Minutes of the Meeting of EACSL, 2008

Bertinoro, September 17, 2008, 18:40-20:15

Agenda

Present: Patrick Baillot, Ugo Dal Lago, Anuj Dawar, Stéphane Demri, Matthias Horbach, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud, Michael Kaminski (Organizer CSL'08), Tomer Kotek, Antonín Kučera, Johann Makowsky (Board of EACSL, president), Simone Martini (Organizer CSL'08), Angelo Montanari, Damian Niwinski (Board of EACSL, vice-president), Ruzica Piskac, Gert Smolka (PC Member CSL'08), Sven Schewe, Wolfgang Thomas,

Confirmation of agenda.
Approved by acclamation.
Choice of chairman of meeting.
Proposal: J.P. Jouannaud
Approved by acclamation.
Choice of secretary (Minutes of the meeting)
Proposal: R. Piskac
Approved by acclamation.
Report on General Meeting 2007 and Accounting
- Minutes of 2007 .
  Resolution: Acceptance of Minutes of 2007
  Approved unanimously.
- Annual report and Treasurer's report. The financial report was checked and confirmed by the accountants A. Durand and J. Adamek. The written confirmation was sent to T. Schwentick. The accountants confirmed this by sending me e-mail.
  Resolution on acceptance and discharge of the board
  Approved unanimously.
- Election of accountants for 2008:
  Candidates A. Blumensath, A. Durand and J. Adamek.
  A. Durand will serve on the Jury.
  Resolution on accountants.
  A. Blumensath and J. Adamek were elected unanimously as accountants for the next year.
Changes of the board of EACSL:
The Board of the Association consists of the President, the Vice-President and at least 7 but not more than 10 other members.
Current members and duration of term.
- L. Beklemishev, Moscow, Russian Federation, 2010
- B. Courcelle, Bordeaux, France, 2010
- Z. Esik, Szeged, Hungary, 2010 (EATCS)
- B. Loewe , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2011 (representative of CiE)
- J. Makowsky President, 2009
- S. Martini, Publicity chair, 2008
- D. Niwinski Vice-President, 2009
- L. Ong , Oxford, UK, 2011
- T. Schwentick Treasurer, Dortmund, Germany, 2010
- G. Winskel, Cambridge, UK, 2010 (representative of LiCS)
S. Martini offered to free his seat.
The assembly thanks S. Martini for his services prolonged services as Publicity chair, and for organizing CSL'08.
Extension of the members of the board.
We have currently 7 members besides the president and vice president.
Election of new members: Proposed candidates: Marc Bezem (Bergen,Norway) as Publicity chair. H. Veith (Darmstadt, Germany) and A. Dawar (Cambridge, England). Each candidate was voted separately. During voting about his candidacy, A. Dawar was not in the room. All three candidates were accepted.
Approved unanimously.
Jury of the Ackermann Award 2008
- J. van Benthem (Amsterdam)
- B. Courcelle (Bordeaux),
- M. Grohe (Berlin),
- M. Hyland (Cambridge),
- J.A. Makowsky (Haifa, President of EACSL),
- D. Niwinski (Warsaw, Vice President of EACSL), and
- G. Plotkin (Edinburg, LICS Organizing Committee),
- A. Razborov (Moscow and Princeton).
Martin Hyland asked to be replaced. Bruno Courcelle and Damian Niwinski have asked to be replaced for 2009, due to possible conflict of interest. The jury is appointed by the board. This would leave us with 5 jury members.
Proposal: Candidates of the president after consultations:
A. Durand (Paris), A.Dawar (Cambridge), P.-L. Curien (Paris), H. Veith (Darmstadt)
Discussion of proposals.
J.P. Jouannaud pointed out that there is no candidate from Italy. He expressed the concern that besides the topic coverage it is also important to have geographical coverage since candidates for the Ackermann Award are usually young scientists, possibly unknown to the wider audience.

The president of EACSL expressed the need for better advertisement of the award.
Sponsorship of the Ackermann Award
Comments and Discussion. The president reported about the experience with funding. The sponsorship by LOGITECH willendin 2009.
Report on CSL'08 presented by S. Martini.
Registration: 44 Registered for CSL (including invited speakers), out of which 10 registered also for Makowsky Symposium (MS) and 7 registered only for MS.
Paper submission: 102 abstracts, of which 87 followed by paper. 31 accepted papers (30%).
Discussion: What can we do increase attendance?
There were several proposals for increasing attendance.
1. Introduce non-refereed contributed communications to be presented in compact parallel sessions (10 minutes + 5minutes discussion) not included in the published proceedings but listed on the conference web-page.
2. Organize CSL together with other conferences and affiliated events (workshops, tutorials). The president of EACSL pointed out that although the last year's CSL was organized jointly with GAMES, the expected increase of the number of the attendance to CSL'07 did not happen.
3. Widen the scope of the conference and add new areas (planning, knowledge representation, etc.) The audience was generally skeptical towards this idea and expressed the wish that CSL should remain conservative.
4. Change the date. There was a general opinion that the time difference between CSL and LICS is too close. That raised the concern about the number of attendees the next year since LICS will be in August.
The board should discuss the date issue and the other proposals.
CSL'09 :
- 2009: Coimbra, Portugal (R. Kahle): Proposal, Pictures
  Homepage CSL'09 and PC
CSL'10 and CS'11 : Discussion and call for of proposals.
Brno (Czech Republic) together with MFCS 2010. Presentation by Antonín Kučera. presentation
Bergen (Norway) 2011, Darmstadt (Germany) 2011/12
The date proposed by the Brno proposal is the end of August 2010. The board will decide till the end of October 2008, taking into account the fact that LiCS will be in Europe in 2010 as part of FLOC.
The current situation of EACSL (J.A. Makowsky)
1. Proceedings in the future. Shall we stay with Springer? STACS decided that not. Alternatives.
  Creation of a book series with Springer (EACSL Monographs). Talks with Springer under way.
  Discussion: No immediate decision needed, but we need feedback from the basis.
2. Cooperation with electronic journal LMCS (Logical Methods in Computer Science).
  President of EACSL is on the scientific board
  Publish special issue with selected papers from CSL08
  Guest editors for CSL08: to be determined
3. Cooperation with CiE (Computability in Europe), a series of conferences
  initiated by B. Cooper (Leeds), and B. Loewe (Amsterdam).
  EACSL is an offical sponsor of CiE-07 and CiE-08.
  EACSL did contribute to cost of and co-selects one invited speaker in 2007, but not in 2008, due to lack of funds.
4. Cooperation with LICS
5. Cooperation with FOLLI and ESSLI.
  We did approach FOLLI to have a CSL-track at ESSLLI and further cooperation.
6. Scientific council of EACSL.
  The council still has to be reorganized (as alredy stated in 2007)..
  It contains a list of people who even are not aware of their membership.
  Former board members are for five more years on the council. Other members should be chosen by the EACSL board. The scientific council should participate in discussions initiated by the board. They can also initiate discussion on topics of their choice.
7. Fees and membership of EACSL
  We decided last year to add to the 10 EURO annual membership a 10 EURO contribution for the Ackermann Award. So in the future 20 EURO per participant are paid to EACSL. We have to work out a way to distinguish non-members from members at registration.
  Collecting fees from non-attending previous members. We shall try to encourage previous members to renew their membership (10 EURO per year, 40 EURO for 5 years) and to allow for electronic payment of membership. The contribution to Ackermann Award for non-attending members is on a voluntary basis.
  Electronic payment of membership for non-attendees.
The future of EACSL
No discussion was held due to the lack of time.
Varia
None.

Signed: J.A. Makowsky and R. Piskac