Minutes of the TPHOLs Business Meeting

• 11 September 2007, 17:30
• University of Kaiserslautern, 42-105
• taken by Jens Brandt

Attendance List

Sa'ed Abed, Bahzad Akbarpour, Hasan Amjad, Yves Bertot, Jens Brandt, Lukas Bulwahn, Holger Gast, Mike Gordon, Hanne Gottliebsen, Florian Haftmann, John Harrison, Peter Homeier, Joe Hurd, Florian Kammüller, Alexander Krauss, Magnus Myreen, Larry Paulson, Klaus Schneider, Konrad Slind, Christoph Sprenger, Tobias Nipkow, Michael Norrish, Sofiène Tahar, Laurent Théry, Thomas Türk, Christian Urban, Makarius Wenzel, Burkhart Wolff

Summary of TPHOLs 2007

Klaus Schneider gives some statistical data about submission, attendence and programme of TPHOLs 2007 (see slides).

There were problems with the TPHOLs 2008 selection procedure. There was a high number of votes from outside the TPHOLs community. Larry Paulson proposes a better definition of the people that are eligible to vote, e.g. people that have attended TPHOLs previously or people that have had a paper at TPHOLs. Tobias Nipkow suggests to create a steering committee: This would allow a better planning of conferences, especially for co-locations. Yves Bertot agrees that an election one year in advance is not enough, but suggests to organise the selection process two years in advance, i.e. the European organiser helps to select the next European one, the North American to select the next North American one.

Everybody agrees to create a preliminary steering committee, which should prepare a new selection process. The following persons are nominated: Mike Gordon, John Harrison, John Matthews, Matthew Kaufmann, Tom Melham, Tobias Nipkow, Michael Norrish, Natarajan Shankar and Laurent Théry. Furthermore, the steering committee should always include the conference chairs of current and upcoming TPHOLs, currently Klaus Schneider and Sofiène Tahar. The commitee should renew itself regularly. Everybody agrees to the candidates and the rules.

Presentation of TPHOLs 2008

Sofiène Tahar gives an overview over next year's TPHOLs (see slides). The programme structure of TPHOLs 2007 should be kept. There will be sessions on research papers, emerging trends and proof pearls. Tutorials (not embedded, outside the sessions) are considered as a further potential part of TPHOLs programme.

Sofiène Tahar announced that there will be a student rate for TPHOLs 2008. To determine whether someone is a student or not, a letter from his supervisor will be requested. Due to various customs in different countries, this procedure is preffered.

The rules for double submissions should be made more precise in the CoP (see slides).

The review standards of Proof Pearls should also be precised. John Matthews created a Wiki for this purpose during the TPHOLs 2007 review process. They should be shorter than regular papers (approx. 6 pages) and should show a "beautiful and clear" proof. No consensus was reached whether they should be refereed like any other research paper or not.

Emerging Trends are considered to be an important part of the conference. Everybody agrees that they should not be included in the main proceedings as short papers, but the tradition of publishing them in a separate volume as a technical report should be continued. Most participants like a paper version of the Emerging Trends proceedings, although they tend to be left behind due to their weight. To reduce costs, they can be produced in a more compact format (compared to Springer LNCS).

Future Meeting Schedule

The preliminary steering committee will meet after the business meeting.

Next TPHOLs Business Meeting will be at TPHOLs 2008 in Montréal.