Participants
Elected Members
Ex Officio Members
Agenda / minutes
Minutes of the previous meeting - approved
Raising ETHICOMP profile & visibility:
Logo - 2 versions left (thank you Don!). Wilhelm will create a poll, each SC member gets one vote, URL will be send around.
Website - Bill gives a concise update concerning the domain name, more news later. Content of the website: who we are/what we're doing/our concerns; ETHICOMP's history; short bio of each SC member; list of past conferences and, if possible, a link to the past programs and proceedings; topic page (to show that computer ethics, AI ethics, tech ethics, ... have been addressed since decades)
Wikipedia - Andrew notes that SC members are not allowed to create it (violation of Wikipedia's standards). Kai asks: can we ask one of our students and give them credits? Andrew suggests to send out an email message to the ETHICOMP community ('it's a shame we don't have a page on Wikipedia and the SC cannot create it'), incl. a call (i.e. ask someone in the community to create it). Sources for the Wikipedia page: perhaps not the website, but the past proceedings, incl. Catherine's paper on 20 years of ETHICOMP. Example that Andrew sends around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conference_on_Automated_Deduction
Social media - Gosia has access to both the Twitter and the FB account (https://www.facebook.com/ETHICOMP-922367214442115/). It might be good to give someone of the 2020 committee access as well.
App - Andrew sends around his updated review of Conference Program Apps
Press and media - Please think about ideas to include local and international media, in order to gain visibility. Perhaps invite people to talk about us (remark by Wilhelm). For this reason, the website (and Wikipedia page) should include key terms such as 'computer ethics', 'AI ethics', 'tech ethics', etc. (remark by Alexis). Andrew says that New Scientist UK used to send a journalist to a conference. Call for action to the SC and ETHICOMP 2020 committee: please make a list of interesting magazines/journalists/bloggers/... and target them for the 2020 conference (as soon as the basic program is known).
(Code of Conduct - not discussed)
ETHICOMP 2020 (extensive update by Mario):
Call for Tracks - accept/reject deadline is today. All tracks are accepted, Mario will notify the track chairs today. Important remark by Andrew: perhaps it might be good to merge tracks, e.g. track 1, 4 and 7 might have overlaps. Mario will not set a limit to the max. amount of papers (too soon to do this), but some papers might be turned into a panel later (if we have a lot of submissions), a number of track chairs will allow this. ETHICOMP 2018 received about 99 submissions. Remark by Alexis: please take into consideration that people will also withdraw papers. Andrew notes that 3 parallel sessions is the maximum (we agreed on this in the past), because otherwise the audience can get too split. Tracks that receive not enough papers will change to the open track.
Time schedule - looks good, agreed upon. People will have 6 months to book flights etc. Deadline for resubmissions (in case of soft reject) also included
Call for Abstracts - will be sent out on 17 June. Important remark: include an 'Open track'. The call for abstracts has to contain very clear descriptions, because otherwise scholars might get confused about which track to submit their paper to. So we have to be very clear about this (also to avoid that we discourage people to submit a paper because tracks seem too strict at first sight). Mario will send out the template email before 17 June to some SC members, in order to check clarity, language, etc. Call for action to the SC and ETHICOMP 2020 committee: from the moment the call for abstracts has been sent out, please distribute it widely (network, colleagues, research group, mailing lists, social media, LinkedIn, ...)!
Publication options - accepted abstracts (not full papers) will be published in proceedings with ISBN + authors can submit (if they want to) full papers to a book (with ISBN). Andrew asks to make the papers available as a preprint to attendees (also the ones that are not included in the book or in the proceedings)
Other updates concerning 2020 - submissions will be to EasyChair. They are working on the keynotes. They are also working on information about travel and accommodation, but they will not receive prices before the end of the year... Updates about e.g. budget planning, registrations, ... will follow later
Any other business - Katleen asked for other issues, none of them popped up. Don't hesitate to send her an email in case of ideas, questions, ... (k.gabriels@maastrichtuniversity.nl)
Next meeting - The next meeting takes place 17 September, 3 pm (Brussels time). Have a nice summer! On the agenda: updates ETHICOMP 2020 / updates increasing our visibility (we have a logo!) / app (cf. mail Andrew) / dissemination CfP / ETHICOMP 2021 / 2020 = 25th anniversary ETHICOMP / domain transfer ETHICOMP.org
Appendix - Conference calendar:
• 13th May 2019: Call for tracks
• 14th May 2019: Tracks submission open
• 3rd June 2019: Tracks submission due
• 10th June 2019: Tracks accept/reject decision
• 17th June 2019: Call for abstracts sent out by
• 2nd July 2019: Abstract submissions open
• 30th October 2019: Abstract submission due
• 30th November: Reviews due
• 15th December: Accept / accept with changes / reject decisions
• 16th March: Final paper(s) due