Minutes of 4th RENOIR Executive Board
Thursday 25 September 1997,
University of Zurich 

Present:

Apologies received from:

 
 

1       Minutes

Minutes of third meeting were agreed
 

2        Director's Report

The annual report for the first year was sent to the CEC together with the first RENOIR cost statement. Both the report and the cost tatement were accepted.

The director announced that he and some members of the RENOIR administration team (Wolfgang Emmerich) are moving to University College London (UCL). UCL is a college of the University of London. The director reported about his intention to move the RENOIR administration to UCL. Stephen Morris will take a lecturehship in Information Science at City University in October and will leave the RENOIR team. The director reported about an ongoing process to fill the vacancy. George Spanoudakis will continue to handle activity proposals and expense claims for the rest of this year.

3       Communications

Wolfgang Emmerich presented a report about the web site. The web site has been updated with all information of new members. Moreover, a new page about  activities funded by RENOIR has been incorporated into the web site. Several members have provided reports about these activities and these were linked to the activity page, too. The board discussed encouraging members to submit these reports.

The Board agreed that: Any reimbursement of expenses for future activities will be subject to receipt of a brief activity report.

Wolfgang  send out a request has been sent out to all members to review the web site and suggest changes. About 20 members responded. Their suggestions will be incorporated shortly.

The Board suggested to increase the contents of the events page by considering the requirenautics newsletter, event lists in CACM and IEEE Computer. The director suggested to employ a junior research assistant to support maintenance of the web site and preparation and circulation of the requirements engineering newsletter.

The Board agreed that: Funds should be made available for this post.
 

4       Membership

Stephen Morris presented a report on membership. Five completed applications for membership were received since the last executive board. These were from University College London (UK), ISPRA (Italy), University of Dortmund (D), Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (D) and University of Granada (E).

The Board agreed that:

 

5       Funding

Stephen Morris reported on  proposals for which bids have been received. He drew the attention of the board to several proposals that were received a-posteriori, i.e. after the activity had been occured already.

The board agreed that: Any travel outside the EU that has not been applied for well in advance (so that permission of David Cornwell can be sought) is not going to be funded.

Stephen then reported about eleven activity proposals that were below 1.2 KECU and were therefore decided by the Director. The board noted that ten proposals totalling 8.2 KECU were accepted and one in the amount of 300 ECU was rejected on the ground that it involved travel to a non-member site outside the EU.

Three further proposals exceeding 1.2 KECU were discussed by the board.  The board agreed that:

 

6       Progress of Committee  Initiatives

6.1     Research Training

The Chair of the Research Training Committee reported progress on the development of the database of PhD and related work The database has been beta tested at City University and the user interface needs some more attention before it can be deployed. The Board agreed that : Further funds should be allocated to secure a student assistant to develop the database further.
 
The Chair of the Research Training Committee suggested to have a Summerschool in the first week of 1998. The proposal was discussed and it was decided that this was too short a notice to prepare a successful summerschool. Instead the Board agreed to provide support a RENOIR Research Training Mini-Workshop. The Chair of the Research Training Committee voluntered to host that workshop in a quite location near Essen between January 5-8  1998.

The Board  agreed that: RENOIR will organise a Requirements Engineering Summerschool in Summer 1999.

6.2     Research Coordination

The  Director informed the network that the previously agreed recruitment for a research fellow to implement the requirements engineering road map will remain an activity at City University. Supervision of the fellow will be jointly by David Till and the Director.

The Chair of the Research Coordination Committee invited the Director of the network to discuss the RENOIR road map.
 

6.3     Infrastructure

Carlo Ghezzi circulated a report prepared by Silvana Castano about the availablity of video-conferencing equipment within the network. The board suggested that once the network coordination has moved to UCL that this activity should be followed-up.
 

6.4 Industry and Technology Transfer

No matters arising
 

7       Calendar / Future Meetings

The Board agreed the following date and location for the next meeting:

8       No other business

 

Last up-date: 30 July 1998