IEEE CONFERENCE NEWSLETTER News and Information for IEEE Conference Organizers 19 September 2007 (2007-09-20) - Vol. 6, No. 2 ************************************************************************ IEEE CO-SPONSORS FUTURE BOSTON IDEAJAM NEW ECOMMERCE GUIDELINES FOR CONFERENCE REGISTRATION PUBLISHING NEWS - ELECTRONIC COPYRIGHT FORM (eCF) MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING (MOU) CONFERENCE INSURANCE CONFERENCE FINANCIALS MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS IEEE NOW OFFERS REPRINTS OF CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS AS AN ADDED SERVICE TO PARTICIPANTS PANEL OF CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS (POCO) HIGHLIGHTS INDUSTRY NEWS IEEE CONFERENCE NEWSLETTER DISTRIBUTION IEEE CONFERENCE NEWSLETTER INDEX ONLINE ************************************************************************ IEEE CO-SPONSORS FUTURE BOSTON IDEAJAM: Participants Needed For IEEE-Sponsored Online IdeaJAM Competition Addressing Technology Challenges In City Of Boston IEEE is one of the sponsors of the FutureBOSTON IdeaJAM Online Competition - a six week, interactive symposium which utilizes social networking to create novel solutions to challenging urban problems facing the city of Boston, Mass. IEEE members and volunteers are invited to join in the competition, which enables participants to post, receive feedback and collaborate with experts on solutions in three key challenge areas - health, design and sustainability. From now through 15 October, visitors to the Site will have the opportunity to vote for the best ideas. Idea winners will have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with expert panelists and venture capitalists to explore the advancement of their proposals in the real world. For full details and rules, visit . NEW ECOMMERCE GUIDELINES FOR CONFERENCE REGISTRATION: New Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance standards for credit card processing have recently been established. The IEEE is dedicated to ensuring the best procedures are in place to protect members and customers' credit card information and has developed Guidelines for IEEE Conference Credit Card Payment Processing based on these new standards. This document provides a valuable summary of the methods, systems and processes that should be followed when processing credit cards. Specific areas covered are: - Current IEEE Offerings in Credit Card Processing - Third Party Processing - Manual Processing Guidelines - PCI Compliant Third Parties - Glossary of Credit Card Industry Terms - IEEE Contacts IEEE registration services through IEEE Meetings and Conference Management (MCM) are PCI compliant. If you are selecting your own registration vendor, please take a moment to look at these new standards and ask the appropriate PCI compliance questions located at . PUBLISHING NEWS - ELECTRONIC COPYRIGHT FORM (eCF): The electronic IEEE Copyright Form (eCF) was introduced to authors and volunteers a little over 3 years ago. Since its inception, the eCF has successfully proven itself to be a highly effective tool that not only accomplishes its main goal of transferring ownership rights of the intellectual property to IEEE, but does so by also saving significant amounts of time and effort on the part of IEEE authors, volunteers and staff. The eCF system is integrated with your conference's manuscript submission site to create a seamless process for authors to transfer copyright when they submit their manuscript. An electronic record of their copyright form is stored in IEEE's database, eliminating the need for your conference to collect and keep track of paper copyright forms. And because there are more and more IEEE authors for whom English is not the first language, a "wizard" telling authors which sections of the copyright form to fill out and where to affix their electronic signatures is now available in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and Russian. We invite all interested volunteers not currently using the eCF to go to the registration web page at Electronic Copyright Registration < http://ecopyright.ieee.org/registration/registration.html> to begin the process of setting up your site so that you, too, may be able to take advantage of this important tool. CONTACT Bill Hagen, IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office or +1 732 562 3966) if you would like to learn more about the eCF. MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING (MOU): Conference Services is actively requiring MOU for co-sponsorships of conferences and is requesting that MOUs be reviewed by Vita Feuerstein prior to obtaining signatures. An MOU is required when two or more organizational units agree to provide financial or technical co-sponsorship to a conference. These organizational units may be all IEEE organizational units or IEEE and other not-for-profit organizations. The MOU is used to explicitly define the relationship and obligations of all parties. Financial Co-Sponsorship indicates a shared and significant involvement in the technical, financial, publicity and administrative areas of the conference. Technical Co-Sponsorship indicates direct and substantial involvement solely in the organization of the technical program. There is no financial involvement in the conference. At a minimum, a MOU shall describe the following areas: - Financial sponsorship and responsibilities of each organizational unit. These arrangements are needed for both liability and surplus distribution purposes. - Ownership of the Intellectual Property associated with a conference. This includes use of the conference name, slogan, copyright for publications, and/or logo ownership. - A clause specifying whether the conference