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Board Meeting Summary

by Ellie Young
Executive Director
<ellie@usenix.org>

Here is a summary of the actions taken at the regular meeting of the USENIX Board of Directors held on November 5-6, 1998, in Berkeley, CA.

Attendance: USENIX Board: Geer, Honeyman, Hume, Parseghian, Pomeranz, Rose, and Zwicky. USENIX Staff/Guests: Young, Berkowitz, Barnett, DesHarnais, Klein, Deno, Long, Appelman, Johnson, Miller, Stoughton, and Suski.

Proposals for Funding

USACO. The proposal to continue funding the USA Computing Olympiad (which selects and trains the US team for the International Olympiad in Informatics) was approved.

Software Patent Institute. A proposal from the Software Patent Institute for a grant of $55,000 to continue to expand and improve the SPI database of software technologies was approved. This database is presently accessible to the public, with the goal of helping patent applicants and the US Patent & Trade Office issue validated patents in the software field.

Incident Cost Analysis & Modeling Project Frequency Study. A request from the University of Michigan for funding support of $64,510 for this project was approved. The project is designed to provide system administrators with additional information regarding which IT related risks are of highest priority to address, about factors relating to occurrence, costs, and how best to manage certain risks, and how to cost-effectively manage incidents. The project also provides a valuable and active learning environment for graduate students wishing to explore the economic as well as technical aspects of IT related events.

USENIX Scholastic Committee. An additional $20,000 was allocated to fund research grants and scholarships for the December 1998 round of applications.

Standards. Stoughton's proposal for a moderate increase in our involvement, covering the new POSIX revision proj-ects, membership in The Open Group, and attending meetings of the TOG Base Working Group was approved. Hall and Stoughton will look into the possibility of funding members of the Linux community to attend meetings.

Berkeley Foundation for Opportunity in Information Technology. It was agreed to become a founding donor of this project with a donation of $10,000. BFOIT has been recently formed to assist women and underrepresented minority students enter the IT industry. Assistance will include providing financial aid for students, create relationships with local IT corporations for jobs and internships, and other support as needed for students doing IT coursework in CS and electrical engineering.

Draft Budget 1999

The assumptions behind the first draft budget for 1999 were discussed. It was decided that we should continue to budget conservatively for conference attendance, especially since this is an area that is vulnerable to economic downturns; that we increase the marketing budget for the Security symposium; that we consider increasing fees and dues to handle the increase in the number of events we are sponsoring (going from 8 to 12 in 1999), the rising costs of holding conferences, and the increased costs of serving the membership.

A marketing advisory committee of the Board was formed to look into issues such as brand recognition, how we measure and correlate the results of our marketing efforts, and how we can increase attendance at some of our smaller or newer conferences.

Membership Dues

After discussion about the increased costs of providing services to a greater number of members (while dues have not been raised since 1994), it was agreed to set fees as follows:

	1999	2000
Individual	$80	$95
Supporting	$1000	$1000
	$2500	$2500
Educational	$200	$200
Corporate	$400	$400
Affiliates	$75	$90

Conference Registration Fees

The staff's report revealed that the costs for putting on conferences have skyrocketed in the past couple of years, while USENIX registration fees continue to be among the lowest. It was agreed to raise fees for the next two years as follows:

Tutorials
1999	2000
$395 one day	$445 one day
$690 two days	$740 two days
$985 three days	$1035 three days

Three Days of Tech Sessions

1999 2000

$400 $435

Two Days of Tech Sessions

1999 2000

$360 $410

It was also decided the conference registration fees for students will remain the same ($75), and the non-member conference fees will be the conference member rate plus the cost of an individual membership.

Electronic Voting

It was agreed that Young will look into enabling electronic voting for the next USENIX Board elections, especially exploring what the auditors' recommendations would be regarding tabulating votes electronically.

Privacy Statement

The Board voted to adopt a USENIX policy statement and to publish it in ;login: (see page 82) and on our Web site.

Staffing

Young reported that there had been a lot of staff turnover recently. She has hired a new publications director, Jane-Ellen Long, to replace Eileen Cohen, who was retiring from full-time work; she has hired a Deputy Executive Director, Gale Berkowitz, to handle operations, SAGE, finances and other projects; two other admin positions for member services and publications/ Web have been filled (by Cami Edwards and Jennifer Radtke), and the conference office has hired a new assistant, Vanessa Fonseca. It is anticipated that additional personnel for marketing and the executive office will be needed in 1999.

Embedded Systems Conferences

It was agreed to co-sponsor this conference with the MIT Media Lab with Michael Hawley and Dan Geer as co-chairs.

In Memoriam

It was agreed to publish tributes to the recent deaths of Jon Postel and John Lions.

BOD Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held February 21 in New Orleans, LA.