Susan Sanchez, president, presiding.
Susan Sanchez called the meeting to order at 6.27pm and called for introductions. The 18 attendees along with affiliations are listed below.
President's report: Susan Sanchez reported that INFORMS is encouraging the college to become a society. The college plans to file an application before the 2002 Winter Simulation Conference. Such an application requires a membership of at least 500. Some concern was expressed that the college maintain a presence at INFORMS annual meetings. Susan Sanchez also asked for volunteers to help with various unspecified tasks for the college.
Secretary's report: Russell Barton gave this report for Stephen Chick, secretary/treasurer, who was not present. The minutes of the 2001 Winter Simulation Conference business meeting were approved by a show of hands.
Vice President's report: Russell Barton announced that the next annual meeting of INFORMS will be held in Atlanta GA. He encouraged the submission of session proposals joint with other INFORMS subdivisions. He also announced the next international meeting of INFORMS in Turkey on July 6 - 10, 2003 and requested proposals for sponsored sessions.
Treasurer's report: Russell Barton gave this report for Stephen Chick, secretary/treasurer, who was not present. The treasurer's report is in the Fall 2002 newsletter. Expenditures have exceeded income by approximately $3000. This is partly due to the fact that WSC 01 returned the seed money, but nothing more. By way of contrast, WSC 00 returned approximately $4000 over and above the seed money.
Newsletter Editor's report: Shane Henderson, newsletter editor, reported that the Fall 2002 newsletter announcement was emailed to the membership in the week before the INFORMS annual meeting.
WSC Proceedings: Jim Wilson reported on investigations into the future of the proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference. Two primary issues are whether the hard copy should be discontinued or not, and whether the format should be switched from two-column format to one-column format.
The hard copy is currently self-financing, so that regular conference registration fees do not subsidize hard copy production costs. While many librarians strongly prefer web access that is well-maintained, accessible and permanent (the INFORMS College on Simulation site would probably not be considered permanent by most librarians), others still prefer hard copy because their institutions cannot afford the fees associated with online resources such as the ACM digital library or IEEE Xplore. The INFORMS College on Simulation membership expressed preferences (through email solicited by Jim Wilson) for a properly edited proceedings with page numbers (for referencing purposes) and running heads, and permanent, free web access. There is interest in a forward and backward cross-reference system.
Omnipress, who currently publish the WSC proceedings, said that moving to a one-column format is no problem for the electronic version of the proceedings, but would increase the hard copy size of the proceedings by approximately 20%.
It is likely that the current system (two-column format proceedings, CD copy for all registrants, hard copy by request for extra fee) will continue for the near future.
There was some brief discussion about these two issues.
WSC '02: Jim Wilson gave an update on WSC '02. As of November 8, 2002, the paid registration was 239, about 130 authors had not registered, and Talley management estimated that they had a backlog of about 100 unprocessed registrations. Based on WSC '96 and '99 figures, about 200 onsite registrations are expected. Targeted emails are being sent to IIE and SCS members in Southern California and Arizona. Total paid registration is expected to be between 650 and 700.
The hotel pickup on November 11 totaled 634 room-nights, whereas the contracted block requires 1633 room-nights. Some copyright-transfer problems were encountered in early November and resolved. A review of the WSC policy on copyright transfer is recommended. Awards: There will be distinguished service, lifetime professional achievement, and outstanding publication awards this year. Some travel awards will be made to women and minorities to enable attendance at WSC 02 this year.
Journal Editor reports: These are available in the Fall 2002 newsletter.
New Business: Susan Sanchez noted that there is some ambiguity in the college dues rates. She proposed that the dues of $10 for a member, and $5 for students and retirees apply to INFORMS members only, and the non INFORMS-member rate of $20 apply to all nonmembers, regardless of whether they are students or otherwise. No objections were raised.
Susan Sanchez asked that the membership consider the possibility of becoming more active in the Spring/Summer through a conference.
Susan Sanchez asked the membership to consider creative methods for reducing the deficit. There was some discussion about creating a sponsorship category for organizations, and offering a one-time cost of lifetime membership in the society. To reduce expenditure, the society might consider only offering a subset of the college awards in any one year, and/or moving the web page development and maintenance to a volunteer role.
Jim Wilson has more copies of the IIE Transactions special issue in honor of Alan Pritsker. IIE Transactions has requested that we sell the excess copies back to them. No objections were raised. The meeting was adjourned at 7.30pm.
Attendees
Jerry Banks, Independent Consultant; Russell Barton, Pennsylvania State University; Dean Chatfield III, Independent Consultant; John W. Fowler, Arizona State University; Michael Fu, University of Maryland; Gul Gurkan, Tilburg University; Peter Haas, IBM; Shane Henderson, Cornell University; Stacy Hill, Johns Hopkins University; Sheldon Jacobson, University of Illinois; Douglas Morrice, University of Texas, Austin; Barry L. Nelson, Northwestern University; Matt Rosenshine, Pennsylvania State University; R. G. Sargent, Syracuse University; Leyuan Shi, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Bruce C. Shultes, University of Cincinnati; Jeff Smith, Auburn University; JimWilson, North Carolina State University; Xudong Yang, University of Cincinnati