ISBA Program Committee Report

The Program Committee met in Capetown, South Africa, on December 1996. Present were Stephen Fienberg representing the ISBA Executive Committee, John Geweke, and Alicia Carriquiry. The main topics on the agenda were ISBA's upcoming meeting schedule in the short, medium, and long terms, and, more importantly, an operational procedure for establishing meeting schedules in the future. This report is an outgrowth of that meeting and subsequent correspondence among the members of the Program Committee.

ISBA sponsors or co-sponsors three types of meetings: (1) World meetings; (2) regional meetings; and (3) meetings primarily sponsored by other societies and co-sponsored by ISBA.

World meetings:

• Timing: Since 1993, ISBA has had four World meetings (San Francisco, Valencia, Oaxaca, Capetown) and will hold its fifth World Meeting in Istanbul, next August 1997. Dwindling numbers of participants, together with an increase in the number of statistical meetings in general, suggest a reduction in the frequency of World meetings. In this regard, the Program Committee recommends that World meetings be held every three or even four years, starting the new cycle with the VI World Meeting in the year 2000.

  Recommendation 1: That ISBA hold World meetings every four years.

  A four-year cycle would allow ISBA and Valencia meetings to alternate, providing one major Bayesian meeting every other year. The ISBA World meetings would then ``stand alone'' rather than be merely a ``satellite'' to another conference, as it has been so often in the past. ISBA World meetings have almost always been held in conjunction with other major meetings, and this has at least two disadvantages: (1) it diminishes the stature of ISBA's World meetings; (2) it imposes the burden on ISBA's delegates of having to choose whether to submit their paper to ISBA's World meeting or to the other major conference.

• Venue: Regarding venue, the Committee recommends that suggestions be requested from the ISBA membership, subject to the following criteria:
  • World meetings should be held in locations easily accessible to a large proportion of our membership around the world.
  • A local organizing committee needs to be in place before we commit to a venue. This local organizing committee would assume primary responsibility for the usual organizational tasks. A Conference Manual modeled after the manual used by the International Biometric Society will be developed by the Program Committee in time for the Istanbul meeting. The manual will then be available for distribution to future organizing committees. [Note 1: The IBS Conference Manual is the only manual we are aware of, and thus was chosen as a model. Note 2: timing is subject to our obtaining a copy of the IBS conference manual sometime soon.]
  • Ideally, local institutions would provide some funds for the running of the meeting and other expenses. Thus, the availability of local funds should be kept in mind when choosing a venue.

  Recommendation 2: A. That ISBA's Program Committee solicit suggestions for future World meeting venues from the Membership. B. That accessibility and availability of local resources serve as selection criteria.

• Funding: World meetings need to be organized with ample lead time. One and one-half to two years would seem the minimum amount of time needed to plan and organize a World meeting of the quality required by ISBA. With enough planning time, it will be possible to request funds from institutions and government agencies such as the National Science Foundation in the United States, to help with travel costs of participants, especially those coming from developing countries. Special emphasis should be placed on raising enough funds to bring students, young researchers, and researchers from developing countries to future World meetings. ISBA's Program Chair, and the meeting organizing and local committees would be primarily responsible for soliciting funds from the appropriate agencies. As with the Conference Manual, the Program Committee will prepare a Proposal Manual to guide future committees raising funds. The Proposal Manual will include a set of proposals that have been successfully submitted by other conference organizers (not necessarily associated with ISBA) to a variety of agencies.

  Recommendation 3: That funds be raised to increase participation of students, young researchers, and members from developing countries (including Eastern European countries) in ISBA World Meetings.

Regional meetings:

• Timing and Venue: Regional meetings have been held in Toronto and Chicago, as satellite meetings to the Joint Statistical Meetings. We expect an increase in the number of Regional meetings due mainly to:
  • The creation of several ISBA chapters, in India, Chile, and soon Southern Africa, which will be holding their own regional meetings. As an example, the Chile Chapter held its II Seminar on Bayesian Statistics in Antofagasta, Chile, January 8-10, 1997.
  • The decrease in the frequency of ISBA World meetings.
  The ISBA Program Committee will not be primarily responsible for scheduling future Regional meetings. Rather, local organizing committees are expected to submit a request for meeting to ISBA's Program Committee, with a proposed date and venue for the meeting. ISBA will then evaluate each request on its own merits and in relation to other requests that may have been submitted by other groups. The idea is to avoid inefficiencies such as sponsorship of different meetings in the same region at the same time.

  Recommendation 4: That the Program Committee inform the full membership that a request for meeting is to be submitted to ISBA when organizing Regional meetings.

  The Executive Board should consider imposing a limitation on the number of Regional meetings that will be allowed per year.

• Funding: ISBA will not take responsibility for raising money to finance Regional meetings. However, ISBA should assist organizing committees by officially endorsing proposals for funds where necessary, for example.

  Recommendation 5: That funding for Regional meetings will be the responsibility of the corresponding organizing committees.

  Co-sponsorship:

  ISBA has co-sponsored several meetings in the past. Two recent examples are the meeting in honor of Seymour Geisser, held in Taiwan in 1994, and the NSF-NBER Econometrics Seminar, Chicago, 1996. We are already committed to co-sponsoring the MaxEnt Workshop to be held in Boise, Idaho, in August 1997, and request for co-sponsorships have been received from the MaxEnt group for their next workshop, and from a member of the organizing committee for the IV International Forensic Statistics Conference, to be held in 1999.

  It is difficult to come up with a set of general rules for co-sponsorship of meetings. Clearly, issues related to timing and venue will often be out of our control, and the decision to lend ISBA's name should be made at each instance, depending on criteria including: (1) quality and appropriateness; (2) whether the conference theme is of potential interest to ISBA membership; (3) timing; (4) who the other co-sponsoring organizations are.

  ISBA should be selective about granting co-sponsorship, and actively participate in the organization of the meeting and in the meeting itself once a decision to co-sponsor has been reached by the Board. Ideally, ISBA members should: (1) participate in the organizing committee of any meeting ISBA is co-sponsoring, and (2) be encouraged to present talks at the meeting. To ensure that ISBA can be an active player in the organization of the meeting, we will only consider requests for sponsorship received no later than 10 months to a year prior to the meeting time.

  Recommendation 6: That the decision to co-sponsor be based on a set of criteria that includes (1) quality and appropriateness; (2) potential interest to ISBA membership; (3) timing. ISBA will only consider requests for sponsorship received no later than 10 months to a year prior to the meeting time; (4) who the other co-sponsoring organizations are.

  Informing our membership:

  Once the Program Committee, in consultation with the Executive Board, finalizes a document that outlines the rules for organizing and co-sponsoring meetings, the document's content will need to be summarized for the membership. The Program Committee will be primarily responsible for writing, for the next issues of the ISBA Newsletter, articles containing the following information:

  • ISBA's new mechanisms for planning World, Regional, and co-sponsored meetings, including new rules to be followed by those planning to organize a meeting. Request for meeting sample forms will also be published.
  • Requests for suggestions regarding the World meeting schedule. We need to solicit suggestions for venues for the year 2000 World meeting, since planning for that meeting should ideally begin one year from now.
  • A list of upcoming Regional meetings.
  • A list of those meetings that ISBA is planning to co-sponsor in the course of the coming year, to give membership enough time to submit abstracts.