Minutes of the  CONFERENCE COMMITTEE  of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges:    Northeastern Region,   January 11, 2003

DISCLAIMER: Approval of these minutes by the CONFERENCE COMMITTEE is pending, and  until they are approved, they are provisional and not binding.

ATTENDING: Frank Ford, Dick Close, Larry D'Antonio, Dale Fish, Michael Gousie, Pat Hayes, Tim Huang, Danny Kopec, Scott McElfresh, Hemant Pendharkor, Ingrid Russell, Kate Sanders, Jim Schaefer, Roger Simons, Karl Wurst, Charlie Welty, Richard Wyatt, Ying Zhou.

APOLOGIES FROM:  Matthew Dickerson, Amruth Kumar, Laurie A. Smith King, Ralph Morelli, Viera Proulx, Rod Rodrigues, Mary Russell

NOT ATTENDING: Paul Chiasson, Bill Taffe
 


The meeting started with an informal discussion of whether or not we have any free hotel rooms for the conference.   The hotel is the Comfort Inn which everyone agreed was satisfactory.  The price is $89/room, but the local arrangements chairs were encouraged to see if the price could be reduced.  There are better prices on the Web now.  The conference dates may have higher demand so the price may stay as it is.  We need a signed contract

Papers ( Karl, Larry, Hemant)
Acceptance rate:  22/45
Second Friday session has 2 speakers in each of 2 parallel sessions to allow time for people to see student posters and vendors.
It was decided to keep as close as possible to last years’ schedule which worked well.  May need some minor tweaking to get attendees to the plenary sessions on time.  Both of the possible plenary session rooms have plenty of doors so the problem of restricted access from last time is not a problem this time. There was support for having the earliest session at 8:15 Saturday to allow more time for getting to the Saturday plenary session.

Panels, Tutorials, and Workshops (Roger)
Good submissions.  Accepted 2 out of 5 workshops, all 4 panels, and 3/5 submitted tutorials were accepted plus one of the submitted workshops was reclassified as a tutorial and 1 invited NSF tutorial for a total of 5 tutorials.

2 workshops Friday morning.  Each session will have 1 panel and 1 tutorial.  Need extra room on Friday morning for extra presentation.

Workshop limit:  1 or 2 computer labs needed for workshops Friday morning.

There are 3 labs with 24 machines each in Gaige Hall.
There are 62 PCs in a Horace Mann lab (for the programming contest)
There are 13 PCs in a small Horace Mann lab (Program contest judging)

Thus, there is adequate space for the 2 workshops without affecting the programming contest.

2 tutorials need labs (Sat. Morning and ?) in separate sessions.  Should have tutorials in the large (62 PC) room because we cannot predict number of attendees at a session.

2 sessions need 5 rooms Sat. morning. There was some reluctance to have 5 talks in one session.

It was decided to have a maximum of 4 presentations/session, by acclamation.

There seems to be need for a hands-on room close to the plenary sessions to reduce travel time from tutorials to the plenary sessions.  One hands-on room after the Friday plenary session and 1 before the Sat. plenary session.

The plenary session may be in Gaige Hall or Donovan Hall.  Kate and Pat will make this decision based on attendees having enough time to get from sessions to the plenary sessions.


Undergraduate Posters (Mike Gousie):  There are 42 submission.  We need easels and/or tables supplied by the host institution.  We have about 30 poster boards and the conference will pay for any others needed.

Decided to accept all 42 posters and publish the abstracts in the proceedings.  Easels are often available from the Art Department on campus.  Can rent tables.  It is preferred to have the college pay but the conference can pay.  There is plenty of room for the posters.
 
Judging posters:  Last year we had both the people’s choice award and the judging awards (we had extra money from Microsoft(?)).

It was decided to have the posters set up by 2:45 PM on Friday.  Judging committee will look through them during the second session.  Poster will be judged on just the poster itself.  Presentation by student, laptop demo, handouts, etc. will not count.  Mike will decide on size of judging committee.

There is $150 for prizes.  3 prizes at $50 each or some other split?

Vendor’s chairs will ask vendors for additional prize money.

Poster’s chair will give Charlie the names of the winners for posting after the conference.

Larry and Mike will talk about how to handle poster submissions.


We now have a 1700 member mailing list.  We need quite a bit of information for the next emailing, including:
Papers:  Titles of papers, presenter’s names, and sessions they are in.
Posters: Titles, student name, advisor name, school.
Panels, tutorials, and workshops: Title and presenters.
Local arrangements:  Hotel info, directions from hotel to college and back.  Info must be put on the Web.  Banquet info.  Parking restrictions.  Times of refreshments.
Feb. 1 email message – preliminary program.  Need copies for SIGCSE (Feb. 19-21).
Frank will supply preliminary program to Charlie for Web posting.

Ingrid – Suggests that we use the list of rejected presenters as one source for session chairs.

Larry’s problem – all presenter’s must be registered, have filled out copyright form, etc. to be published.
Karl will put up the pages for the presenter’s.


Vendors Chairs:  Not at meeting and sent no statement of their progress.  Last year there was not much money raised from vendors.  There was much concern at the meeting that the vendor’s chairs had no report to make.

It must be reiterated that it is very important for board and committee members to attend the meetings.


There seems to be a problem with the 2003 committee email list not getting to all committee members.

Programming Contest (Tim and Jim):  Start off with a maximum of 30 teams.  Need 30 computers and 90 chairs.  Only one team/college will be accepted until some given date.  After that a second team will be considered if there is room.

