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.