Candidate for: President, At-large member
BIO
I have been part of the SIPTA EC since 2015, was general chair of ISIPTA 2019 and served as SIPTA president for the past two years. Information about me and my research is available on my website: https://users.ugent.be/~jdbock/.
STATEMENT
In my current presidency term, I focus(sed) on improving the inner workings of SIPTA. I was fortunate to have an Executive Committee (EC) that was willing to put a lot of work in, and I’m happy to report that this payed off. We can finally deal with our finances online, our website is now modernized and mobile compatible (or will soon be, depending on when you read this), we’ll (vote to) update our society’s articles during the next ISIPTA, we now have our own independent server and mailing server, and our administration has been cleaned out and structured. A massive thank you goes out to the EC members that helped make this possible (and even some people outside the EC).
I must admit though that this wasn’t my original plan. Instead, the original plan was to set up a communication strategy that reaches out to new communities in a refreshing and professional way, and to expand our community in this (and other) way(s). But such plans make little sense, I think, if the foundations aren’t there. For example, in my view, there is no point in reaching out to new members on a large scale if the website you intend to refer them to is outdated, and if the mailing list you have has technical limitations. When I came to realize that we weren’t sufficiently covering our bases yet, I therefore changed plans, and decided to focus on our inner workings first.
Two years later, I think we now do have most of the foundations in place (or are at least making good progress on that front), and I’d therefore like to get back to my original plan of growing SIPTA. Basically, I’d like to set up a system that is able to advertise SIPTA and imprecise probabilities outside our own community, in a way that is modern, maintainable, and does not rely (solely) on ad hoc initiatives of subsequent ECs. Other than that, I’d also like to continue and finish organizing our inner workings. There is also the issue that our society isn’t registered. During the past two years, it became clear to me that this creates a number of important limitations. On the other hand, it also has some clear advantages. The issue is, overall, quite complicated, and involves a number of legal matters. If we were to make a change in this respect, it would take time, and the debate and process would have to be initiated early on in a two-year EC term. I’d like to open that debate. And then finally, but this is a long shot, I’d like to work together with other uncertainty communities to investigate the possibility of setting up a sponsored funding scheme for research events on uncertainty, including IP, similarly to the existing scheme for AI (https://aij.ijcai.org/funding-opportunities-for-promoting-ai-research/) that is sponsored by Elsevier.
If you like these ideas, and are willing to give me the chance to try and develop them, then I’d be happy to take on a second term as president of SIPTA. If not, I’ll gladly spend some more time in my garden, in which case I’d be happy to still serve the SIPTA society as an at-large member of its EC, and perhaps execute part of the ideas above, if the new president deems them to be worthwhile.