Attendance: Peter Imrey, Marie Davidian, Joanna Shih, Jane Pendergast, Lance Waller, Oli Schabenberger, Karen Bandeen-Roche, Tim Gregoire, Lisa LaVange, Ramon Littell, Judith O'Fallon, Tony Olsen, Linda Young, Peter Lachenbruch, Dennis Dixon, Barry Davis

Welcome
ENAR President Peter Imrey welcomed all attendees.

Minutes
Suggested adding last name to meeting participants in minutes. Minutes approved.

Treasure's Report
Joanna Shih (ENAR Treasurer) handed out the current financial statement. Main points of discussion included:

• Net revenue for this year $51,370 (so far)
• Schedule 1 on spring meeting notes financials comparable to last year at the same time. We increased registration fee by $10. We raised more money from sponsorship than last year, about $46,000. Without sponsorship, our meeting revenue would not be able to cover meeting expenses (ignoring continuing education). AV expenses went up (but will as we add more courses and sessions). Kathy noted that this has often been the case, the meetings do not pay for themselves.
• Short courses did very well ($22,000 net revenue compared to $15,000 last year).
• Tutorials were slightly lower but not by much.

Peter Imrey noted that meeting was more expensive since we had larger attendance than expected, necessitating more food and beverages.

The Executive Committee recommends the following changes to registration and fees:

• $10 registration fee for members/nonmembers, students stay the same.
• Increase short course fee by $10.
• Tutorial fee by $5.
• Increase sponsorship goal from $3,000 to $4,000 for the Tuesday evening social.
• Advertising rates increase slightly (advertising in program book).
• Roundtable increase from $30 to $35.

Tim Gregoire asked how ENAR roundtable fees compare to JSM roundtable fees. Lisa LaVange replied that JSM roundtable fees are going up to $40 per person.

Executive Director's Report
Peter Imrey presented Kathy Hoskins' report (handout). Briefly, total paid membership in 2005 is approximately 1775 and still declining. Peter reported that as of this morning, ENAR has 20 fewer members than this time last year. Tony Olsen asked if membership numbers were end of year (in other words, are we comparing August to December). Peter noted that ENAR continues to send out reminders and gets some updates in between.

ENAR Meetings
2005 Austin
Peter Imrey noted that Joanna Shih's Treasurer's report gives the financials for the 2005 Austin meeting. Peter Lachenbruch expressed some pleasant surprise that meeting attendance is about 50% of membership size (even though one doesn't have to be a member to attend). Is that continuation of trend or not? Barry Davis asked if the number of tutorials/short courses offered caused the increase. Peter replied, no, the short course can cause spikes in attendance (e.g., the first courses in microarray analysis), but the number of offerings is not the only explanation.

2006 New Orleans
[Note: due to the subsequent relocation of the 2006 ENAR Spring Meeting from New Orleans to Tampa due to Hurricane Katrina, some items of discussion are moot, but are included for documentation purposes.]

Jane Pendergast (ENAR President-Elect) provided an overview of plans for the 2006 ENAR Spring Meeting. Program Chairs Monste Fuentes and José Pinhero have completed the invited program with 32 invited sessions and 8 IMS sessions. ENAR is formally titling four sessions as introductory: one in longitudinal analysis, one in Bayesian statistics and computing, one on statistics and genetics, and one on data mining. The short course and tutorial programs are close to being completed and include:

• Geert Verbeke and Geert Molenberghs: Models for Discrete data
• Andy Grieve and Mike Smith: Adaptive clinical trials
• Full-day Bayesian course (talking to potential instructors)
• Microarray analysis (waiting for call back)
• Don Rubin: Propensity scores and instrumental variables

Proposed tutorials include: Oli Schabenberger on PROC GLIMMIXED, Ed Vonesh on joint survival/longitudinal analysis (possibly a short course), John Costello on SAS, and additional ones on R/Bioconductor, Missing data.

Roundtables are in progress and Jane hopes to finalize those soon. The 2006 Spring Meeting will feature both a diversity and a young investigators' workshop. The Tuesday night social event will be a dinner at the Palm Court Jazz Café.

Jane added a note about space. If we have more registrants than we have presentation space, we may need to move some to posters (if we have space), or resort to giving priority for presentation slots to those who complete their abstract submissions earlier. We plan to announce this in the program booklet coming out soon.

Peter Lachenbruch suggested the option of giving presentation preference to dues-paying members. Jane P. noted that this is a possibility, but also noted that RAB/RECOM had already approved the described idea for 2006. She suggested taking the idea back to RAB/RECOM for future discussion.

2007-2009 meeting sites
Peter Imrey reviewed Kathy Hoskins' notes on future spring meeting sites:
2007 has been moved to Atlanta (Hyatt) due to the sale and impending construction of the conference hotel in Miami. 2008 will be in Crystal City (DC area), and 2009 is under consideration. So far we have two bids: Boston (Cambridge) and Tampa. The Cambridge site is expensive (like to be over $200/night). Tampa offers nice space and better rates. Peter reviewed discussion from RAB/RECOM and the Executive Committee, and Kathy is looking for additional bids.

Tony Olson noted that Boston raises weather issues. Oli Schabenberger noted that 2009 would not be an early return to Tampa, since 6 years will have passed. Tony Olsen also suggested a new hotel/convention center in Rockville MD that might be a possibility for next time in Washington.

JSM Future
Jane Pendergast (ENAR President Elect) discussed efforts for a joint Biometrics Section/ENAR/WNAR/Biopharmaceutical Section mixer at JSM. Brent Coull is the ENAR representative on the JSM 2006 Program Committee and has made a proposal to the ASA Committee on Meetings.

