Agenda item 1. Opening Attending: Malte, Dan, Wheeler, Jeremy, Eva, J., Shirin, Erez, Laura (remotely), Scott, Olivier (for items 4.1-4.2), Chris (for items 4.1-4.2), David (for item 4.2), Nir (for item 4.2), Sid (for item 4.2), Hankz (for item 4.3, remote), Rao (for item 4.3, remote), Minh (for item 4.3, remote). The council congratulated recent and expectant parents who could not be present. Agenda items 1.1 - 1.4 Minutes of the 2018 council meeting were approved with the correction of a few minor typos. Agenda item 2.1. ICAPS 2018 Report and Survey Results (Malte) The report was briefly discussed. It was noted that it has useful informantion for the ICAPS 2020 organisers, e.g., about handling of payments. It was noted that the response frequency to last year's post-conference survey was somewhat low. Agenda item 2.2. Treasurer's Report The treasurer reminded the council of the outstanding action item from the previous year to investigate options for director and officer (D&O) insurance. This prompted some discussion, culminating in questions being asked: - Each edition of the ICAPS conference has a liability insurance; does this offer sufficient coverage? What, if anything, is it that the council could be liable for that is not covered by the insurance of a specific conference? - How do other organisations that run conferences in the field, such as AAAI and IJCAI, handle this? Action items: - Jeremy and Wheeler to investigate the relation between conference liability insurance and D&O insurance (if necessary by talking to a lawyer or expert in the field). - Malte to ask Bernhard what IJCAI does. - Someone to inquire about AAAI [unassigned]. Agenda item 2.3. Limit for Contracts Requiring Council Approval The treasurer and ICAPS 2019 organisers expressed that there is a need for a broader discussion about the interaction between council and the organisers of each ICAPS conference. The guidelines state that some decisions (contracts over $2,000) require council approval. The ICAPS 2019 organisers expressed the view that feedback from the council (or at least councilors with experience of reading the fine print, such as the treasurer) was often very helpful, but that its usefulness does not strictly correlate with the amount; there were examples of very straightforward contracts that did not require the extra scrutiny (and thus need not burden the treasurer's time) but which were for a cost over $2,000. Others held the view that some amount limit is useful. The limit should be not only on the cost, but on the total financial liability associated with the contract. (For example, reduced-rate deals with conference hotels may sometimes include a provision that the conference must compensate the hotel if less than some minimum number of attendees use that hotel.) A motion to increase the limit to $5,000 was proposed and passed. Action item: To update the conference organiser guidelines [unassigned]. Agenda item 2.4. Sponsorship The ICAPS 2019 sponsorship chairs reported that many sponsors this year were querying about sponsorship levels (as used by many larger conferences), and about benefits in return for sponsoring, and suggested that ICAPS should have a discussion about how to handle this in the future, as otherwise future sponsorship chairs will have to make it up on the fly. Having this discussion in advance would also improve coordination between sponsorship, program and conference chairs. For example, if there is a sponsored best paper award, the program chairs have to select a best paper. As another example, the free registrations that were offered to industry-session speakers could have been given as a sponsor benefit, since in several cases the speakers represented companies that also sponsored the conference. Councilors with experience of being on the sponsoring side noted that the pressure to justify conference sponsorship, by demonstrating what the company receives in return, is increasing; company name on the conference web site is not enough. Recruitment opportunities is something that most sponsors (companies) can be expected to be interested in. In other words, students (PhD or masters) as potential employees are a resource that ICAPS has to offer. However, ICAPS has a responsibility to be careful about how conference participants personal information is used; for example, passing on attending students names and contact information to sponsors, without the students' consent, would not be acceptable. It was noted that IJCAI offers invited talk slots to sponsors (at some level). There was some discussion over how much the council should be involved in deciding what benefits ICAPS organisers can offer to sponsors, and how much this should be left to the conference organisers' sound judgment. It was agreed that as this is a first, the ICAPS 2020 organisers should draw up a list of potential benefits that may be offered to sponsors and pass this list to the council for information and possibly feedback. Action item: ICAPS 2020 organisers to draw up a list of possible benefits to offer to sponsors and bring this back to the council. [undecided when] Agenda item 2.5. Workshop-only Registrations The pros and cons of workshop-only registrations were discussed. The ICAPS 2019 organisers reported that the majority of workshop-only registration requests had been from people in companies, who have a workshop paper or presentation but either do not have an interest in or cannot spend the time to attend the whole conference. There were also some special cases. In total, it was estimated that perhaps an additional 10 people would have attended one of the workshop days if a workshop-only registration option had been available. Possible drawbacks mentioned included that people who have only a workshop paper may have greater difficulty securing funding to attend the whole conference if a workshop-only option exists; the counter- argument made was that having only a workshop paper makes it hard to secure funding to attend at all; and that if workshop-only registrations were an option, conference organisers may need to start checking badges during the main conference to ensure those attending have registered for it (as has been done at some of the large AI conferences). It was concluded that we have no good data on how great the potential demand for a workshop-only registration option may be. It was also noted that as far as we know, other conference of a size similar to ICAPS do not have workshop-only registrations. In conclusion, as the council did not have a unified view for or against, it was decided that for the time being, future ICAPS organisers (including ICAPS 2020) are free to decide if they want to trial workshop-only registrations. Action item: This years post-conference survey should have an item on workshop-only registrations, to gauge how many participants may have taken that option instead, had it existed. [unassigned] Agenda item 2.6. Code of Conduct During the last year, a working group was established to develop a Code of Conduct (CoC) for ICAPS conferences, along with associated guidelines and best practice information for future conference organisers. The CoC was used for ICAPS 2019. Having a CoC is a requrement for NSF sponsorship. The question was raised whether other sponsors/funders have similar requirements. The EU has some similar rules; other than that, no one present