proceedings will be included in IEEE Conference Publications Program (CPP), which includes posting of the proceedings in IEEE's electronic database of articles. - Provisions for dissolving the relationship. - Complies with IEEE and other non-IEEE organization policies. - Assignment of conference management and other administrative responsibilities to the appropriate organizational units. - General conference management accountabilities such as assignment of chairs, organizational unit chairs for conference committees, steering committee obligations, location of the conferences, associated exhibitions, etc. For your convenience, MOU Templates can be found on the Conference Services website at . CONFERENCE INSURANCE: IEEE's insurance is intended to protect IEEE and its interest in the conferences in which it participates. In the case of a co-sponsored conference, IEEE maintains general liability insurance to cover any potential liabilities that could arise from its participation in the conference. This means that IEEE carries insurance only up to its financial involvement in the conference. IEEE does not include non-IEEE organizations on its insurance policies. It is prudent to ask the other non-IEEE co-sponsoring organizations if they carry liability insurance. In the event that the non-IEEE co-sponsoring organization does not have adequate insurance coverage, or carries no insurance (i.e. self-insuring), they should be aware of, and agree that, if a loss were to occur, they may be liable for a portion of the loss. CONFERENCE FINANCIALS: Conference Closing Penalty Fees Suspended for 2007 Conference Services is suspending penalty fees for past due conferences while we focus on closing out old conferences and improving service to you. No direct action is required by Conference Organizers or Societies in this regard. We hope this will free more time to partner with you in closing old conferences and servicing your present conference schedule. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact Rebekah Kerstetter at +1 732 562 5486 or . MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS: If you are planning a conference, you may find you need an additional email address to manage communications related to the conference. IEEE provides the ability for you to create such a functional alias. A functional alias is defined as a non-personal IEEE email alias that forwards to up to five individuals. If you need to create such an alias, please see IEEE Functional Alias Registration for the simple registration form at . IEEE NOW OFFERS REPRINTS OF CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS AS AN ADDED SERVICE TO PARTICIPANTS: Once your Conference Proceeding has been published, as an organizer, you can now offer IEEE Papers in print to your participants. Purchasing is easy, cost-effective and quick. We've been providing Reprints for many years because author's use them to extend the reach and value of their work. Having high-quality print copies on hand is a valuable tool in the careers and fields of your Conference Proceedings participants. You can find the order form at IEEE Ordering Reprints . PANEL OF CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS (POCO) HIGHLIGHTS: Perhaps you joined us July 13th and 14th at the second annual Panel of Conference Organizers' meeting in Vancouver, Canada? This year's theme was Building a Global Conference Business and we discussed a wide array of important conference topics from Pan-European VAT, to the Society Conference Portfolio and Conference Future Directions. We had presentations on 25 Years of Conference Lessons Learned, Region and Chapter Best Practices and a tutorial on Website Designs that get results and a primer on Conference Emergency Management. If you missed us in Vancouver, the POCO Presentations can be found on the Conference Services website at . INDUSTRY NEWS: U.S. Passport Rule Back in Effect Oct. 1 U.S. airline passengers will once again need valid passports in order to travel between the U.S. and Bermuda, the Caribbean, Canada, and Mexico starting Oct. 1, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. On September 30, a temporary rule is set to expire that permitted travelers who had applied for but did not yet receive U.S. passports to proceed with trips to countries within the Western Hemisphere, so long as they had a government-issued photo ID and proof that their passport applications were pending. The full press release can be viewed at: . (From This Week @ PCMA 5 September 2007) IEEE CONFERENCE NEWSLETTER DISTRIBUTION: The distribution of this newsletter includes all Conference Chairs, Conference Information Contacts, Conference Treasurers/Financial Officers, TAB, Society Presidents, Society Treasurers, and Regional Conference Coordinators. The distribution list is refreshed for each issue and includes only those volunteers involved with open conferences. Additionally, any volunteer wishing to receive continued delivery of this newsletter may opt-in at any time by sending a request to . IEEE CONFERENCE NEWSLETTER INDEX ONLINE: All back issues of the IEEE Conference Newsletter are available online in PDF format. The newsletter index can be accessed from the Conference Organizers Web Site , or directly at . ******************************************************************** Editor: John Wettlaufer IEEE Technical Activities telephone: +1 732 465 7809 email: (Anyone wishing to opt-in or opt-out for this newsletter's distribution may do so at any time by sending a request to .) (This newsletter is intended for the interest of IEEE conference volunteers and may be shared with other volunteers. The newsletter, in its entirety or in part, should not be sent to public bulletin board systems.)