Below are notes for:

• ICC/Globecom Track Chairs
• Organizing the DSTC Meeting at ICC/Globecom
• Statistics for ICC/Globecom DSTC Track
• Advertising Calls for Papers, Calls for Nominations, etc.
• Listserv mailing list
• People at Comsoc

ComSoc Recertification

Every 3–4 years, ComSoc recertifies the technical committees.  The chair answers the questionnaire provided by ComSoc

• TC_recertification_Questionnaire_2013 — Results 2013
• TC_recertification_Questionnaire_2017

ICC/Globecom Track Chairs

This describes how to request and run a Data Storage Track in the Symposium on Selected Areas on Communications (SAC). Note that ICC and Globecom consist of several symposia, of which SAC is special, because it is subdivided into tracks — data storage is one of those tracks.

As Track Chair, your major responsiblities include:

• Writing and submitting a proposal for the Data Storage Track.
• Attending TPC Meetings. These are held at the three ICC/Globecom conferences before your confernce. The meeting one year before is most important. If you cannot attend, find someone to attend instead of you.
• Selecting TPC members.
• Advertising, usually sending out CFPs on the DSTC mailing list.
• Assigning submitted papers to TPC members, and making sure each paper gets 3 reviews.
• Advising on paper accept/reject decision, but the decision is based heavily on numerical scores, with a score weights and acceptance threshold set by the conference.
• Allocating papers to sessions and finding a session chair.

The following is a timeline of the activities. There is some variation for each conference, but is roughly consistent. TPC Chair means the TPC Chair of ICC/Globecom. DSTC Representative and Track Chair means you, the person running the Data Storage Track in SAC. TPC Member means the TPC members of the Data Storage Track, who were invited by the Track Chair.

1. About 25 months before the conference, the TPC Chair of ICC/Globecom solicits proposals from the technical committee chairs.
2. The DSTC Chair nominates you to be the DSTC Representative. The deadline in step 3 is predictable (and sometimes tight), so the chair should have a nominee in advance.
3. 24 months before The deadline for the Data Storage Track proposal, written by you, the DSTC Representative. See below for examples — it is acceptable to do a lot of copy-and-paste.
4. 21 months before Acceptance notification. If accepted, the DSTC Representative becomes the Track Chair.
5. 18 months before TPC meeting at ICC/Globecom — attend if possible.
6. 17 months before TPC Chair may request a CFP for the track. Also, please send your CFP to the DSTC Secretrary to put on the DSTC web site. If you like, begin informally recruiting TPC members (i.e. through a personal email).
7. 12 months before TPC meeting at ICC/Globecom — this is the most important meeting to attend, where you learn about the specific policies, which may differ from what is written here.
8. 11-12 months before TPC Chair will open EDAS for the track chairs. You can now send official invitations to TPC members from EDAS. At first, you may find EDAS difficult to use as a track chair, even if you have already used it as an author and reviewer. EDAS will open for submissions soon after this.
9. 9-12 months before Advertising. From the time EDAS opens for submissions, until the paper submissions actually close, you should periodically send CFP annoucements to the DSTC mailing list, by sending the CFP to dstc@ieee.org. Annoucements like “EDAS has opened”, “1 month until deadline”, “deadline extended” are useful for authors who are actively considering publishing at ICC/Globecom. Make a post on the DSTC Linkedin group as well.
10. 9 months before Paper submission deadline. Usually extended 1-2 weeks.
11. After the submission closes, begin assigning papers to TPC members immediately. Each paper needs 3 high quality reviews. You should be able to add TPC members to fill gaps in expertise. Please send the final list of TPC Members to the DSTC Secretary to put on the DSTC web site.
12. 7 months before Review deadlines. You should remind slow reviewers, find alternate reviewers etc., for papers with missing reviews.
13. 6 months before TPC meeting at ICC/Globecom — attend if possible.
14. 5 months before Author accept/reject notificaiton sent by TPC Chair.
15. 3 months before You allocate papers to sessions, and find a session chair. Done on EDAS.

Statistics for ICC/Globecom DSTC Track

Below are a few statstics for recent ICC/Globecom DSTC Tracks.

The acceptance rate is fixed at around 40% by the conference. To increase the number of published papers, the number of submissions must be increased.

Each paper requires a minimum of 3 reviews. Typically, each TPC member handles 2 to 3 paeprs each.

Organizing the DSTC Meeting at ICC/Globecom

Normally a DSTC meeting is held at each ICC/Globecom, and room reservation deadline is about 3 months before the conference. The DSTC Chair, the data storage track chair or some other officer usually takes responsibliity for reserving the room and running the meeting.

The room schedule for ICC is at http://www.comsoc.org/gc/iccmeetingschedule and there is a link to the page where you make the reservation. Recently June Leach-Barnaby (j.leachbarnaby@comsoc.org) at ComSoc has helped with the reservations.

Usually the room reservation deadline comes after the technical program has been published, so you can see when the data storage track is held, and adjust the DSTC meeting accordingly. You can request the DSTC meeting on the same day as the Data Storage Session, but since times are not guaranteed, it can make for a tight schedule (at ICC 2014, the DSTC meeting ended at 2 pm, and the data storage track began at 2 pm, but the two were in different hotels, requiring time to move).

Advertising Calls for Papers, Calls for Nominations, etc.

Here are some ways to advertise DSTC-related calls and events:

• Post on the mailing list by sending the message to dstc@ieee.org. See also Mailing List.
• Post on the Information Theory Society web site
• Inclusion in various news letters:
  • IEEE Magnetics Society newsletter
  • IEEE ComSoc newsletter
  • IEEE Information Theory Society newsletter
• Post on the DSTC LinkedIn group
• Use the DSTC logo in your postings

Listserv mailing list

The DSTC mailing list runs on the IEEE listserv:

• Post a message by emailing to dstc@ieee.org.
• “Editors” are people who can post to the list directly. Editors are the current officers, upcoming ICC/Globecom track chairs, committee chairs, etc.
• Any one else can post, but the posting must be approved by the “moderator”.
• The moderator is generally the Secretrary. Posts within the scope of the DSTC are approved, others (including non-data storage CFPs) are not.
• The list owner is generally the Secretrary. Change roles on listserv.

IEEE listserv has the advantage that it is easy to change management to another officer when the term ends, it also provides a the IEEE address dstc@ieee.org. But listserv is a bit dated in its interface — users generally change subscriptions options by sending listserv commands by email, for example Unsubscribe: listserv@listserv.ieee.org with subject and body “unsubscribe dstc”.

A few people have multiple addresses on the list, so the actual number of subscribers is slightly lower.

People at Comsoc

• June Leach-Barnaby, Assoc. Manager M and C, j.leachbarnaby@comsoc.org — help with meeting rooms at GC/ICC
• Natasha Simonovski n.simonovski@comsoc.org or David Alvarez — “You can reach out to David or Natasha for web server support”

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