By Nilay Argon, Secretary

Mike Kuhl, Vice President, called the meeting to order at 6:17 pm.

Each person at the meeting introduced themselves (name and affiliation).

Chun-Hung Chen gave a report on the first INFORMS Simulation Society Workshop. He noted that the workshop was very successful with five keynote speakers, more research discussions than regular conferences, and a good financial outcome (thanks to INSEAD and NSF for support). Extended abstracts for the talks are provided at http://www.insead.edu/issrw/ and an ACM TOMACS special issue is in progress. Mike Kuhl and John Fowler are open to ideas for the next workshop.

Mike Kuhl gave the Vice President's report. He reviewed the simulation society sessions at the current meeting, then mentioned the upcoming INFORMS Practice meeting, which will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, April 13-15, 2008, and the IFORS meeting, which will be held in Sandton, South Africa, July 13-18, 2008.

Stewart Robinson distributed handouts and talked about the 4^th Simulation Workshop of the Operational Research Society, which will be held in Worcestershire, England, April 1-2, 2008.

Dave Goldsman gave an update on the upcoming Winter Simulation Conference, which will be held in Washington DC, December 9-12, 2007. He mentioned that 742 authors are contributing to this year’s conference and that the hotel blocks reserved for the conference attendees are sold out.

John Fowler briefed about the 2008 Winter Simulation Conference, which will be held in Miami, FL, December 7-10, 2008.

Nilay Argon gave the Secretary’s report. The society currently has 525 members, almost half from academia and half from industry/government/military. She mentioned that only 19 members are also WORMS (INFORMS Women in OR/MS Forum) members and 3 members are INFORMS Minority Issues Forum members.

Mike Kuhl and Dave Goldsman gave the Treasurer's report on behalf of Seong-Hee Kim. The society is in very good financial health with a record net cash flow.

Jesus Jimenez and Victor Chan gave updates for the Committees on Underrepresented Minorities and Women (CUMW), and the PhD Colloquium at WSC, respectively. They thanked IBM for their generous support (in the amount of $3000) of I-Sim’s CUMW and PhD Colloquium activities at WSC, and Soumyadip Ghosh for facilitating this. Jesus Jimenez mentioned that two to four $400 awards will be given to qualifying under-represented minority students attending WSC 2007 and a one-year free membership in I-Sim. Victor Chan said that there are 25 participants at the PhD Colloquium in WSC 2007 with 5 best paper finalists.

Mike Kuhl stated that the current practice for Council elections does not match I-Sim bylaws. In the past, elections were held every 2 years, with people serving 4 years. Bylaws require elections every two years, with people serving 2 years. We are adapting to conform to Bylaws. Russell Cheng and John O. Miller have agreed to serve one more year to get back on schedule. This will require annual elections for two council members.

Jim Wilson stated that Bob Sargent, Dave Goldsman and himself will have the following motion to be made for approval by the INFORMS Simulation Society at the WSC business meeting.

He mentioned that for the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award (LPAA), normally people who are retired or close to retirement are considered. Without the proposed addition to the guideline, the distinction between this award and the distinguished service award is not clear. The formal discussion is deferred to the WSC business meeting in December 2007.

Jim Wilson gave an update from the Communications Committee. In Fall 2002, the financial condition was critical, and hence Peter Welch’s fee had been reduced from $1800 to $1200. Now that the society is in a reasonably good financial state, he recommended restoring the annual fee back to $1800 for this calendar year. John Fowler made a motion to raise the fee to $2000 and motion passed unanimously.

There was no other new business.

The meeting adjourned at 6:50pm.

Attendees: In the interest of preventing email address harvesting, email addresses have been disguised. To get the true email address, replace <of> with @.

Christos Alexopoulos christos<of>isye.gatech.edu
Sigrun Andradottir sa<of>gatech.edu
Nilay Tanik Argon nilay<of>unc.edu
Bahar Biller billerb<of>andrew.cmu.edu
Wai Kin (Victor) Chan chanw<of>rpi.edu
Chun-Hung Chen cchen9<of>gmu.edu
Ek Peng Chew isecep<of>nus.edu.sg
Roy Creasey creaseyrr<of>longwood.edu
Rafeal Diaz rdiaz<of>odu.edu
John Fowler john.fowler<of>asu.edu
Dave Goldsman sman<of> gatech.edu
Winfried Grassman grassman<of>cs.usask.ca
Cigdem Gurgur cgurgur<of>mines.edu
Jeff Hong hongl<of>ust.hk
Sheldon Jacobson shj<of>uiuc.edu
Jesus Jimenez jj30<of>txstate.edu
Michael Kuhl mekeie<of>rit.edu
Loo Hay Lee iseleelh<of>nus.edu.sg
Chick Macal macal<of>anl.gov
Sharif Melouk smelouk<of>cba.ua.edu
Doug Morrice morrice<of>mail.utexas.edu
Barry L. Nelson nelsonb<of>northwestern.edu
Raghu Pasupathy pasupath<of>vt.edu
Stewart Robinson stewart.robinson<of>warwick.ac.uk
Hong Wan hwan<of>purdue.edu
Preston White kpwhite<of>virginia.edu
Jim Wilson jwilson<of>ncsu.edu
Shane Wu shw14<of>pitt.edu