20 countries and 23 Societies represented
by 19 delegates, which means a total of 40 votes.
1. Opening
The Chairman welcomed all delegates and was pleased that such a large number of delegates attended this general assembly in a non-ECAI year. He noted that G. Ossipov was nominated as proxy for ADUIS, Jean Paul Barthès as proxy for ARC, Enric Plaza as proxy for AEPIA, C.G. Jansson for DAIS, V. Cyras for LANO, C. Thornton for BCS-SGES, and W. Daelemans for NVKI.
The Chairman apologized on behalf of
the ECCAI Board for having chosen a date for this General Assembly
that conflicts with religious holidays in two Member countries
(Greece and Israel). The Board will try to avoid such conflicts
in the future. The next GA will be held on Wednesday, August 26,
1998 in Brighton.
2. Minutes of the Last General Assembly
The minutes of the General Assembly held
in Budapest, 14 August 1996 were distributed. Unfortunately,
the preparation of these minutes had been delayed until recently.
The secretary of the previous board had problems with missing
notes for some of the items on the agenda, since he had to count
votes in parallel to the ongoing session. The minutes have therefore
been augmented based on the notes of the present Chairman. The
items that were incompletely described were item 8, item 12 and
item 13. The augmented minutes have already been approved by the
current board. In the present version still two delegate names
were missing: Roger Evans and José Cuena. With these two
additions the last GA minutes were approved.
3. Chairman's Annual Report
The Chairman presented the other members
of the board and their different roles. Nada Lavrac is Vice Chair
and handles the ECCAI travel awards, Carl Gustaf Jansson is Secretary
and handles the minutes, Jean Paul Barthès is treasurer, Walter
Daelemans is the member in charge of the statutes and handles
EU contacts, Piero Torasso is ordinary member and handles ECAI
publication issues.
The Chairman announced that:
a new ECCAI webserver is now operating at Saarbrücken. The new ECCAI Webserver available at http:// www.eccai.org was presented to the General Assembly.
an ECCAI Secretariat is established
in Kaiserslautern. The full address is:
The Chairman reported:
- an increased income for ECCAI due to
a large surplus for ECAI-96
- that the board has been very cost
efficient by merging board meetings with other business trips paid by third parties
- that a better service is now provided
for ECCAI members including 11 benefits:
- that the Irish and Belgium Societies
do not exist anymore. Some new applications from Eastern countries
are foreseen.
The Chairman presents also highlights
from board meetings during the last half year:
- the establishment of ETAI (see separate
item)
- a new form of AICom (see separate
item)
- the status of negotiations with future
publishers for ECAI proceedings
- the ACAI summer school proposed by
Lithuania
Piero Torasso described the discussions
with Wiley and Springer Verlag with respect to the future publication
of ECAI proceedings. Wiley will print the proceedings for ECAI-98,
if ECCAI insists. At least for ECAI-2000, ECCAI needs a new publisher.
According to the current proposal from Springer, the proceedings
could be published in the lecture notes series (LNAI). The board
will also negotiate with Morgan Kaufman. No final decision was
made. If the negotiations with a new publisher cannot be completed
before autumn, ECCAI will use Wiley for ECAI-98.
4. Secretary's and Treasurer's Annual
Report
Cash Variations from August 1996
to August 1997 (First 2 Tables)
ECCAI's bank account, as of April 1997
shows a balance of 58,992 ECU. This figure is subject to minor
variations since two savings accounts are in non-ECU currencies
(resp DM and £), and the working account is in BF. The exchange
rates are subject to fluctuations.
ECCAI has received 19,775 ECU from the
organizers of last ECAI'96 in Budapest. Expenses related to the
functioning of the Board have been so far 2,500 ECU.
Forecast to the end of 1977
ECCAI will receive 7,891 ECU as a second
payment from the ECAI'96 meeting. Expenses are budgeted as follows:
2,500 ECU for the General Assembly; 3,000 ECU for the two next
Board meetings; 3,000 ECU for ACAI Grants; 8,000 ECU for IOS Press
(AICom); for a total of 16,500 ECU. If, we assume an income of
8,000 ECU from the members in 1997 (a conservative figure), the
total cash variation will be negative of 609 ECU.
In fact the total amount of grants for
ACAI was overestimated and was brought down to 1,000 ECU. Thus
the estimated cash variation should be positive of 1,391 ECU.
Loan to ECAI'98
Not accounted for in the cash variation
is a loan to the Organizing Committee of ECAI'98 (Third Table).
