Minutes of the ECCAI General Assembly

on 6th July 2001 at the ACAI Summer School, Prague, Czech Republic

CHAIRMAN'S ANNUAL REPORT

For the President's annual report, please visit https://eccai.org/admin/chairreport_2001.html.

BUDGET FOR 2001 AND 2002

Budgets for 2000 and 2001 are enclosed.

REPORT ON ACAI-01

ACAI-01 is held in Prague this week and next, the event seems to be a great success, both, scientifically and with respect to the budget.

ECCAI TRAVEL GRANT PROGRAM

The travel grant program is still one major benefit for the member societies. Preference for the future procedure is to spread the grant over all societies of ECCAI.

AICOM: ELECTRONIC ACCESS SCHEME

AICOM succeeded in shaping the scientific profile by establishing a larger editorial board. Each member of the board will get a paper version of the journal. The societies get access to the Journal via the web. However, the General Assembly is unhappy about unavailability for a long time. The publisher will solve these problems soon.

STATUS OF ETAI: THE ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS ON AI

ETAI is appreciated very much as the major electronic scientific journal of ECCAI. The President of ECCAI is responsible for the liaison of the ECCAI Board and the editors of ETAI. It is planed that ETAI will broaden its spectrum, by adding new areas.

ECAI-2002 IN LYON PROGRESS REPORT

The preparations for ECAI-2002 in Lyon are on its way. The PAIS applications conference will be continued under the chairmanship of Boi Faltings. Frank van Harmelen will introduce special activities to increase Eastern European participation, such as pre-reviewing of papers. Alain Mille has made good progress leading the local organising committee and in raising initial sponsorship.

ACAI-2003: PROPOSALS

The plan is to have the summer school in 2003 in relation with RoboCup.

THE ECCAI DISSERTATION AWARD

The winner of the ECCAI Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award 2001 is Christian FREI, Luanne, CH, for "Abstraction Techniques for Resource Allocation in Communication Networks". Thanks to Silvia Miksch for coordinating this big task. The Award will be presented as part of the ACAI summer school in Prague.

THE ECCAI FELLOWS PROGRAMME

This year the ECCAI Fellow Selection Panel selected eight new fellows. For the list of the new fellows please see the presidents report or visit eccai.org.

ECCAI MEMBERSHIP FEES FOR 2001 AND 2002

There are no changes for this year.

MEMBERSHIP STATUS OF SOCIETIES

Irish society is to be reactivated.

ECCAI STAND AT IJCAI-01

ECCAI will be present with its usual stand at IJCAI 01. Member societies are invited to display material at the stand.

DATE FOR THE NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY AT ECAI-2002 IN LYON

The next General Assembly will take place in Lyon, on Tuesday 23rd, 2003 after the Welcome Party (app. at 8pm).

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

• For further ECAI conferences there will be a Conference Chairperson, who will be appointed besides the PC Chair and the Local Arrangement Chair. This will be started in 2004.
• There was a short discussion about ideas to establish a global AI Society. There was a consensus that we don’t see any benefits from a new global society.
• The Board proposes a change of Article 11 of the ECCAI Charter, which currently states that the Board members are elected by the General Assembly for a two-year term. In the past it turned out, that a new Board member needs some time to get along in their new field, such that there remains too little of the term in which they can deal efficiently with the new tasks. A modification of Article 11 aiming at three two year terms, would guarantee more efficiency in the service of the Board members to ECCAI. Together with the remaining part of Article 11, which states that a Board member cannot be elected to more than two consecutive terms, we then would have sufficient continuity within the Board and at the same time the guarantee to get new directors in the board. The GA supported this point and it is agreed that during the next GA a formal vote can take place.
• The British Computer Society announced their new prize: Progress Towards Machine Intelligence (http://www.bcs-sges.org/miprize/)