knew the answer. Motion: To approve the use of the proposed CoC for future ICAPSes. After some discussion it was agreed that the phrase "technology choices" should be struck out from the CoC. It was also clarified that the CoC may be amended by the council in the future as it sees fit. The motion to approve the amended code was passed. Motion: To establish an "inclusion chair" role within the council. This will be a council officer (to be elected following the usual election procedure). The role of the inclusion chair will be to maintain the knowledge gathered by the working group, maintain and improve the guidelines mentioned below, and advice future ICAPS organisers on the use of the CoC. The motion was passed. Motion: To approve the proposed "Policy and Guidelines" document. For clarification, despite its title, the document is a source of knowledge and advice for the inclusion chair. It is not a set of rules that must be obeyed. The present document is a starting point, and it is expected to be refined by the inclusion chair. The document will be public after refinement by the inclusion chair. With those clarifications, the motion was approved. The working group responsible for developing the CoC and guideline has now done its job. Agenda item 2.7. Industrial Advisory Board The idea of establishing an "industry advisory board" was discussed. This was presented as an idea for discussion, not as a proposal. The motivation is similar to the industry session at ICAPS 2019: to provide an industry view on planning to the ICAPS community. The ICAPS 2019 organisers reported that dispite their efforts to promote the conference to local industry, the number of participants from industry remains quite low. It was pointed out that there are already several initiatives by conference organisers in this direction (the SPARK workshop, the applications special track, the choice of some invited speakers, and the aforementioned industry session); this prompted some skepticism regarding the value of another formal structure around industry engagement with ICAPS. In summary, anyone interested in strategies for increasing industry participation in ICAPS and/or industry awareness of ICAPS research should talk to Dan. Agenda item 2.8. Publishing The idea of a journal on planning (considering the JAAMAS journal and its relation to the AAMAS confernence) was discussed. This was presented as an idea for discussion, not as a propoal. The conclusion was that current AI journals (such as, for example, AIJ, JAIR, and AI Communications) serve the planning community well; increasing fragmentation of the field would also be detrimental. Agenda item 3.1. "If I could do one thing" update "If I could do one thing" was an initiative of the former ICAPS president Brian Williams in which each newly elected councilor was asked to pen down the "one thing" that they would like to accomplish during their term. This tradition will continue, though new councilors will only be asked to have their "one thing" thought out a year after election (when elected they are still in the process of running the current ICAPS, and it seems unreasonable to ask them to think about a six-year plan in the middle of that). Council meetings should include updates from everyone on the progress of their "one thing" on a semi-regular basis. As examples, Malte reminded the council that his "one thing" is to better document how ICAPS, as an organisation, does what it does, and that Gabi's one thing is to improve the ICAPS web site and system for document management. Agenda item 3.2. ICAPS & the AI Boom There was a discussion around the current AI boom and the place of ICAPS in it. Although planning and ICAPS does not get the headlines or attention that some other areas of AI (e.g., deep learning) currently enjoy, it was noted that the conference has been continually growing (in terms of submission and attendance) for the past years, and that planning does not appear to be in immediate danger of losing its relevance to AI. Agenda item 4.1. Report on ICAPS 2019 There was some discussion about special tracks, but with no clear conclusions. Agenda item 4.2. Report on ICAPS 2020 The ICAPS 2020 organisers reported on the progress of their plans. Two issues were discussed: There will be a possible paper "swap" with ECAI 2020, whose review period more or less coincides with that of ICAPS. What this means is that rejected papers close to the borderline may get passed on to the ECAI program chairs for consideration; authors will be asked whether they want this option at submission. This arrangement was suggested by ECAI program chairs. A joint robotics and planning summer school is being considered, to occur in the interval between ICRA (in Paris) and ICAPS (in Nancy). The current plan has the summer school coinciding with ECAI, but this was considered acceptable, given its potentia for improving engagement between planning and robotics; it is not expected to be a big conflict for potential attendees. Agenda item 4.3. ICAPS 2021 The council considered the proposal to host ICAPS 2021 in Guangzhou. Questions and comments for the proposal's organisers included: * There is no apparent strong case for collocation with KDD. An argument for collocating with KDD is that KDD will attract participants from other parts of China, and there is a chance to attract more of them to also attend ICAPS. * What are the plans for promoting ICAPS to local participants? * There is no item for video recording/streaming in the proposed budget; this can be quite costly (~20k for 2019). * What are the logistics of location option 1? This option involves two venues (one for the preconference program and one for the main conference) that are at some distance. How can participants travel between their hotel and the two venues? The proposal's organisers mentioned the possibility of arranging dedicated buses between the venues (there is an item for this in the budget for this option), and also mentioned that there are public transport options. * Were any other hotels asked for quotes? There was one from Sheraton, which was much more expensive. * What is the weather like for the proposed alternative dates, in June and July? It will be the same at both proposed dates; it may be quite hot, but Guangzhou does not have the polution problem that Beijing does. * If we go to SYSU in June, there will be students on campus; how will this affect the conference? * The proposal includes a number of candidate co-chairs for different roles; have they been approached to determine if they are interested? Not yet. There was some concern about the delay in developing the proposal so far; the proposal's organisers outlined how they will address this, by distributing the work and responsibilities more effectively. It was decided that the council needed some further deliberation before accepting the proposal. Agenda item 5.1. Community meeting preparation The following discussion items were proposed: * OpenReview * Competitions * The idea of an industry advisory board These will be included in the open discussion phase of the community meeting if there is time. The detailed scheduling of the meeting is left to the president and president elect. Agenda item 5.2. ICAPS Council Meeting 2020 The 2020 council meeting will be held on the 14th of July, in Nancy. Agenda item 5.3. Any other business There was no other business.