----------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Minutes of the RTA98 General Assembly

                          Chairman: Klaus Madlener

                          Secretary: Friedrich Otto

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Agenda

  1. Status report for RTA98 (Tobias Nipkow and Aart Middeldorp)
  2. Report on RTA99-FLoC99 (A. Asperti, P. Narendran, M. Rusinowich)
  3. Proposal for RTA2000
        o Presentation of site proposal (Richard Kennaway)
        o Site and election of the local organization committee
        o Date
        o PC chairperson proposal from the OC (RTA Organizing Committee)
        o Election of the PC chair
  4. Election (by secret ballot) of two new Organizing Committee members
  5. Future RTA conferences (strategies)
  6. Proposals/discussions from the floor

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The general assembly starts at 5:30pm with 56 persons attending.

  1. Tobias Nipkow presents the submissions statistics. In particular, he
     points out some surprising correlations between the submission dates,
     the country of origin of authors, and the rate of acceptance.

     There were 61 submissions in total of which the program committee
     selected 22 for presentation.

     The tradition of awarding a Best Student Paper prize was revived and
     should be continued. Future RTA call for papers should also make
     explicit reference to this prize.

     Aart Middeldorp reports on local arrangements. The number of
     participants is 107 distributed according to countries as follows:

         Japan       65
         Germany     16
         France      10
         UK           5
         USA          4
         Netherlands  2
         Denmark      1
         Korea        1
         Spain        1
         Sweden       1
         Taiwan       1

     Of these 107 participants, 27 were students. Compared to RTA97(63),
     RTA96(91), RTA95(104) these numbers are encouraging. They reflect the
     efforts undertaken by the local organizers. Aart reports also on the
     success of attracting sponsoring which is detailed in the proceedings.

     The assembly thanks the PC committee and the local organizers for their
     excellent work.

  2. Since none of the organizers of RTA99 is present, the chairman reports
     on the current planning status of RTA99/FLoC99 in Trento.

     The dates have been fixed at the beginning of July 1999 (July 2-10)
     with LICS and RTA running parallel first and CADE and CAV afterwards.
     The call for papers is not issued yet but will be coming soon. There is
     a call for workshop proposals for FLoC99. Topics of interest to RTA
     should be offered, if possible in collaboration with the other
     communities.

     FLOC99 Steering Committee:

         Moshe Y. Vardi            (Chair)
         Fausto Giunchiglia        (Conference chair)
         Leonid Libkin             (Publicity chair)
         Paolo Traverso            (CADE)
         Joseph Sifakis            (CAV)
         Eugenio Moggi             (LICS)
         Simona Ronchi della Rocca (LICS)
         Andrea Asperti            (RTA)

  3. Richard Kennaway presents the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK
     as site to host RTA2000. In detail he describes the conference
     facilities at the university and the estimated costs (conference fee
     approximately 100 pounds, guest rooms 26 pounds, student rooms 19
     pounds). The date of the conference should not overlap with the spring
     term at East Anglia, and so it should either be early (March or April
     which, however, is considered as too soon after RTA99 considering the
     experience made with RTA97 in Spain) or after mid-June avoiding
     collisions with CADE and ICALP.

     The proposal to hold RTA2000 in Norwich with local organizing chair R.
     Kennaway is accepted by majority vote. The time slot will be chosen
     later by the local organizing chair, the PC and the OC.

     The OC proposes Leo Bachmair as PC chair for RTA2000. The proposal is
     accepted by majority vote.

  4. Election of two new members of the OC to replace the outgoing members
     J. Hsiang and K. Madlener.

     The OC received two nominations for new members in the OC: Nachum
     Derschowitz and Tobias Nipkow. Both expressed their consent. The result
     of the voting by secret ballot is as follows: 29 votes for both, 2 for
     Nachum only, 7 for Tobias only, 7 blank, 6 invalid. Hence, Nachum and
     Tobias are both elected.

     The OC of RTA now consists of H. Comon, N. Derschowitz, H. Ganzinger,
     P. Narendran, T. Nipkow, and Y. Toyama. The chair is to be elected by
     the OC.

     There is some discussion on the way the nominations of candidates for
     the OC and the site proposals should be made. For some attendants the
     nomination of only two candidates is unsatisfactory. There is agreement
     to make a call for nominations (by the publicity chair of the OC) in
     the rewriting mailing list two months before the GA takes place.

  5. Concerning the future of RTA, there is consensus in setting up some
     long term strategies and to try to join regularly related conferences.
     Proposals are:
        o Continue joining FLoC (next time expected 2003).
        o In conjunction with CADE every second year beginning 1999.
        o In conjunction with ETAPS in the early part of the year.
     Rewriting related workshops should be organized and held as satellite
     events to RTA and not completely independent. This topic was also
     discussed in the last GA in Sitges. The OC should conduct negotiations
     in this direction.

     The experience with the workshops in this RTA should be used in the
     future. E.g. extend the RTA format by some ad-hoc workshops, wild-card
     sessions, poster sessions, demo sessions.

  6. No point is raised and the meeting ends at 6:30pm.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------