Membership Meeting Eurocrypt 2004 Interlaken 5 May 2004 IACR President Clark convened the meeting at 16:53. He began by telling attendees that the purpose of the meeting was to inform members of issues of concern to the IACR. Clark then gave the agenda for the meeting which included the following items. - About I.A.C.R. - Your Board - Membership - 2004 Election - Financial Report - Conferences & Workshops - Journal of Cryptology & Newsletter - Springer-Verlag & Link - Current & New Actions - Online Registration and membership management - New CD - "In Co-Operation With" Status - F.I.A.C.R. - New Award - Open Discussion Clark then noted that the IACR is a non-profit organisation registered in the USA, and he described its purposes as "to advance the theory and practice of cryptology and related fields, and to promote the interests of its members with respect thereto, and to serve the public welfare." Clark then described the services delivered by the IACR to its members as follows. - Running the Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt conferences - Sponsoring the FSE, PKC, and CHES workshops - Publishing the Journal of Cryptology and the IACR Newsletter - Managing the Eprint Archive at http://eprint.iacr.org/ - Maintaining the association website at http://www.iacr.org Clark then described the IACR Board of Directors comprising - 4 elected Officers - 9 elected Directors - 6 appointed conference General Chairs - 3 appointed positions - Membership Secretary - Newsletter Editor - Journal of Cryptology Editor-in-Chief He then introduced the Board members by name. Clark then provided some "perspective" on the IACR. He noted that that the organization's financial turnover is approximately US$5000,000 per annum which is consistent with that of a small to medium sized business but that it has no employees. He said that instead the organization relies on volunteer labour and a paid Secretariat. Clark then noted that those who attended this conference would become members of the IACR for 2005 and that anyone who attended an IACR conference or workshop in 2003 was already an IACR member for 2004. Clark then noted that there are annual elections for members of the IACR Board of Directors and solicited interested members to join the Board. He said that all four directors positions and three at-large positions were up for election. He then introduced the election Committee consisting of Dawson, Quisquater, and Hughes. IACR Treasurer Langford then delivered a Financial Report. She said that Eurocrypt 2003 collected US$170,000 in income and $16,000 in membership dues but lost US$36,000 (including currency fluctuations). She said that Crypto 2003 collected US$323,000 in income and $25,000 in membership dues and returned a surplus of US$39,500. She said that Asiacrypt 2003 collected US$74,000 in income and $8,000 in membership dues but lost US$500. She then said that FSE 2003 returned a US$10,000 surplus and that FSE 2004 had suffered a US$900 loss that was being covered by the local committee, that PKC 2003 had broken even and that PKC 2004 had suffered a US$80 loss that was being covered by the local committee, and that financials for CHES were not yet applicable. Langford then showed a pie chart detailing IACR funds as of December 31, 2003. It indicated total assets of US$588,000 with a surplus of US$367,000 after taking into account outstanding expenses for 2003 and 2004. Langford then showed a bar chart of IACR conference attendance from 1981 through the present which varied from about 100 to about 500 attendees. Langford closed by stating that the IACR had weathered a downturn in conference attendance and had a "cash neutral" year despite low membership fee income and loss on Eurocrypt due to lower than planned attendance and higher prices than originally expected. She said that this had been done through flexible management of Crypto which produced a surplus to offset the Eurocrypt loss and reduction of some administrative costs such as moving to electronic rather than paper mailings. She added that continued prudence would be applied in planning and managing of IACR financial affairs. Questions of the Treasurer were then solicited, and none were offered. Clark then thanked Eurocrypt 2004 General and Program Chairs Camenisch and Cachin and gave then plaques of appreciation. Camenish then gave statistics on Eurocrypt 2004. He said that there had been 206 submissions of which 3 were withdrawn and 36 were ultimately accepted (a rate of 17.7%). He noted that 169 of the submissions were larger in Postscript format than in PDF format and that 15% of these were accepted while 27% of the 37 papers that were smaller in Postscript format than PDF format were accepted. He then correlated Postscript file size with acceptance rate and found a 26% acceptance rate for submissions between 100KB and 200KB, a 21% acceptance rate for submissions between 200KB and 300KB, a 19% acceptance rate for submissions between 300KB and 400KB, a 19% acceptance rate for submissions between 400KB and 500KB, a 44% acceptance rate for submissions between 500KB and 600KB, and no acceptances of papers larger than 600KB.He then correlated the