It would be useful to have some classrooms available in Horace Mann for team discussions away from the computer room.

Also rooms are needed for breakfast and lunch for programming contestants  (Raytheon will sponsor RIC’s team.)

RIC has mainly PCs and Macs.  Limited Unix machines.

Judging methods:

1. Scripts – need to use Unix.
2. Manual – just judges
3. Manual – using judges and advisors
Languages: C, C++, and Java.

Schedule:  Friday morning

8 – 8:45 am:  breakfast.
8:45 – 9 am: meet and present problems
9 – noon: contest
noon: lunch

Local arrangements chairs:
Need to have campus rooms reserved ahead of time as well as labs.
Need to have some audiovisual people available during the conference.
We need to find out what the presenters need for audio-visual.

The registration form will state that every room will have a transparency projector, Internet connection, and computer projector.  Kate’s name and email address will be on the registration form for people needing special equipment.

There are two excellent students available.  It is nice to have a student in each session room who can either help or knows who to find for help.
Students also needed for registration.

College will pay to register the students, so they get meals, sessions, snacks.


Food:
Breakfast for programming contest ( 8 am Friday)
Lunch for programming contest (noon Friday)
Registration area – some sort of food
Food at breaks – (2:15 pm and 4:00 pm Friday)
Social hour (5:30 Friday) - Try to get a vendor to sponsor this.  Social hour should be in the same place as the vendor location.
Buffet banquet w/vegetarian choice (estimate number of attendees as 100% of preregistrations)
Continental breakfast (Sat. 7:30 am) - Comfort Inn has a basic complimentary breakfast, so may not need much here.  Some people will be driving in or will have made other arrangements and want something in the morning.
A little something before plenary session on Sat. (late lunch for most people)
Last break before lunch - coffee and some food.
Lunch – use 75% of non-student registrations as an estimate.  Students will not be there.  Many others will have left.

Other things for local arrangment chairs to set up:
Microphone with podium at banquet.
Friday morning parking may be a problem.  Space will need to be reserved.   Workshop attendees and programming contestants will be notified where to park.
Must be sure that the buildings and rooms are unlocked.  Notify physical plant people.
Tables and easels must be supplied for the posters and vendors.
Vendor’s chairs must find out what vendors need.  Power, Internet connection, …?
Publisher’s books will be sent to RIC.  Need to set up a room to store them and a person to carry them from the mailroom to the reserved room.  Proceedings will also be stored in that room and need to be carried there.
Vendor chairs must notify local arrangements people of what the vendors need.  Vendors often want materials mailed back to them.  Vendors pay for this.  Vendor’s chairs need to take care of this.
Signs should be place at every session room specifying what sessions and presentations are there and their times.
Need signs pointing to right buildings.
Signs needed for parking.
There should be an attendee list available Sat. to hand out.  It is better to hand it out at the conference than to email it to attendees.
Need certificates for programming contest, papers, and poster winners.  Danny must be given the names of winners and he will take care of the certificates.
If a vendor wants to make a presentation there is a charge.  Local arrangements people must be told what the vendor needs (room, audio-visual, etc.)

Basic vendor fee: $200
Vendor Presentation – same as last year perhaps raised by 10%.  Ask last year’s vendors chair (Paul Chiasson).

Need a room in which to store the books Friday night.


The conference packet will have to be put together at some point.  They will be available at the registration table.  They should contain meal tickets, badges, freebies, etc.

Registration:  At present it is not known if registration will be local (done by the conference committee) or done by national.

If registration is local:

Forms will come locally.  Send to Frank.
Registrations for presenters, posters, and programming contest will be sent to Frank by the appropriate chair.
Frank will be able to do local depositing of checks.  Bill Myers has a for-deposit-only ATM card available.
Registration check should be payable to CCSC.
Registration form contains an email link for registrants to register for a workshop.
Use last year’s registration forms.
Use a separate form for vendors.  This should be prepared by vendors chairs.
Receipts for registrants registering at the conference should be available at the registration table.  Earlier registrants should have receipts emailed to them.
We may be entering registration info directly to the national database or sending on to national for them to enter.  This is not known.
Charlie will put registration forms on the Web.  Registration chairs will send the final form to him.  Registration form will be printed by registrants and mailed in.  No interactive registration.
Registrants can opt out of being included in the attendees list.
Regular registration: $120/person

Student registration: $40/student

Programming team registration: $50/team (each student on team must register as a student and the advisor must use regular registration)
Students registering both for a team and a poster session need only register once.  Poster chair and programming contest chairs can communicate about students  who claim they are already registered.

Extra proceedings: $10/each
Extra meals:  Dinner - $30   Lunch - $15
Late fee:  $30, bringing registration fee up to $150 for late registrants.  No late fee for students.


Camera-ready date: Feb. 3rd
Regular registration forms should be on the Web by January 25.
Paper’s chairs must notify session chairs  of their responsibilities.  Timing each presentation is very important.  It was suggested that each session chair be given signs that say 5 minutes, 2 minutes, finished, and over time.
Larry will send Frank and Charlie URLs for presenters, chairs, tutorials, workshops, and etc. pages. About 10 student aides are needed.  This is up to the local arrangements chairs.

Adjourned: 1:40 PM January 11, 2003.  By acclamation.

Respectfully submitted by Charles Welty, CCSCNE secretary.