TCCC ExCom Conference Call Minutes

 

Conference Call Date: Wednesday; June 16, 2004

 

Attendees:

 

Douglas Comer, Purdue University (douglas.e.comer.1@purdue.edu)

Sajal K. Das, University of Texas at Arlington (das@roop.uta.edu)

Charles Perkins, Nokia Research (charliep@iprg.nokia.com)

Howard Salwen, Audeon Networks (salwen@rcn.com)

Joe Bumblis, UDLP (j.bumblis@ieee.org)

 

Unable to attend:

 

Sanjay Jha, University of New South Wales (sjha@cse.unsw.edu.au)

Gary Kessler, Champlain College (kumquat@sover.net)

Archan Misra, IBM Research (archan@us.ibm.com)

Ellis Nolley, Strategic Growth (e.nolley@ieee.org)

 

Next Conference Call:

 

Although we did not discuss whether or not we should have another conference call prior to our face-to-face meeting in Tampa, FL, I would like to propose one more conference call to settle on a November meeting agenda. Since our meeting is scheduled for Friday morning (November 19, 2004), I suggest we have a brief conference call discussion in the third or fourth week of September. As before, I would like to hold the call at 3:00 PM ET (2:00 PM CT). Please copy the following “Ballot”, select what days you believe will work best for you, and E-mail your “vote” to me. Please E-mail your “ballot” to me no later than August 12 to permit time to reserve the date/time for the conference call. Be sure to select ALL days you are available for a 3:00 PM ET (2:00 PM CT) conference call.

 

--------------------------------------------

| Ballot (Place a “X” next to the date for |

|         a 3:00 PM ET conference call):   |

|                                          |

| September 13 ___                         |

| September 14 ___                         |

| September 15 ___                         |

| September 16 ___                         |

| September 20 ___                         |

| September 21 ___                         |

| September 22 ___                         |

| September 23 ___                         |

-------------------------------------------|

 


Previous Action Items Not Completed:

 

Joe Bumblis: Draft TCCC Charter.

 

Ellis Nolley: Proposes that we survey the existing TCCC members to determine their background, position and interests, and use the IEEE Technical Interest  Profile (TIP) items under the Computer Society to gather their  interests.

 

All: Any IEEE organization can get Majordomo lists through the IEEE; see: http://eleccomm.ieee.org/maillist.shtml for details. Also see the IEEE E-Mail Policy at: http://eleccomm.ieee.org/email-policy.shtml  Should we establish a Majordomo list? If so, would someone please volunteer to complete this action item.

 

Web site info: IEEE organization can obtain and run a website now as long as they adhere to the “Terms & Conditions for Use of the IEEE Web Site” viewable at: http://www.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp?pageID=corp_level1&path=about/documentation/copyright&file=legal.xml&xsl=generic.xsl  . See http://ewh.ieee.org for  further details. IEEE privacy policy located at: http://www.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp?pageID=corp_level1&path=about/documentation/copyright&file=privacy.xml&xsl=generic.xsl

 

 

New Action Items:

 

All: E-mail your ballot to Joe Bumblis for our next conference call.

 

All: Send an E-mail to Joe Bumblis with an estimate of your travel expenses for the November 19, 2004 face-to-face meeting. Please include if you are planning on attending the LCN conference including days you plan to attend and conference functions. I need to make arrangements with the LCN Finance Chair regarding billing of LCN attendance by TCCC ExCom members. Travel expenses include airfare, hotel, taxi/car rental, and $25 per day food allowance. LCN conference costs covered by the TCCC include conference meals and a copy of the conference proceedings (please let me know if you wish to receive a copy).

 

Your E-mail should include:

 

1.      Your estimated travel expenses, and

2.      Your level of participation in the LCN conference.

 

Gary Kessler: Consider level of effort to create a TCCC web-based publication paged based on http://dsonline.computer.org  , http://www.ieeetfcc.org/edupromote.html , http://www.coe.uncc.edu/~abw/parallel/links.html or some derivation of these examples. We will need to discuss fees/honorarium to secure student help with this effort.

 

Joe Bumblis: Investigate “manuscript central” options for on-line publication review and processing.


Computer Society Technical Activities Board (TAB) Operations Committee (OpCom) meeting of June 11, 2004 in Long Beach, CA:

 

The following is a brief overview of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Activities Board (TAB) Operations Committee (OpCom) meeting held on June 11, 2004.

 

§         The TAB Executive Committee (ExCom) has completed their five year strategic plan. Copies will be distributed after final review. No date was given for distribution. One major point discussed during the OpCom meeting was a need for more cross-functional activities between Technical Committees (TC’s). The TCCC already collaborates with TCPC, TCI, and TCDP; as well as the IEEE Communications Society (ICOIN conference). This is viewed as very positive by the TAB ExCom.

