Board Meeting -- Minutes

Siena College, Latham NY, September 8, 2012

Attendees

Lawrence D'Antonio (LD) (Chair)
Lonnie Fairchild (LF)
Frank Ford (FF)
Michael Gousie (MG)
Nadine Hanebutle (NH) (non-voting guest)
David Hemmendinger (DH)
Mark Hoffman (MH) (non-voting guest)
Stoney Jackson (SJ)
Darren Lim (DA) (non-voting guest)
Jim Teresco (JT)
Paul Tymann (PT)
Richard Wyatt (RW)

I. Previous Meetings

1. Minutes

MOTION (no proposer/seconder): To accept the minutes of the April meeting.
Passed: unanimously.

II. Reports

2. Chair's Report: Larry D'Antonio

I. Report from National

1. The next national board meeting will be held October 12-13 at Metropolitan State College in Denver.

2. Laura Baker is the new President of CCSC. The outgoing President, Bob Neufeld, has taken on the role of Membership Chair. 


II. Future Conferences

1. 2014 Conference

CCSCNE 2014 will hopefully be held at Providence College. The dates are to
be determined. Frank Ford would be a conference chair.

2. 2015 Conference

CCSCNE 2015 (our 20th anniversary meeting) will hopefully be held at Holy
Cross College. Laurie Smith King would be a conference chair.

Remarks from the meeting on, or made at the time of the discussion of, the Chair's Report

Bill Myers is to shortly retire and will no longer be National Treasurer. He is expected to retire in two to four years.
The proposed venue for CCSCNE-2014, Providence College, is deemed "probable".
The proposed venue for CCSCNE-2015, Holly Cross, is deemed "definite".
The National data base is still not functioning adequately.

3. Membership Chair's Report: Paul Tymann

The report is intermingled with remarks made at the time of the discussion of the report

The mail host is fragile, especially with aliases. It becomes problematic if there are over 100 recipients per hour. Paul asked whether our email needs to come from a CCSC domain, and the consensus was that it did not. Paul suggested moving the host to RIT, keeping our name and so using something like CCSC-RIT.
The possibility was raised of using Google for mail. It was noted, however, that it is not free, and that in any case action would be needed by National to introduce it.
It was recommended that we try to keep the "NE" as part of the domain name, and not use merely CCSC.
The question of removing people from our email list was raised. After some discussion, the consensus appeared to be that we do not need to be overly concerned with the issue at this point.

4. Webmaster's Report: Stoney Jackson

NEW SITE AT http://ccscne.org/ 
    -Based on WordPress
    -"Responsive" theme (try it on your cells and tablets!)
    -Nightly, off-site backups
    -Chairs can edit their pages
        Username is your chairs email
            Ex: papers@ccscne.org
        Chairs share account
        Login/reset password at http://ccscne.org/wp-admin/ 
        Create and edit pages.
        Set parent to properly place in menu.
        Create posts to draw attention to new content.
    -Until email alias issues resolved, send changes to stoney.jackson@wne.edu 
        Please check content of pages on new site.

OLD SITE AT http://old.ccscne.org/ 
    -Contains past conference sites
    -Still used for submission system (check URLs in emails and pages!!)
    -We will use the old submission system this year.

WIKI AT http://wiki.ccscne.org/ 
    -Collaborative changes to documentation for committee members.
    -Access Control Policy
        Current (getting spam):
        Anyone can read
            Anyone can edit
            Anyone can create an account
        Planned:
            Anyone can read (should this be only authenticated users?)
            Users with confirmed email accounts can edit
            Anyone who can pass a captcha test can create an account.
    -Currently not regularly backed up. TODO

NEW SUBMISSION SYSTEM
    -Done
        Basic account management working
            Self creation of account with email verification
            Change password and password reset
            User profiles with update capability
            Login/logout
        Core database design
            Conferences, Categories, Authors, Reviewers, Submissions, Files, Keywords, Reviewer Preferences
    -By January
        Submission of works
        Download of submissions
        Posting reviews
        Download of reviews
    -By April
        Status views for reviewers, chairs, authors, and editors
        Accept/reject work
        Reviewer signup
        Reviewer assignment by chairs
        Release of reviews to authors
    -By September (Basic, usable submission system)
        Creation of conference and categories
        Assigning users to roles and basic enforcement of roles
        Closing of submissions
        Submission of camera ready copies
    -Beyond September
        Automated email notifications to reviewers (notice of assignment, reminders)
        Deadline management and enforcement
        Integrated messaging via email between chairs and authors, and chairs and reviewers
        Reviewer preferences
        Reviewer assignment assistance
        Customizable review forms
        Automatic tabulation of reviews

Remarks from the meeting on, or made at the time of the discussion of, the Webmaster's Report

The question was raised: do we want a presence on Facebook or twitter? There are some advantages to having such a presence: for example, if someone cancels their paper at the last minute we can all be notified immediately.
Stoney said he will set up an account for us on twitter.
RE: ConfTool -- Mark reported as follows:
- ConfTool is good for about 95% of our registrations.
- There are, however, some issues with respect to PayPal.
- But, overall, ConfTool is "very good". Larry seconded the view and remarked that it was a big step forward, and that we might even consider adopting the professional version.

III. Old Business

5. CCSCNE web site

The CCSCNE web site has been updated, and Stoney Jackson is going to
report on the changes. Please look at the new web site (same old
address http://ccscne.org/).

[Sec: see item 4.]

6. 2012 Final Financial Report

I have appended the final accounting for the 2012 meeting. As you can see,
for the third year in a row we made a significant profit.

