Telecon meeting notes, Oct. 21, 2015

Attending:  Tom Henderson, Felipe Perrone, George Riley, Manuel Ricardo

Walid Dabbous was not present but reviewed and agreed on the actions shortly 
after the telecon.

Minutes taken by Tom Henderson.

1) future annual meeting activities

Prior to the meeting, we agreed over email that WNS3 would be the week of 
June 13-17 at the University of Washington.  Tom Henderson confirmed that the
department will host and will offer administrative assistance to conduct 
the event.

We also re-confirmed with Manuel on the telecon that WNS3 2017 is tentatively 
to be hosted by INESC Porto.

George Riley recommended Brian Swenson, with GTRI, as co-TPC chair for 
WNS3 2016-17, to take the spot filled by Peter Barnes for the past two
years, and the steering commitee agreed.

Tom suggested that the consortium ought to offer $500 travel stipend to TPC 
chairs if needed, as we have done in the past on a by-request basis.  The
suggestion was agreed.

Eric Gamess has requested to serve as WNS3 proceedings chair again, and we 
confirmed this at the telecon.

We discussed and agreed again on the suggestion to modify the call for 
papers to better encourage industrial participation, but make sure that there 
is provision that such papers are reviewed accordingly (by providing 
guidance to reviewers).

Tom agreed to coordinate with the TPC co-chairs to update and announce the 
CFP shortly.

2) CTTC membership

With Nicola Baldo's departure from CTTC, the committee agreed to Lorenza
Giupponi (CTTC) as his replacement.

3) NITK Surathkal membership

UW is processing an application from NITK Surathkal university to become a 
regular member of the consortium in 2016.

4) Budget and WNS3 2016 registration

We operated 2015 WNS3 at a net loss this year (while in 2014 we had a net 
profit from the Atlanta meeting).  There was a decline in paid training 
attendance, and an increase in travel expense reimbursements.

We took in roughly $3000 from registration/training fees.  We had roughly the 
following expenses:  $1500 for food and beverage, and $4400 for various 
travel stipends and reimbursements.

We are about to receive $2000 from Google Summer of Code for mentor stipends.  
Tom agreed to circulate a revised statement on our account once updated from
UW.  The combination of Google Summer of Code stipends and meeting income
was enough to offset the costs of the annual meeting.

We discussed the need to change the registration structure for next 
year (including the need to have a nominal fee for students to avoid 
unused registrations), and to solicit more training income/participation 
and possibly corporate sponsorship of the event.  The meeting agreed to 
revisit at a future date.