 

§         The Task Force on Cluster Computing (TFCC) is promoting a book donation campaign to promote “Cluster Computing Education around the world. We are working on building a cluster computing education web site providing pointers to information.” Please see http://www.ieeetfcc.org/edupromote.html for details. Their “Technical Area Education” page can be viewed at http://www.coe.uncc.edu/~abw/parallel/links.html  Perhaps TCCC can offer something similar; a discussion point for our November meeting.

 

Note: the TFCC has a newsletter located at http://www.clustercomputing.org   It appears to be very well designed and informative. Please have a look; we may want to discuss improvements to the TCCC web page based on this model.

 

§         A major portion of the TAB OpCom meeting was consumed by discussions surrounding the proposed formation of a Technical Steering Committee (TSC). My impression is the TSC is being driven by the TAB OpCom Chair Yervant Zorian.  In essence, Yervant is proposing a top-level committee to encourage more cross-functional collaboration. As depicted in the drawing below, the TSC would become yet another level of bureaucracy needing a budget and some level of authority over a wide range of domains.

 

Most TC Chairs strongly oppose the formation of the TSC as currently defined. The majority feel they - and their technical committee members - will loose what little control they currently have in running conferences, setting direction and charters of their TC, and possibly forfeiting TC budgets ($) to fund the TSC. It is very unclear what service the TSC would offer TC’s and their membership. This discussion will continue at the next OpCom meeting currently scheduled for November 5, 2004.

 

§         There was some discussion on the merger of TFCC, TCDP, TCPP, and TCSA (please see http://www.computer.org/tab/tclist/index.htm for a details of these committees). It was “tabled” until the November TAB OpCom meeting to permit the different committees time to decide how the merger will occur and what the final merged committee will look like.

 

§         The other item that consumed quite a bit of the OpCom meeting was a proposal to authorize a new Technical Committee on Embedded Systems. I strongly opposed the creation of this new TC based on current embedded systems activities in the Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Computing (TCFT -http://www.computer.org/tab/tclist/tcftc.htm ), the Technical Committee on Microprocessors and Microcomputers (TCMCOMP - http://www.computer.org/tab/tclist/tcmcomp.htm ), and the Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems (TCRTS - http://www.computer.org/tab/tclist/tcrts.htm ). My recommendation to the person proposing the new TC was to investigate the activities of the three TC’s already involved with embedded systems, and determine if either a merger is possible, or if this new TC can actually differentiate itself from the other TC’s engaged in embedded systems. This will be discussed at the next TAB OpCom meeting in November.

 

§         The Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) uses an on-line web publication page located at http://dsonline.computer.org  I asked Gary Kessler to have a look at this web page to determine if the TCCC could offer its membership something like “dsonline.”  Gary is going to look into “hiring” a student to work on a design.

 

§         For those of you interested in software engineering, the Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE) offers a web service to search for information on software engineering. It is located at: http://www.tcse.org/new

 

 

TCCC Discussions Regarding On-Line (Web) Publication:

 

We had a very lively discussion regarding on-line (web-based) publishing including peer review process, autonomy, citations and privacy. My initial thoughts are to offer authors (corporate and academic) the opportunity to contribute to the TCCC through papers, news briefs, white papers, etc.  My thoughts are to start by simply adding a folder to our TCCC web index folder, insert PDF literature (papers, news briefs, white papers, etc.), and have a "Publications" link on the TCCC home page with publication titles and perhaps a short abstract.  During our conference call discussions, it appeared the TCCC committee members are most concerned about the peer review process, and a method for the authors to have a citable reference for their publication.

 

As mentioned in the TAB OpCom brief above, one option might be to use http://dsonline.computer.org which is currently focused exclusively on Pervasive Computing (TCPC).  We (the TCCC) jointly sponsor the Pervasive Computing Conference with TCPC.  Due to this collaboration, the TCPC committee has offered the TCCC use of the  http://dsonline.computer.org facilities.  I believe any licenses issues are free to the TCCC because of the joint conference sponsorship. Also, the co-sponsorship of Pervasive Computing Conference permits TCCC to use TCPC’s EDAS paper processing license. Please see http://edas.info for details.

 

Another suggestion made during the TCCC conference call was to use a “manuscript central” service for TCCC on-line publication reviews and processing. These services are available through ScholarOne ( http://www.scholarone.com/products_manuscriptcentral.html ), the ACM

( http://acm.manuscriptcentral.com/  ), and the IEEE Computer Society (http://cs-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com/  ). Joe Bumblis will investigate options regarding costs, availability, and ease of use.

 

Face-to-Face Meeting Discussions:

 

We briefly discussed the November 19, 2004 face-to-face meeting. Since we were running short on time, we need to finish our discussions and agree on an agenda for the meeting. Please be sure to E-mail your ‘next conference call ballot’ to me no later than August 12th.

 

Please send any questions, concerns, and/or changes/additions to the meeting minutes to Joe Bumblis at  j.bumblis@ieee.org

 

Thank you.

 

Joe Bumblis

Chair, TCCC