number of characters in the title with acceptance rate. Next, he correlated time of first submission with acceptance rate and found a 41% acceptance rate for submissions first made within an hour of the deadline, a 17% acceptance rate for submissions first made between 1 and 2 hours before the deadline, an 18% acceptance rate for submissions first made between 2 and 4 hours before the deadline, a 9% acceptance rate for submissions first made between 4 and 8 hours before the deadline, a 16% acceptance rate for submissions first made between 8 and 24 hours before the deadline, and an acceptance rate of 18% for submissions first made between 1 and 2 days before the deadline. He then correlated the number of revisions with acceptance rate and found a 13% acceptance rate for submissions to which no revisions were made, a 30% acceptance rate for submissions to which one revision was made, a 14% acceptance rate for submissions to which 2 revisions were made, a 20% acceptance rate for submissions to which 3 revisions were made, a 75% acceptance rate for submissions to which 4 revisions were made, a 50% acceptance rate for submissions to which 5 revisions were made, and no acceptances for submissions to which more than 5 revisions were made. Finally, he correlated time of last revision with acceptance rate and found a 42% acceptance rate for submissions which were last revised after the deadline, a 36% acceptance rate for submissions which were last revised less than 1 hour before the deadline, an 8% acceptance rate for submissions which were last revised between 1 and 2 hours before the deadline, and a 23% acceptance rate for submissions which were last revises between 2 and 4 hours before the deadline. Clark then provided information about upcoming IACR conferences and workshops. Crypto 2004 would be held 15-18 August at UCSB in Santa Barbara with James Hughes as General Chair and Matt Franklin as Program Chair. Asiacrypt 2004 would be held 5-9 December on Jeju Island, Korea with Kwangjo Kim as General Chair and Pil Joong Lee as Program Chair. Eurocrypt 2005 would be held 22-26 May in Århus, Denmark with Ivan Damgård as General Chair and Ronald Cramer as Program Chair. Crypto 2005 would be held 14-17 August (tentatively) at UCSB in Santa Barbara with Stuart Haber as General Chair and Victor Shoup as Program Chair and would include the 2005 IACR Distinguished Lecture. Asiacrypt 2005 would be held 4-8 December at the Taj Coromandel Hotel in Chennai, India with C. Pandu Rangan as General Chair and Bimal Roy as Program Chair. Eurocrypt 2006 would be held in May or June of 2006 in St. Petersburg, Russia with Anatoly Lebedev as General Chair and Serge Vaudenay as Program Chair. CHES 2004 would be held 11-13 August in Cambridge ( Boston), USA. PKC 2005 would be held 23-26 January in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. FSE 2005 would be held 21-23 February in Paris, France. Clark then solicited proposals for 2007 conferences and referred potential organizers to htt://www.iacr.org or to Board members for details on how to submit a proposal. Clark then reported on the status of the Journal of Cryptology which he described as the pre-eminent journal in the field. He noted that roughly 75% of IACR membership fees are used to pay for the Journal and thanked Editor-in-Chief Ueli Maurer for his work, and encouraged authors to submit their best papers to the Journal. Clark then reported on the status of the IACR Newsletter which is electronically mailed to members thrice annually. He noted that the Newsletter is available at http://www.iacr.org/newsletter and includes a calendar of events in the field, job opportunities, publication announcements, and more, and he encouraged members to submit relevant announcements be sent to newsletter@iacr.org. Clark then spoke about the IACR relationship with Springer-Verlag. He noted that Springer-Verlag publishes the proceedings of IACR conferences and workshops in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science series and also publishes the Journal of Cryptology. Clark then said that both of the above are available to full subscribers to the Springer-Verlag "LINK" service at http://link.springer.de and that the Journal of Cryptology is available to all IACR members. Clark added that the IACR was in discussion with Springer-Verlag to allow all of its members to have access to the LINK library of IACR proceedings as well as the Journal of Cryptology. Brian Snow then asked from the audience if the CD of IACR proceedings given to conference attendees was searchable, and he was told that it was. IACR Board Member Kevin McCurley then reported on new information systems for the IACR. He described the goals of the information system as including the ability for IACR members to maintain their own membership data, the ability to register and pay for all IACR conferences and workshops online, support for online submission and review of papers, hosting of the IACR website and archive, and management of the mailing of the IACR Newsletter. McCurley said that introduction of these services would reduce costs of mailing and paper use. He also noted that the contract between the