In early 2001, Tom Wiener, the former president of the OES, asked me to head a committee to formalize our conference activities, finding the proper balance between the responsibility of the sponsoring society and the authority and autonomy of the local organizing committee, and improving the management of our conferences so that our technical, professional, and financial goals are met.
This first committee, which I named CoCoPo (Committee on Conference Policies) had four main objectives:
• Issue #1: Conference Guidelines
• Issue #2: Multiple Conferences
• Issue #3: Conference Benefits
• Issue #4: Conference Regional Support
Cocopo included MTS members and rapidly came up with answers directed to the four issues stated. It was quite clear that the conference guidelines (agreed upon in 1999) were an extremely good starting point. Nevertheless, the guideline application needed to be more stringently imposed on the local organizing committee. Indeed, in order to keep a level of continuity from conference to conference, a complete set of tools needed to be developed: in particular a permanent Technical Program Committee had to be created, a first database of conference “facts” (topics, attendees, exhibitors, …) had also to be created, a website link had to be developed, and a metric for assessing the quality of a conference had to be developed.
All agreed on experimenting on a two conference-a-year concept. The first one to be in 2005. The scheme that was selected is the following: an Oceans Conference every year in Northern America with the participation of MTS, an alternating conference every other odd year in Europe and every other even year in Asia-Pacific, only sponsored by IEEE/OES. I am pleased, as general chairman of the first of this new series of OCEANS conferences – IEEE Oceans’05 Europe in Brest, France – to confirm that this scheme was very successful and highly beneficial.
The parameters for defining a metric for conference benefits are still under discussion. We need more data and criteria to design a model that would consider the uniqueness of the varied areas (Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific) for the proposed venues.
On the fourth issue, we have seen a growth trend in Europe raised by the prospect of hosting an OCEANS conference. New chapters have been formed: where we had only two (France, Norway) and then one when the Norwegians dissolved because no conference was granted to them, we have now 4 to 5 (with the addition of Italy, Spain and soon Germany and UK).
In order to implemented these new concepts, CoCoPo evolved, by mid 2002 - into a new structure: JOAB for Joint Ocean Advisory Board (Dick Butler, MTS and René Garello, OES, co-chairs). The idea was, at the same time, to create the tools necessary for insuring a sustainable procedure for the OCEANS conferences and to support the coming “future” ones. The first in line were the 2005 conferences. Our first goal was to select a Web contractor to assist the local committee to go all electronic (from abstract to Proceedings), but also to begin implementing all the tools for allowing a smooth transition between conferences (pertinent and mandatory documents, database, mailing lists, …). The second subject under consideration was the use of a contractor (with different roles) vs a paid consultant. In this latter case the consultant would have interacted with the JOAB chairs, the advisors and the local committees (IEEE GRSS model). In the case of single contractor, the discussion revolved around the limitations of their action: should they oversee all aspects of the conference or just be assigned specific tasks (such as hotel negotiations for instance). Nothing is easy: it took us a year and a half to finally agree on the definition and the selection of both contractors.
In the meantime, a full definition of the roles and relation between JOAB and RECON (the Reconnaissance Committee headed by Joe Vadus) was discussed and agreed on. A charter describing both bodies was written (cf. attached documents). To make a long story short, the conference venue selection and committee process starts about 5 years prior to a given conference. RECON either is solicited or solicits a given venue (or venues if several candidates); it’s main role is then to support the core of the local committee to provide an estimated budget, a full set of documents on the venue itself (conference center, hotels, local arrangements, …), a theme for the conference, a complete organizing committee, the local support and local arrangements for the attendees. A formal presentation to JOAB, RECON and MTS/OES leaders is scheduled 4 years prior to the conference. JOAB is then in charge of making a recommendation to the MTS and OES Board/AdCom in order to grant (or not) the conference to the venue. If agreed, a letter of appointment and a Memorandum of Agreement are signed between the presidents of the societies and the general chair of the conference (cf. attached documents). JOAB is then in charge of advising/supporting/counseling the upcoming conference.
Coming back to the Web Company and the management contractor, we finally selected Veraprise Inc. for the former and IEEE CMS (Conference and Management Services) for the latter. In this case we asked for an “a la carte” service depending on the needs of the local committee. Veraprise proved to be an extremely valuable choice as all the tools for handling the technical part of the conference were delivered in time and tested in real-life context: the OCEANS’05 conferences (Europe and Americas). Again, as general chair of Oceans’05 Europe, I can testify of the net benefit we got from this move. Apart the first step in the continuity and the corporate memory we are seeking, a substantial economy was indeed realized. The next step will be to implement a delegate registration tool in order to be able to cross-check the author’s database more easily.
We have achieved in 4 years a great part of the challenge that was proposed by Tom Wiener. We have evolved from a first concept – the advisors revolving around a paid consultant – to a more internal to the societies approach: a Web exchange between the local organizing committees, the advisors and the data. JOAB has still lots of “bread to cut on the table”, as we say in French: define a consistent and fixed set of technical topics to propose to the prospective authors (the continuity challenge), propose a new “Procedures and Policies” document that will supersede the present guidelines, conduct a detailed survey of the conferences to identify critical parameters and develop a set of success criteria.

René Garello (M’85; SM’96) was born in 1953. He received the Ph.D. degree in Signal Processing at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG) in 1981. From 1982 to 1984 he worked as a Research Associate at Aeronomy Lab, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado (USA). He joined the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne (ENST Bretagne), Brest, France in 1985. In 1988 he became Professor in this engineering school in the field of signal processing and image processing and in 1995, Prof. Garello obtained his Habilitation (HDR; Habilitation to Supervise Research).
Prof. Garello (together with Jean-Yves Jourdain, Thomson Marconi Sonar) has started a French IEEE/OES chapter in 1993 of which he became chairman in 1995. Since 1997 this chapter has been extended to all of Region 8 (except Norway), i.e. around 300 active members. He was in charge of the Student Poster Competition in the Organizing Committee for OCEANS’94, held in Brest, France. He has been co-organizing this competition (together with Norman Miller) for the following OCEANS’ series of conferences. For OCEANS’98, held in Nice, France, he was co-chair of the Technical Program Committee, Chair of the publicity Committee and Chair of the Student poster Competition. He is also, since 1997, Associate Editor for Region 8 of the Journal of Oceanic Engineering.
Prof. Garello was an elected AdCom member from 1999 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2005. In the beginning of 2001, he headed the Committee on Conference Policies (CoCoPo) which was in charge of defining a new set of Conference Policies and Procedures in order to insure continuity between the successive OCEANS conferences. This committee jointly held with MTS members defined several new approaches and came up with the concept of two Oceans-a-year (every year in Northern America, every other odd year in Europe and every other even year in Asia-Pacific). In order to implement this plan a new committee was formed: the Joint Oceans Advisory Board or JOAB, of which Prof. Garello is the co-chair. The first actions consisted of implementing a permanent OCEANS Website facility with all the necessary tools for going ALL electronics (from abstracts/papers collection to CD/DVD Proceedings). The second action was the research of an “a la carte” contractor for handling all conference related items not supported by a given local organizing committee (ranging from hotel negotiation to registration supervision).
Prof. Garello was the General Chairman of the first OCEANS of the new Two-Oceans-a-year concept: Oceans’05 Europe held in Brest, France in June 2005.
Prof. Garello is also an active member of the IEEE/GRS (Geoscience and Remote Sensing) Society.
His main research interests lie in Remote Sensing, 2D signal processing, statistical and spectral analysis applied to ocean surface features detection and characterization.