Table 1 Cash variation up to April
25, 1997
Table 2 Forecasts for cash variation
from April 25, 1997 to December 31, 1997
Table 3 Loan to the Organizing
Committee of ECAI'98
Annual Budget for 1998
The budget for 1998 is presented taking
into account possible income from ECAI'98, and from members' fees.
Expenses are conservative. They include
3 Board meetings, the cost of a General Assembly, Travel Grants
to ECAI, Web maintenance costs, the cost of continuing the IOS press
arrangement, a cost for setting up a Dissertation Price, and the
cost of setting up a fellow program. Secretariat is courtesy of
DFKI.
The current 1998 budget shows a deficit
of 11,000 ECU, but expenses will be cut so that a balanced budget
is achieved in the end.
Annual Budget for 1997
The budget for 1997 is shown below. It
assumes some income from the members, estimated conservatively
at 8,000 ECU. ACAI'97 has no financial impact (except for the
travel grants).
The overall projected result is negative
and of the order of 8,000 ECU.
The budget for 1997 was approved by the
GA. There were no abstentions and
none against.
5. AICom : The new Editorial Board
and Distribution Scheme
Georg Gottlob is the new editor of AICom,
but unfortunately could not attend the GA. On behalf of Georg
Gottlob, Peter Flach presented the new policy for AICom. The policy
includes an ambition for high quality papers, a broad AI Scope
and an Editorial Board of good quality with so far 27 members.
The area editors (selected members of editorial board) will get
more responsibility and more decision power, being in charge of the complete reviewing process of an individual submitted paper.
IOS plans to augment the international
marketing of AICom. This includes negotiations with AAAI to distribute
to all their members and inclusion of non European members in
the editorial board such as Jon Doyle, Stuart Russel and Riichiro
Mizoguchi. A good cooperation with ETAI is proposed by making
Erik Sandewall liaison editor, having frequent references to ETAI
and by publishing ETAI papers. ECCAI should have influence on
the character of AICom by being guaranteed two representatives.
Nada Lavrac is proposed as a member of the AICom editorial board, representing the ECCAI board. Elisabeth André is proposed as a member of the AICom editorial board, in charge of ECCAI news and news about ECCAI member societies.
The chairman gives the following information:
ECCAI will pay 2 ECU/member/year for
2 issues of AICom. The copies will be sent by bulkmail to each
society. For 4000 members this means 8000 ECU altogether. 2 issues/year
out of 4 will contain ECCAI material. The first issue is planned now. The 2nd and
4th issues are planned to be ECCAI special issues. 14 ECU is the price
for all additional issues of a volume for individual subscribers. This is an offer by IOS press, not by ECCAI. 6 ECU is the reduced fee for all additional
issues of a volume for ECCAI societies, if they subscribe for all their members.
Some attendees of GA critizised
the bad communication about the negotiations with IOS and some
confusion regarding the relation between membership fees and the
cost for AICom. The Board stressed that the membership
fees grant members all eleven benefits of ECCAI, of which AICom
is only one.
The GA approved the board's proposal
to have a contract with IOS (two ECCAI issues) for 1997. For further
decisions about 1998 and the future of AICom the GA proposes an
evaluation after one year.
6. ETAI: The Electronic Transactions
on AI
ETAI is an innovative electronic journal
proposed by Erik Sandewall. An extended abstract on ETAI was
distributed. The Chairman presented the new electronic journal,
since Erik Sandewall himself was not able to present the new ETAI journal at the GA. The Board
is interested to support ETAI in several ways, but ETAI doesn't
need financial support at present. Initial funding exists from
various sources of the supporting organizations. According to the
proposal, the organization should include a policy committee and
a number of topic areas with area editors. With regard to the
policy committee, Wolfgang Wahlster is already a member.
ETAI comprise specialized transactions
in different fields. Four transactions are already established
at present. The journal is based upon the existence of first
publication archives (FPAs). Papers are submitted from archives
to ETAI. Papers change status due to a stepwise reviewing process
within ETAI. ETAI also comprise an Electronic Colloquium: an
active electronic discussion associated with each transaction.
An example exists for Reasoning and Change.
The GA welcomes ETAI enthusiastically
as an important channel of scientific communication in Europe
and thanks Erik Sandewall and his team for their initiative.
7. ACAI-97: the 7th Advanced Course
on AI in Vilnius, Lithuania
A presentation was made by Vytautas Cyras.
The summer school will take place on the 23-28 of June 1997 at
Vilnius University. The current program was distributed. The summer
school has been granted 5500 ECU from the Tempus project and 1200
ECU from national Lithuan funds. The deadline for applications
is the 16th of May. The deadline for travel grants has passed.
