Dear all,
first (even if it is already late for that) all the best for 2005!
There was a period of ver limited information which was due to a most important evaluation which our institute had to undergo but this has now been successfully completed. Thus: Back to work!
The minutes of our "copyright-issue-loaded" and very heated meeting in Bangkok are not yet ready but they are promised to me very very soon.
We had our first negative experience with Springer LNCS when they refused to publish I3E proceedings (the conference which will happen before our October meeting in Wroclaw, Poland) and diverted this proceedings volume towards "old style Kluwer". Alfred Hofmann from Springer apologized very much but he could not win the internal battle in Springer - and indeed it may be best to publish I3E proceedings in the Kluwer series where they have been published since the beginning of that conference series. On the other hand I made a very positive experience with LNCS when I published a proceedings volume for a workshop on "wireless on mobility" in a EU funded network of excellence: For a 280 pages volume I have to pay 45 EURO per copy but I get 50 copies for free and as an editor I get 47,5 percent of reduction (or even 50 percent if I order 200 copies what I will do). Thus my price per copy is 22,5 EURO or even 18 EURO if I take into account the free copies. And this is just less than peanuts when I consider the other organisation cost of conferences (dinners for 100 USD, coffee breaks for much money, registration fees in the order of 600 EURO,...). Thus I sincerely hope that publication problems will be a little less complicated; but this hope is - unfortunately - limited.
I'll defend our (or my?) publication policy at the occasion of the IFIP council in Korea (end of February) very strongly. And concerning council: Please send me topics which I should include in my report and which I should discuss there until February 5 at the latest.
Less and less conferences are willing to pay a sponsorship fee. This will bring us unavoidably in serious financial trouble. My last experience from that was the excellently organised conference on "IT and sport" in Cologne (Sept. 2004) where the organisors really didn't understand why they should pay the sponsorship fee since the only participation from IFIP came from myself and I didn't ask for any money; I could "convince" them to arrange the payment but it gets more and more complicated. To return only the "good name" and the logo of IFIP for the sponsorship fee is just not enough.
There has been a change concerning national delegates: Prof. Hu Dao-Yuan who organised the excellent meeting 2000/2 after IFIP WCC 2000 in Beijing decide to leave the committee due to work overload. His successor will be Prof. Lin from Tsinghua University chlin@tsinghua.edu.cn (see attachment): ----
Now I take great pleasure in introducing to you Mr.Lin, professor of Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, who is well on his way to establishing an equally high reputation, I think he is the right person to take over my responsibility in IFIP-TC6. Attached is his resume. IFIP CHINA will write formal recommendation letter to IFIP Committee.
---- Prof. Lin: Welcome to TC6 ! We look forward to a good cooperation like we had it with Prof. Hu Dao-Yuan.
With my best wishes Otto