There was minimal discussion of the 2012 accounting. Larry reported that there was no "head tax" on the expense side, and that therefore there is no need to raise registration fees for 2013. The Saturday lunch will remain as it was last year; namely, that it will not be supplied by the conference.

IV. New Business

7. Email Lists

Paul Tymann has reported that there are problems with the conference and
board email lists hosted by Dreamhost. Mail has been bouncing with some
frequency (and in an inconsistent way).  Paul has suggested the possibility
of RIT hosting the lists.

[Sec: see item 3.]

8. Undergraduate Posters


A committee on undergraduate poster judging (Jim Teresco, Stoney Jackson, Lonnie Fairchild) has
submitted a report together with a proposal. I have appended their report at the end of the agenda.

The committee also made suggestions for the structure of the undergraduate student poster abstract:

Draft Guidelines for abstract body: 

1. Brief description of what the project is about and what you did. 
[This should come at the beginning.] 

2. Context/background needed to understand (1).  [This relates your work 
to other work in computer science, or to a larger research project of 
which it is a part. You may note your motivation for tackling this 
problem and its importance.] 

3. Methods.  [Give just enough detail to clarify what is not routine. 
e.g. Describe methods for data collection and analysis, or how you 
handled computationally difficult problems, but not ordinary coding 
techniques.] 

4. Results obtained and their significance.  [You may also compare these 
with the results of others who have worked in this area.] 

5. Optional references.

[Sec: for the report, see the Appendix.]

There was some discussion of the report:

We might consider limiting the number of undergraduate posters.
The finalists should represented about 20%-25% of the total.
Precise wording is needed for our web page.

However, the overriding consensus was that we should try the committee's suggestions and see how it works out.

MOTION: To accept report by the Committee on Undergraduate Poster Judging.
Passed: unanimously.

8A. Guidelines for Abstracts

[Sec: This item was not on the agenda.]

The matter of providing guidelines for the submission of poster abstracts was raised. Larry noted that as this is a mere implementation detail it can safely be left to the Program Chairs.

8B. The Evaluations of Previous Conferences

[Sec: This item was not on the agenda.]

David ask if anyone knew what had happened to the evaluations of previous conferences. Larry reported that he has them.

8c. Saturday Lunch

[Sec: This item was not on the agenda.]

It was suggested that we reserve a room, perhaps the West Room, for the Saturday lunch.

8D. Speakers

[Sec: This item was not on the agenda.]

Michael suggested that our speakers should appeal more to students. It was further suggested that the Friday speaker's topic should not be on education. There was general agreement on the matters.

9. Motion to adjourn

MOTION (DH/RW): To adjourn.
Passed: by acclamation.

Respectfully submitted,
Richard Wyatt
(CCSCNE Secretary)

Appendix

CCSCNE: REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON UNDERGRADUATE POSTER JUDGING
Jim Teresco, Stoney Jackson, Lonnie Fairchild

Background considerations:
---------------------------
A. The judging process for student posters has become cumbersome for the undergraduate posters
committee and for the volunteer judges. In recent years it has been difficult to find enough
volunteer judges.

B. In order to encourage student research, the conference should try to find a way to display all
undergraduate poster submissions that meet our standards.

C. The processes and criteria used for making decisions at various levels should be available and
clear.

D. Our committee believes that a student whose project deserves an award should be able to describe
the project in a properly constructed abstract, as well as in the full poster.

Outline of the proposal:
-------------------------
1. We will change the name to indicate that there are two simultaneous but different events,
e.g. "Undergraduate Poster Display and Research Competition". On the basis of the submitted
abstracts, a small number of finalists will be invited to be included in the Research Competition.
We will make it clear that it is an honor to have a poster accepted for display, and that all
accepted abstracts will be published in the brochure.

2. The undergraduate poster chairs will classify submitted abstracts as one of the following:
a. Accepted for display at the conference, and also a finalist for the competition,
b. Accepted for display at the conference,
c. Not accepted.

3. Submitters will receive a single email notifying them of the status of their abstract.

4. If there is not room for all accepted posters to be displayed in the same space, some will be
displayed in a separate area and special care will be taken to insure that viewers are directed to
both display areas. All the posters in the competition will be located close enough together to be
convenient for the judges. Details on how this is handled will depend on the conference site.
[Note: Darren Lim has been helpful in arranging for this at Siena.]

5. At least for this year, judging will take place before the public display and judges will not
talk to students about their posters. [Note: Arranging for student discussions of their work to be
counted in a fair way, seemed too complicated to be handled now.] Judging criteria can include the
abstract and the poster.

6. The conference website will include:
-- Requirements and guidelines for abstracts,
-- Criteria used for judging the competition,
-- A description of the undergraduate poster display, the research competition, and submission
and notification procedures.
-- Any other guidance the undergraduate poster chairs wish to include about abstract and/or
poster preparation, selection as a finalist, information and forms for advisors, etc.

Why we expect this to help:
---------------------------
-- Judging at the conference will be restricted to a much smaller set of posters so only a small
number of judges will be required.
-- Since there is flexibility in where and how posters that are not in the competition can be
displayed, it should be possible to accept all worthy posters that are submitted on time.
-- In future years, after the materials described under [6] are developed, the work of the
undergraduate poster chairs should be simpler and more routine,

What remains to be done:
------------------------------
This proposal depends on the materials described under [6], especially on the guidelines for
abstracts. A first draft of the guidelines is attached for feedback. The undergraduate poster
chairs will continue to work with the webmaster to develop the remaining materials.