Membership meeting - CRYPTO 2018 Thursday August 23, 2018 (Supporting slides are available on the IACR website.) President Christian Cachin opened the meeting at 16h35, giving a brief overview of the IACR, its conference/workshops, etc. He reminded the membership that three of the directors have terms expiring this year, and encourages members to run for office. The President explains that the annual IACR Distinguished Lecture is awarded by the IACR to people who have made important contributions to cryptology research. The lecture alternates from Eurocrypt to Crypto to Asiacrypt. Currently, the IACR Distinguished Lecture is awarded to Mitsuru Matsui (2018, Asiacrypt), Cynthia Dwork (2019, Eurocrypt), and Silvio Micali (2020, Crypto). Treasurer Brian LaMacchia gave a report summarizing the IACR's finances. He highlighted the fact that the IACR has a robust financial position. With just under one year of transactions via Stripe we have saved over USD 40,000 in credit card processing fees. The Treasurer shows the conference attendance by year: this clearly shows two spikes for RWC 2018 (first time as part of the IACR) and Crypto 2018 (new attendance record). The treasurer did recommend to not change the current IACR membership fee. Handschuh highlights that all board members are volunteers. Cachin thanked LaMacchia for his continued hard work. Membership Secretary Douglas Stebila gave a report and showed that membership has slightly increased from last year. He highlighted that due to the Real World Crypto Symposium held earlier this year we have seen a significant number of new IACR members who were never a member before: 373. He expects an increase in our members next year and it likely to exceed 2000 members for 2019. The membership Secretary explains we can expect an updated and improved membership website soon. Cachin thanked Stebila for his continued hard work. Cachin continued by giving an overview of the online services offered by the IACR, the cryptography research fund for students, and video recordings of presentations. Cachin discussed the current topics and started with explaining the established uniform Conflict-of-Interest policy. Next he explained the new Test-of-time Awards for Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt but he noted that the details still are being worked out. Moreover, there is a new code of conduct for all IACR events and a task force on diversity has been created. Volunteers are needed and the members are encouraged to contact Tal Rabin and Douglas Stebila if they are interested. The Ethics committee received three cases: one case of harassment at a recent conference, a plagiarism case, and a case of harassment of young B by more senior A. The President observes that it becomes harder to attend IACR venues due to more resetrictive visa policies of the United States. The President asks the members for feedback. Various members thanks the President for bringing this topic to the attention and share some stories. Some students are essentially banned (cannot apply for a visa) while in other cases visas are not ready in time. Also members with a dual citizenship have experienced long delays. Rabin suggests that technology can help in upcoming events: maybe we should rephrase the CFP and remove the condition that at least one of the authors needs to be present at the conference. The Presidents reminds the members the IACR statement related to this (cf. https://www.iacr.org/misc/us-immigration-ban.html). McCurley explains that this issue has existed for a long time but has gotten worse lately. Maybe we should make it clearer how to apply (timely) for a visa? We should also take these travel restrictions into account when organizing other conferences. Handschuh points out this also works the other way around for USA students. The Presidents highlights that there is no perfect solution but that the Board is looking into this. The Presidents thanks for the lively and interesting discussion. The next topic on the agenda is the Program co-chair model. Until 2009 this was a single chair after which this was changed to a rolling co-chair model: this means two co-chairs per year with one new co-chair every year (such that a co-chair serves for two years). The Board has discussed the possibility to change to a parallel co-chair model: two co-chairs which both change every year. The President recalls that the motivation to switch to the rolling co-chair model was continuity and asks the members for feedback. McCurley mentions that the main reason for switching to the parallel model is that two co-chairs receive this honor per year instead of one person. However, there is a problem how to resolve ties with two equal parallel chairs. Haber supports the rolling model where one chair works with someone who is more experienced. Rabin is strongly in favor of the parallel model and thinks that a disagreement between the two co-chairs is rare. Being asked as a co-chair is often considered a reward and we have a lot of talented cryptographers in our community. The question is raised if an honorary chair could be used who you can ask for advice? Maybe we could also remove the publication restrictions for the co-chair(s). The President explains that this is exactly the situation we had in the past and it wasn't always effective. It is pointed out that both TCC and CHES use the parallel model with success. Benaloh explains that the main reason for the current model is continuity. Other members agree that the current model was a very positive experience but was hard to do it twice. Rabin asked for an informal show of hands among the members who is in favor for which approach; this is seconded by Yung. Around 15~20 hands are raised for the current rolling co-chair model while around 25~30 hands are raised for the parallel co-chair model. The President thanks the members for the input and will follow up on this topic. The floor was opened for discussion: Vaudenay thanked the organizers of this Crypto for their excellent work and especially the quality of the food. The meeting was closed at 17h30.