The GA proposes a more active process
for generating proposals for future summer schools.
8. ECAI-98: Progress Report
Medeni Fordham (Sussex) presented the
status of the ECAI-98 preparations:
- The dates and site are 23-28 of August 1998
in the Brighton Centre
- The Brighton Centre is free, subsidized
by the City of Brighton
- The fees are lower than for ECAI-96.
- The break even point is at 423 participants.
- The poster for ECAI-98 was presented.
- The progress report was distributed together
with posters.
Judging from the preliminary budget it
was observed that the costs for PC and invited speakers was rather
high and should be lowered.
9. ECCAI travel grant program
Nada Lavrac described the travel award
grants for 1997.
According to the board's decisions, two
kinds of grants were given for ACAI-97
- type A: for Baltic participants who
do not pay registration : 100 ECU and
- type B: for others: 400 ECU
Grants for 1000 ECU in total have been
approved: One application for a
non ECCAI sponsored event was denied.
10. ECCAI Membership Fees for 1997
and 1998
The following membership fees were proposed
for 1997.
1. - 3 ECU for societies in EU member
countries and a few other countries in Western Europe
2. - 2 ECU for societies in associated
EU member countries
3. - 0 for societies in countries not
associated with EU.
The above definitions are not precise
enough and the GA requested concrete lists for each category.
The following tentative list was made. It has to be finally approved
by each society.
After a lengthy discussion the GA voted
on two issues:
- Should ECCAI have a membership fee?
- Should the membership fee for 1997
be according to the above proposal?
- the GA decides on having a membership
fee: 34 votes in favor and 6 against
- the GA decides for a membership fee
according to the above proposal, 30 in favor, 8 against and 2
void votes.
The conclusion was that the membership
fees proposed for 1997 are accepted by the GA.
11. Budget for 1997/98
The budgets for 1997 and 1998 were approved
during the discussion of agenda item 4.
12. ECAI 2000
The Chairman reported briefly about the
ECAI-2000, which will take place in Berlin, August 20-25.
13. Proposals for ECAI 99
Was discussed under item 7.
14. Any other business
15. Closing
Sigrid Herzog
German Research Center
for Artificial Intelligence
DFKI GmbH
Erwin-Schrödinger-Straße / Geb. 57
Postfach 20 80
D-67608 Kaiserslautern
Germany
Voice:
+49 631 205 3213/3214
Fax:
+49 631 205 3210
Email:
siherzog@eccai.org
Invested money
DM
19 126
0,52
9 869
£
9 072
1,37
12 411
ECU
19 437
1
19 437
Received
ECAI'96
19 775
TOTAL
61 492
Expenses
Miscellaneous
26
BM #1
1 045
WEB set up
150
BM #2
1 279
TOTAL
2 500
BALANCE (Apr 97)
58 992
Forecasts
To receive
ECAI'96
7 891
National societies
8 000
TOTAL
15 891
To spend
ACAI Grants
3 000
GA
2 500
BM #3
1 500
BM #4
1 500
IOS
8 000
TOTAL
16 500
BALANCE
-609
Loans
ECAI'98
5 000
TOTAL
5 000
INCOME
ECAI'98
15 000
Fees
12 000
TOTAL
27 000
27 000
EXPENSES
Board Meetings (3)
5 000
General Assembly
3 000
Secretariat
0
Travel Grants
13 000
Web maintenance
2 000
AICom
8 000
Dissertation Price
5 000
Fellow Program
2 000
TOTAL
38 000
38 000
BALANCE
-11 000
INCOME
Members
8 000
TOTAL
8 000
8 000
EXPENSES
Board Meetings (1)
4 279
General Assembly
2 500
Secretariat
0
Travel Grants
1 000
Web set up
150
AICom
8 000
Miscellaneous
100
TOTAL
16 029
16 029
BALANCE
-8 029
The budget for 1998 was approved. There
were no abstentions and none against.
ACIA 1 GI/KI 1
ADUIS 3 IAAI 2
AEPIA 1 LANO 2
AFCET 1 LIKS-AIS 2
AFIA 1 NAIS 1
AI*IA 1 NJSZT 2
APPIA 1 NVKI 1
ARC 1 ÖGAI 1
BAIA 2 RAAI 3
BCS-SGES 1 SAIS 1
CSKI 2 SGAICO 1
DAIS 1 SLAIS 2
EETN 1 SSAISB 1
FAIS 1 SSKI/SAV 2
Given the total of 40 votes:
Last updated 1997-06-02.