met in future
during
January, the January
meeting being devoted to
the conference alone.
Withdrawn
It was informally agreed that this matter would be placed on the agenda for the upcoming January meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard Wyatt