Subject: IEEE-CIS ListServer for CIBCB conference publicity?
From: "Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada" <>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 19:40:45 -0700
To: =?UTF-8?Q?Daniel_Ashlock=2e_Publicity_Co-Chair=2e_IEEE-CIBCB_2020_Vi?=
Cc: "Gary Fogel. VP Conferences. IEEE-CIS. CEO. Natural Selection. USA"

IEEE-CIBCB 2020 Publicity Co-Chairs :

This email is to inform you that, as part of a trial for WCCI 2020, I set up an IEEE-CIS ListServer to handle the WCCI2020 mass emails, and at the same time I set up ListServers for [
IEEE_CIBCB, FUZZ-IEEE, IJCNN, IEEE,CEC, IEEE-SSCI] to allow recipients of WCCI2020 mass emails to sign up or quit the ListServer email address lists for each of the conferences.  There is no link on the WCCI2020 website for the IEEE-CIS ListServers because I needed experience with the system before that can be done.

It is available if you would like to use it for IEEE-CIBCB mass email publicity, however this is NOT a requirement of IEEE-CIS, so that is up to you. I didn't have a list of emails for your conference, so it only has a very few people who did sign up, which suggests that this won't be a major source of contacts for a conference, but perhaps every little bit helps.  

So far, only three people signed up for CIBCB :
  • Jun Yan  <>
  • Rayane Tabbara  <>
  • M  Ilyas  <>
A mail chimp system is also being maintained with a link on the WCCI2020 website, and it has brought in far more new subscriptions. 

I was using my own programs to manage an email server with my ISP (personal - I am retired).  I find the IEEE ListServers to be very handy and manage-able.  Furthermore, it provides :
  • a secure way of handling email lists without sending them by non-secure email to new conference publicity committees.  My experience is that encryption is like a poison to most people, and only one person succeeded after much [time, effort] with an encrypted email list.
  • it conforms to modern requirements for [privacy, security] in a formal way
  • mass email recipients have direct control over their "subscriptions", and can sign on to other conferences of interest to them.
  • automated "clean-up" of dead email addresses :  I still retain my own programs to analyse responses, but I am not doing that much any more.  The ListServers are a HUGE time-saver for me!
  • For future conferences : 
    • the hope is that Tomasz Cholewo will be able to directly add co-author emails to the respective list server.   This is the main source of emails at present, at least for [WCCI, IJCNN], with society memberships also being a small but important second source for IJCNN (I've never had access to IEEE-CIS membership emails).  Publicity Co-Chairs often don't have access to the conference email lists, and that won't be a problem if Thomasz or someone else does that.
    • IEEE-CIS should make its own website, as I will be finished after WCCI 2020 Glasgow
If you are interested in looking at this, I just finished throwing together a "Publicity Guide" website along the same lines as [Authors, Publications] Guides.  It's [rough, incomplete] and will have errors, but it might help.  It also links to IEEE ListServer web-pages for more information (just look at the "mass email" related web-pages, as linked in the menu at the top of each web-page) :
http://www.BillHowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Conference%20guides/Publicity%20website/Publicity%20Guide.html

At least one of your Publicity Committee would have to be a SENDER, and someone has to become the owner, in order to use the IEEE-CIBCB ListServer.  This is explained on the "Publicity Guide" website.

No action is required on your part, but I thought that you should be aware of this.


Mr. Bill Howell
1-587-707-2027     www.BillHowell.ca
P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0
member - International Neural Network Society (INNS), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE-CIS),
IJCNN2019 Budapest, Authors' Guide, Sponsors & Exhibits Chair, https://www.ijcnn.org/organizing-committee
WCCI2020 Glasgow, Publicity Chair mass emails, http://wcci2020.org/
Retired: Science Research Manager (SE-REM-01) at Natural Resources Canada, CanmetMINING, Ottawa