IACR and the UCSB for its Secretariat services would be up for renewal soon and that it was necessary to contain their costs by reducing their workload. McCurley noted that there had been a pilot of online registration conducted for Eurocrypt 2004 and that registration and credit card payments (MasterCard, Visa, and American Express) had been successfully processed for 8 attendees. McCurley added that the registration system operates using IACR member numbers and stored email addresses and that it is important for members to keep their email addresses up to date by sending updates to iacrmem@iacr.org. He also noted that payments were made through authorize.net and that receipts were still provided. Whit Diffie asked from the audience about security, and McCurley replied that this was difficult in practice and said that a new machine would be purchased for co-location at the IACR's host site. Clark then gave thanks to McCurley for his work and noted that Eurocrypt 2004 had served as an alpha-test for the system and that Crypto 2004 would serve as a beta-test. Clark then reported on the new IACR Fellows designation. He listed the six inaugural IACR Fellows as Tom Berson, David Chaum, Don Coppersmith, Whitfield Diffie, Ron Rivest, and Adi Shamir and said that a formal presentation would be held at that night's banquet. Clark then described the procedures for selection of IACR Fellows wherein all candidates, nominators, and endorsers must be IACR members (which can be verified by correspondence with iacrmem@iacr.org). He noted that the deadline for the next set of nominations was December 31, 2004 and that instructions could be found at http://www.iacr.org/fellows/. Clark listed the members of the selection committee as Damgård (chair), Dwork, Feigenbaum, Kraczyk, and Wiener. Clark then described the new CD of IACR proceedings of recent Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt, FSE, and PKC conferences and workshops. He thanked Bart Preneel, Christian Cachin, and Alfred Hoffmann for their work on this project. Clark next indicated that the IACR would not be sponsoring any additional workshops until information technology and other growth issues had been resolved. He then described how the reach of the IACR could be enhanced with "in Co-Operation with the IACR status" which may be bestowed upon events that further research in cryptology and related fields, have a program selection process that encourages scientific excellence, commit to avoiding schedule conflicts with IACR events, and agree to distribute IACR membership materials to their attendees. He added that the events awarded the status of "in Co-Operation with the IACR" would be linked on the IACR web site and that forms for seeking this status would soon be available on the IACR web site. Clark then described the establishment of the new "best paper" award which MAY be awarded by any IACR program committee. The author(s) of any paper granted such an award should be notified in advance of the conference, the award should be formally announced at the start of any such conference, and the award should also be noted on the IACR website. ________________________________________________________________________ At 17:38 Clark opened the floor for discussion from the membership. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark was asked about the decision process for granting "in Co-Operation with the IACR" status, and he replied that it was at the discretion of the IACR president. He was then asked if the IACR planned to issue guidelines regarding best paper awards, and responded that this had not been discussed and that the judgment of Program Committees would be relied upon. Election Committee Chair James Hughes then announced that he had forms available for nomination of candidates to the IACR Board of Directors. Kevin McCurley announced that there would be at least one open director seat since he would not be running again. A suggestion was made that IACR conferences be broadcast over the Internet. Clark replied that this was a good idea and that perhaps a future General Chair would manage this. Yvo Desmedt asked if slides from conference talks could be made available. Clark noted the informal agreement with Springer-Verlag to try to avoid competitive publication for a period after initial publication. Whit Diffie expressed the view that this should not be a problem for Springer-Verlag. James Hughes offered to coordinate this for Crypto 2004. It was also asked whether slides or talks from prior IACR Distinguished Lectures were archived. Clark responded that some slides had been made available. Diffie asked about his own Distinguished Lecture, and Clark responded that this had not been recorded by the IACR. McCurley asked that any individual who had made such a recording make a copy available to the IACR for posting on the IACR web site, and Diffie gave "copyleft" permission for any such recording. ________________________________________________________________________ The Membership Meeting was then adjourned at 17:45. ________________________________________________________________________ Respectfully submitted Josh Benaloh IACR Secretary