ITG Meeting Minutes
Chris Forsythe, jcforsy@sandia.gov
Sandia National Labs
The following notes summarize the annual business meeting of the Internet Technical Group held about a month ago at the HFES meetings in Houston, Texas USA.
The meeting began with Pawan Vora summarizing the accomplishments of ITG over the past year. It has only been one year since ITG was officially recognized by HFES. Over the past year, membership has grown to over 1,300. Quarterly issues of the newsletter Internetworking have been published. The 5th HFWeb conference was held in June. And in Houston, the ITG had its first program at the annual HFES meetings. Finally, Pawan announced that Chris Forsythe will take his position as chair on an interim basis until an election can be held after the first of the year.
Gavin Lew, program chair, discussed ITG annual meeting activities. At the 1999 meetings, ITG sponsored a paper and a panel session and co-sponsored a panel with the Communications Technical Group. ITG sponsored two other activities that were unique for HFES. The first was an Interactive session at which there was an open discussion of practitioners regarding two sample web design projects. The second was a two session demonstration at which presenters provided attendees a hands-on opportunity to try-out new Internet products. Additionally, ITG members participated in a highly enjoyable social sponsored by the CTG.
Submissions have been received for the 2000 meetings in San Diego. There is concern that ITG will only have four sessions and this is not sufficient for the number of submissions that have been received. This was also a problem with the 1999 meetings and concern was expressed that 2001 may be the same. Ram Bishu has volunteered to work to secure more sessions for ITG at the 2001 meetings. Finally, Gavin announced that Rachel Young will take the position of program chair for the 2001 meetings.
There was discussion that ITG could do more to market itself and through doing so, increase submissions, attendance and its presence at the annual meetings. Sanjay Batra volunteered to work on the marketing of ITG. Chris Forsythe will provide Sanjay with the marketing plan that Martha Lindeman has developed for the ITG.
The issue was raised that the conference facilities did not provide an Internet connection at the ITG sessions. It was agreed that this should be an essential requirement for future meetings. This requirement will be emphasized in the paperwork for future ITG sessions.
Judy Cantor, editor of Internetworking, discussed the lack of submissions to the newsletter. Internetworking is gaining a good reputation and there have been numerous requests from other organizations to link to Internetworking. Judy asked that everyone think about submissions and ask people they know to do the same. Wendy Chisholm agreed to provide a regular section addressing accessibility issues. This is particularly noteworthy since she is moving to the W3 and will have valuable insights concerning their activities.
There was comment that the URL for the ITG web pages and Internetworking are both awkward. Pawan indicated that this will be resolved once the ITG web site moves to the HFES web server.
Michelle Vincow volunteered to assure the ITG web page and Internetworking are registered with the search engines. Pawan will coordinate reciprocal links with the other related HFES Technical Groups.
Issues were raised regarding the HFES submission process. In particular, many papers are submitted that are rejected, but with relatively minor revisions, the shortcomings could be corrected making the paper acceptable.
The submission process allows only one shot. Likewise, there is no mechanism for late-breaking results. With the pace of technology development, it is not practical to have to wait nine months to a year before results are publicized. There was discussion of a session devoted to late-breaking results. Gavin has placed a request with HFES for an additional session(s) at the 2000 meetings for this purpose. Shawn Henry has agreed to chair such a session. It was also suggested that in 2000, space could be requested at the poster session for papers for which there was not space at the allotted sessions. Ideally, this space would include an Internet connection for live demonstrations. Tom Woods volunteered to work with Gavin to make these arrangements.
HF/Web ConferencesJudy suggested that with HFWeb being an official ITG event, there may be opportunities to take advantage of the tax-free status of HFES. In particular, substantial funds were required for the 5th HFWeb and these were obtained through corporate sponsors. It was a tremendous effort in 1999 that might not be repeatable in upcoming years. By selling the proceedings, or similar arrangements, it was suggested that some of the costs could be covered.
There is no host identified for HFWeb in 2001. Chris Forsythe indicated that Sandia National Labs would be a potential host. There would be no facility costs, but funding to cover breaks and lunch could be problematic. Ram Bishu offered to check on the possibility of the University of Nebraska Lincoln hosting HFWeb.
There was discussion of starting international counterparts to HFWeb. Marco Botta volunteered to investigate holding HFWeb in the south of France. Max Chin discussed funding available from the government of Taiwan for such activities and volunteered to investigate Taiwan as a potential HFWeb location.
Mathew Zaleski discussed an idea for an event that involved holding a contest for hackers in which they would be challenged to break a known security system. This would be an extremely high-risk event with definite human factors implications, but concern was expressed that HFES might not be the right venue. It was suggested that another more appropriate venue could be identified, such as InternetWorld, with ITG linked to the event. Mathew volunteered to explore this possibility.
Jason Levin suggested seeking sponsorship for HFWeb from one of the larger computer user groups. Los Angeles and San Francisco were mentioned as possibilities. Jason volunteered to look into this suggestion and Sanjay volunteered to explore publicity opportunities with user groups.
© Internet Technical Group
Last update: December 12, 1999
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