IBS Activities
Marie Davidian announced that Naisyin Wang will be the new Biometrics editor and that Tom Logan (also of ENAR) will be the new Book Review Editor. ENAR has also made 5 nominees for IBS Council. Other IBS news involves the initiation of IBC awards session, a showcase for best papers, and sessions for Biometrics and JABES.

Peter Imrey noted that IBC 2006 is coming up in July in Montreal. ENAR is host region. There is a good program and local arrangements are going along well. ENAR members are encouraged to submit papers and attend.

Peter Imrey also provided an update of IBS/ENAR interactions regarding security biometrics and the recognition of "biometrics" in general. There will be an upcoming 3 hour session in AAAS in February and a NAS symposium on technology science and forensics featuring discussion on such issues in mid-November. Peter Imrey is currently a member of a National Research Council panel on "Whither Biometrics?"

Peter Imrey provided update regarding a IBS/ENAR/WNAR cosigned letter to JAMA protesting recent changes in editorial policy. The primary issue is embedded in conflict of interest issues but requires reanalysis of any data analyzed by industry statisticians. We regard this as offensive and counter-productive. Letter drafted after discussions with RAB/RECOM, Biopharm, Exec Committee, and IBS Council. Peter noted that Fritz Schuren (ASA President) also sent a letter. To date, JAMA hasn't acknowledged any need for change. The implication is that industry statisticians are at risk of conflict of interest, and academic statisticians aren't. Lisa LaVange mentioned knowledge of two cases where papers were not submitted to JAMA for this reason.

COPSS
Peter Imrey gave an overview of the COPSS meeting. The Tukey memorial award is moving forward following some clarification with the estate and the American Philosophical Society. COPSS is attempting to solicit funds to support the award. Currently, the idea is for a data analysis award with an intent to orient it somewhat differently than other awards. COPSS is setting up a standing awards committee with the first Tukey award planned for 2007. This is intended to be an annual award.

COPSS is also considering expanding to include other societies. Currently COPSS consists of the organizations sponsoring JSM, but proposals have been received from the Bernoulli Society, ISI, and others.

Finally, Peter Imrey and Linda Young noted an adjustment to the COPSS' Presidents' Award, making accommodations for individuals taking longer in training. The modification makes eligible statisticians under the age of 41 years or under the age of 45 years with 12 or less years since obtaining a doctorate.

WNAR
Peter Imrey reviewed discussions of a possible ENAR/WNAR joint meeting in 2010, noting that it is not clear if this is completely realistic due to differences in flavor, participant cost, and scheduling. It seems feasible if held in the 2nd half of March, and the Executive Committee suggests investigating the possibility and exploring locations for 2010 or 2011. Linda Young pointed out that the split of revenues is the big sticking point and would need to be worked out.

Peter Imrey also reviewed IBS' institution of joint regional membership where individuals pay regional dues to both but only pay the IBS portion once. The newly formed "Channel Network" in Europe provides an example. Peter suggested the possibility of dues discounts for individuals joining both, noting that RAB/RECOM had recommended against this after some discussion.

Computing and Database Management Issues

Peter Imry: Issue is much more collegial than it has been.

Tim Gregoire: IBS is driving this to streamline bookkeeping at their end. Cynics say they want to be the dues collector (but this seems to be off the table now). They want e-commerce to store data, personal information, ability for members to make changes to their own information, etc. and enable the data to be transmitted directly to ENAR. To date, they have been very vague on the specifics of how they are going to do this.

Kathy Hoskings, Tim Gregoire, Bill Drohan, and IBS reps met to discuss broad issues on making databases compatible,but not much progress had been made since. They want us to move forward, yet we feel we have insufficient information. Perhaps more will be learned at the IBS Executive Committee meeting tomorrow.

Jane Pendergast added that it may be in our best interest to be the test case, if IBS moves forward with this, but we cannot do so with so few details. We need to know more about what are one-time costs and what are recurring and maintenance costs.

Judith O'Fallon asked what proportion of the overall IBS data base do we constitute? Time Gregoire responded "one-third", and noted that while this may be a good idea for Bostrom (the company serving as the IBS business office), but it is not necessarily so for IBS as an organization.

Peter Imrey noted how important it is for ENAR to have someone from ENAR working on this who really understands the technical issues. Tim Gregoire agreed that this was the time to be having this discussion with Bostrom/IBS.

Tony Olsen asked if anyone was working on the security issues involved in this. Karen Bandeen-Roche commented that it sounds like the IBS believes we are a good beta-test, but we're very large for a beta-test.

Old Business

Pending Ad Hoc Committees
Some Ad Hoc Committees are still in the works (Strategic Planning Committee, By-Laws Review, Membership). There is a major concern whether ENAR strategic planning can dovetail with the IBS strategic plan, especially by aiding the effort to provide instruction for developing countries. Peter Imrey looked into Rockefeller, USAID, but funds are fading away. There is a meeting tomorrow with an ASA committee, which Peter Imrey will attend and report back regarding web-resources for Master's program template. Help, suggestions, sources of money are most welcome.

New Business

Jane Pendergast announced that the ITOC committee has a need for 2 new members. Any suggestions are welcome. Suggestions are also solicited for 10 appointments to RAB, for terms starting next year.

Peter Imrey added that Kathy : Monti has finished her term on the sponsorship committee. It is also possible that we may need to replace Frank Shen as well, depending on the results of the election. This has become a very important committee for ENAR.

Other Business

Tony Olsen announced his candidacy for President of ASA: A t-test in every pocket.

Adjourn

The meeting was adjourned at 6:40.