Minutes of founding ISAL Board meeting, 9 Sept 2001, Prague (at ECAL'01).
Board members present: Mark Bedau, Dario Floreano, John McCaskill, Masanori Sugisaka, Charles Taylor.
Visitors present: Jozeph Kelemen, Hussein Abbass.
The meeting was called to order at 1 p.m.
1. The ISAL Bylaws were approved unanimously after minimal revisions. A pressing task now is for the Board to approve membership fees and terms, and a Board subcommittee of Charles Taylor and Dario Floreano was created for the purpose of making recommendations to the Board on this matter early in October. These recommendations will depend on the contract between ISAL and MIT Press for publishing the Artificial Life journal, as well as a detailed appraisal of the Society's financial condition, and the subcommittee is charged with making recommendations on those matters, too.
The Board also created a subcommittee consisting of John McCaskill and Mark Bedau for the purpose of overseeing and creatively developing the Society's web presence.
2. The four mandated ISAL officers were elected unanimously, as follows:
President, Mark Bedau
Vice President, John McCaskill
Treasurer, Dario Floreano
Secretary, David Green -- contingent on his acceptance.
In addition, Masanori Sugisaka was unanimously elected to a newly created
office of Vice President for International Relations. The terms of all these
offices is two years, as specified in the Bylaws.
As specified in the Bylaws, the terms of the founding Board members were apportioned into two and four year terms (largely on the basis of who present at the meeting), as follows:
| Four year terms | Two year terms |
| Mark Bedau
Dario Floreano Masanori Sugisaka John McCaskill David Green |
Charles Taylor
David Green Tom Ray Inman Harvey Lee Altenberg Jean-Arcady Meyer |
3. The Board reviewed ISAL's financial condition. Preparation of a sensible budget for the society is a current priority (see 1 above). The Board also discussed its own responsibility for leadership in development work for the Society. Finding a person to coordinate and oversee development efforts is another high priority for the Society.
4. The Board received a report on the current status of the Artificial Life journal from Mark Bedau and Chuck Taylor. One pressing need is to cultivate future editors for the journal, and the Board discussed using the journal's Associate Editor positions for that purpose. Another pressing need is for a more active and creative Book Review Editor.
5. Hussein Abbass presented to the Board a proposal to have the Artificial Life VIII conference in Sydney in December of 2002, organized by Russell Standish, Hussein Abbass, and Mark Bedau. This proposal was approved unanimously by the Board.
The Board also discussed ways in which it might support and be supported by other conferences, such as the AROB, ECAL, GECCO, and SAB. The Board generated the following list of potential benefits to both parties:
How the allied conference benefits from ISAL
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- announcement of the conference on ISAL web site
- notice of conference on MIT Press's Cognet web site
- ISAL use its mailing list to publicize the conference
- notice of conference published in Artificial Life journal
- on special occassions, papers from the conference can be published
as a special issue of the Artificial Life journal
How ISAL benefits from the allied conference
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- advertize ISAL and ALJ at conference
- discount subscriptions to ISAL/ALJ for conference registrants
- ISAL members have reduced registration fee at allied conference
The meeting was adjourned at 5:30 p.m.