---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Minutes of the RTA-97 Business Meeting Sitges, June 2, 1997 Chair: Klaus Madlener Secretary: Helene Kirchner ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Agenda 1.Status report for RTA'97 by H. Comon and R. Nieuwenhuis 2.Report for RTA'98 by A. Middeldorp and T. Nipkow 3.Proposal for RTA'99 Presentation of FLOCS'99 proposal Site and Election of the local organizing committee chairperson(s) Election of the PC Chairperson(s) 4.Election (by secret ballot) of the two new organizing committee members 5.Tutorials/Workshops connected to future RTA conferences 6.Rewriting Home Page 7.Proposals/discussions from the floor The general assembly starts at 7.30pm with 41 persons attending. 1. Hubert Comon presents submissions statistics. Submitted Accepted Rejected Published Presented Regular Research 47 23 24 22 21 Papers System Descrip. 7 4 4 4 3 The low number of submissions (47 full papers and 7 system demonstrations) is discussed: too many related conferences (TFCA, CADE, TAPSOFT ...), most larger, both theory and applications oriented, conferences include rewriting sections, deadline too close from RTA'96. Roberto Nieuwenhuis reports on local arrangements. The number of participants is 63. He comments the problems due to the Antemare hotel bankruptcy and apologizes for the few inconveniences in the new hotel. The assembly thanks him for the way he managed this difficult situation. The distribution of attendees according to geographical location: F(19), D(13), E(11), US(6), J(6), NL(3), POR(2), POL(1), H(1), ISR(1). This represents, compared to RTA96(91) and RTA95(104), also a minimal attendance. Some reasons for low attendance (e.g. teaching duties (Germany)) were presented. In future measures for increasing attractivity of attendance should be undertaken. In particular in form of attached workshops, tutorials, special relevant topics etc. 2. Aart Middeldorp presents RTA'98, to be held in Tsukuba, March 30 to April 1, 1998. Invited speakers are H.Comon, J.W.Klop and G.Plotkin. Submission deadline is september 28, 1997. Cheap accomodation in guest houses is available. The budget for RTA'98 has been balanced on the basis of 80 participants. Satellite workshops are planned to encourage participation. The call for workshops will be issued in August with a deadline for propositions in October 1997. A related event is the Fuji International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming, in Kyoto, on April 2-4. Both conferences should advertise each other. The overlap with ETAPS conferences is mentioned. The discussion starts on how to increase participation. Several ideas are proposed: - - People from Asia and Australia should be contacted. - - The workshops could be specialised in topics adjacent to rewriting: for instance automated theorem proving, graph rewriting, computer-aided verification... and should be advertised in appropriate communities. - - Attract papers on applications. The conference should make visible the kind of results we propose, the competitiveness of our methods... - - This could be realized also by an open workshop on "Applications of Rewriting", to which everybody who wants to contribute is invited to submit and present his/her ideas. - - The possibility of posters presentations is mentioned. But the decision is up to the Program Committee and the Program Chair. - - The question of possible grants for PhD students is asked: this seems difficult. - - The problem of money is raised. People from some countries do not want to participate to conferences with high-standard accomodation level. The possibility for a cheap accomodation should be offered. Support to less-favored countries has to be proposed. Travel costs decrease when several conferences are coupled in the same or close locations. People are encouraged to use the rewriting mailing list and the Web page to make further suggestions. 3.Two site proposals for RTA'99 are - - Trento, Italy, as part of FLOCS99, local organisation by Andrea Asperti - - At Norwich, University of East Anglia U.K., local organisation by Richard Kennaway. Leo Bachmair gives his point of view on his experience at FLOC'96. Advantages are more attractive and cheaper events. Low registration fees for students are possible. Inconveniences are less flexibility for accomodation and for the program. He recommends to have CADE and RTA not in parallel. The solution to have LICS and RTA in parallel is acceptable. The dates of FLOC'99 are not yet fixed and should be negociated. June would be much better for RTA since otherwise RTA'2000 will have similar problems as RTA'97 here in Barcelona. The proposed PC Chairs for RTA'99 are P.Narendran and M.Rusinowitch to represent both the US and the European RTA communities. There is a vote on the following proposition: The choice is first Trento joining FLOC with A.Asperti as local organisation chair representing RTA, and in case of problem, the second alternative is Norwich with R.Kennaway as local organisation chair. PC Chairs: P.Narendran, M. Rusinowitch. 40 votes pro (FLOC), 1 vote against, no abstention. 4.Election of the two new organizing committee members The assembly thanks the outgoing members C. Kirchner and M. Okada for their work in the OC. The nominations recieved by the RTA OC chair are: H.Comon and Y.Toyama This proposition is accepted with the following votes: H.Comon and Y.Toyama 38 H.Comon 1 Y.Toyama 1 Invalid 1 5.Tutorials/Workshops connected to future RTA conferences This was already discussed in point 2. Tutorials and workshops are encouraged in particular on applications topics. This is the responsibility of the program chair, after consulting with the organising committee for instance in case of problems of dates. 6.Rewriting Home Page A prototype version is presented by Nachum Dershowitz and is available at http://www.loria.fr/~vigneron/RewritingHP/ Its goal is to improve visibility of our community. It is aimed at showing our achievements, systems, applications. Volunteers are welcome! 7.Proposals/discussions from the floor As preamble to the RTA Bylaws, some kind of motivation and "definition" of RTA should be stated. A proposal for it should be worked out by the OC. No other point is raised and the meeting ends at 9.15pm.