Draft Minutes of the 2004 ISCA Annual General Assembly - 6 October 2004,
Jeju Island, South Korea
1. Opening remarks and
minutes of the 2003 General assembly
The General Assembly is opened at 18.10 by the President, Sadaoki Furui, who
welcomes the 43 members present. The minutes of the 2003 General Assembly, which
had been posted on the ISCA website, are formally approved.
2. President's report
The president presents his report in the form of a Powerpoint presentation [Pdf
document]
3. Treasurer's report
The treasurer presents his report in the form of a Powerpoint presentation [document]
After a few requests for points of information from the floor, the reports are
formally approved.
4. Demonstration of
online archive
Wolfgang Hess (WH) demonstrates the online archive. He suggests, as a further
development of the archive, to include sound/video files linked to conference
presentations. A number of questions are asked from the floor. First, the issue
of availability of proceedings of ISCA-supported events is brought up. WH responds
that inclusion within the archive is dependent on the approval of the conference
organiser and invites further materials. There is a question about search capabilities.
WH answers that abstracts are easily searchable via a search engine because
they are in HTML. The issue of whether full papers should be in the public domain
rather than restricted to ISCA members was brought up. A number of other members
support the full release of the archive. The President responds that it was
a board decision to keep this archive as a membership benefit (abstracts are
full accessible) but that the matter could be discussed again. A member comments
that the ISCA archive is a major achievement of ISCA and thanks the Board for
its work. The President thanks Wolfgang Hess for his work on the archive.
5. ISCA Goals for 2004-5
The President presents the issues identified by the Board as major goals for
ISCA for 2004-5 (see powerpoint slide in President's report). He asks for comments
on these goals. A member comments that ISCA is doing good work in archiving
publications and suggests that ISCA should now be thinking of publishing its
own e-journal under its control, publishing original materials at low cost.
The Board answers that this is a major undertaking for an association of the
size of ISCA with only minimal staff, and that the association has good relation
with Elsevier which gives members access to Speech Communication subscriptions
at a reduced cost. It is also mentioned that such an activity would not be compatible
with ISCA's status in French law as a non-profit organisation, as it cannot
be in competition with commercial concerns. Another member commends the Board
for expanding its horizons and for bringing the Eurospeech and ICSLP series
of conferences together under the INTERSPEECH umbrella, but comments that the
Board is not very representative of the demographics of the membership and still
is perceived as a Eurocentric organisation. Members of the board answer that
elections to the Board (held in 2004, and to be held again in 2005) give a good
opportunity to the membership to redress any perceived imbalance and urge more
members to vote. There is a positive comment regarding the increase in student
involvement, and it is suggested that ISCA could take a greater role in bringing
students and potential employers together by enabling students to upload their
vitae on the website and encouraging employers to run interviews at INTERSPEECH
conferences. The President welcomes this excellent suggestion and replies that
this kind of activity is currently being planned by the Board.
6. Date and location
of next meeting
The next General Assembly is planned to be held on 6 September 2005 in Lisbon
during INTERSPEECH 2005 - Eurospeech. The President declares the meeting closed
at 19.10.