1. Information Theory Society Conference Committee Update
Emanuele Viterbo
Aachen, Germany
June 21st, 2017

2. Committee Members in 2017 Emanuele Viterbo (Chair)
Rüdiger Urbanke (Ex Officio)
Elza Erkip (Ex Officio)
Daniela Tuninetti (Ex Officio)
Albert Guillen i Fabregas
Urbashi Mitra
Brian Kurkoski
Alfonso Martinez

3. IT Symposia ISIT 2016 Barcelona Closing the budget 2017 Aachen
Running now
2018
Vail
budget approved - nothing to report
2019
Paris
New budget to approve
2020
Los Angeles
nothing to report
2021
Melbourne

4. ISIT 2016, Barcelona Waiting for budget closure
Estimated surplus 34KEuro
Final report ready
Newsletter article published

5. ISIT 2019, Paris
Dear Emanuele,  We are getting back to you after a revision of our contract and renegotiation with our venue Maison de la Mutualité (MdM) and finalisation of all the other contracts (CMS for the technical program and B2C for the conference management). It took more time than anticipated due to the negotiation of the payment schedule and, especially, to the French elections (MdM organized several political meetings during the presidential campaign from October 2016 to February 2017).  Please find attached the revised budget for ISIT 2019, which has been modified according to the recommendations of the BoG. Based on these updates, we have restored the original registration fees, approved by vote of the BoG in ISIT 2015 (IEEE IT Member = 750 Euros, IEEE IT Student Member =  380 Euros). The surplus is  now at 12% under the likely hypothesis of at least  900 participants and at 7% under a more pessimistic hypothesis that  there will be as few as 800 participants. The new budget accounts for expense due to technical services (video/sound experts) and security, a discount on the rental costs of the venue, and a recalibration of the anticipated distribution of the registration categories according to ISIT 2016 (as requested by the BoG). We negotiated with the MdM to reduce by 15K Euros their original bid on  technical services/security personnel. We also got them to include the rental of an additional session room so that we could accommodate 10 parallel sessions. However, these  reductions were offset by an increase in expenses to enhance security of the venue and the participants  (MdM recommended 34% additional  security officers with respect to the standard plan),  which is due to a new requirement of the French government  for events that attract large numbers of participants.   At this point, we feel it is essential to move forward to the next step and send all contracts to IEEE for approval. We very much hope that you will be able to share this update with the BoG in advance to the incoming meeting in Aachen so we may be able to provide additional information or clarifications if requested. All of us will be in Aachen on June 25 and could meet with you or attend the BoG if you think it would be helpful. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require further information.  Thank you very much in advance.  Best regards,  Pablo Piantanida (Co-Chair) Alfred Hero (Co-Chair) Charly Poulliat (Finance Chair)
Conference Committee has given feedback
BoG vote will be required to approve the budget

6. IT Workshops Cambridge, UK
2016
Cambridge, UK
Closing the books (expected 6% surplus Jossy will confirm in a few days)
2017
6-10
Nov.
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
On track
2018
Nov.
Guangzhou, China
On Track
2019
Sep.
Oct.
Sweeden
Gotland
Expression of Interest for next BoG in Allerton from Lars Rasmussen, Mikael Skoglund and Tobias Oechtering, KTH
2020
Italy (Como, Venice, Milan, Turin)
Expression of interest planned for next year Marco Dalai and Ugo Vaccaro
Future ITWs -- Interest from potential organizers:
Proposals for ITWs are usually approved 18 to 24 months before the workshop.
ISIT future teams may be interested in organizing an ITW to warm up.

7. ITW 2017, Taiwan 146 submitted papers 317 authors
Top ten participants’ countries: USA (65), China (44), Japan (33), India (23), France (21), Israel (17), Hong Kong (15), Singapore (15), Italy (13), UK (12)
Complete the review process by July 21 after a TPC meeting

8. ITW 2018, Guangzhou Website and CFP are ready
TPC members almost completed
Two parallel tutorials on the 25th (the welcome reception day) .
No charge the tutorial attendees, but pre-registration will be required with priority for students.
Will provide the accommodation during the event, for plenary speakers.
Possible travel support for plenary speaker using other resources, e.g.,  sponsorships.
An App will be used for the workshop program.

9. The new TCS approval process
The current process to approve the TCS is rather complicated for the organizers and involves unnecessary delays to reach the final BoG approval, when the conferences have obtained the TCS from the Society in the previous editions.
The following new process is in place since Jan. 1st , 2017:
If the BoG approves technical co-sponsorship (TCS) for a conference in two or more consecutive cycles, then only Conference Committee approval is needed for TCS of that conference for the next 6 years.
The conference committee will seek Board approval during that period if there are major changes in the conference scope or if for any other reason they fail to reach consensus on approval.

10. The new TCS approval process
The following conferences have been approved for the past two editions and will be considered as approved by the BoG for the next 6 years, starting from Jan 1st 2017, subject to the above conditions.
ANNUAL CONFERENCES
Allerton –
CISS –
ITA –
WiOpt – 2006, 2007,
International ITG Conference on Systems, Communications and Coding (SCC),
BIENNIAL CONFERENCES
ISITA – 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018
Int. Symposium on Problems of Redundancy in Information and Control Systems – 2007, 2009, 2012 , 2014, 2016
Turbo Codes – 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016
International Zurich Seminar on Information and Communication (IZS) –2016, 2018