• Galal Hassan Galal (Network Co-ordinator: in the Chair)
• Anthony Finkelstein (Network Director)
• Barbara Farbey (Industrial Liaison)
• Daniel Berry (Co-ordinator External nodes)
• Bashar Nuseibeh (Coordinator A, S, Ge, Ir, UK)
• Jose Fiadeiro (Coordinator It, Gr, Sp, P)
• Kevin Ryan (Chair of Research Coordination Committee)
• Torsten Meyer (representing Michael Goedicke)

• Janis Bubenko (Co-ordinator D, F, No, Sw)
• Roel Wieringa (Co-ordinator B, L, Ne, F)
• Barbara Pernici (Representing the Chair of Infrastructure Committee)
• Philippe Lefebvre (Project Officer, CEC)
• Michael Goedicke (Chair of Research Training Committee)
• Wolfgang Emmerich (Infrastructure Co-ordinator)
• Paul Gough (Chair of Ind. & Tech. Committee)

The previous minutes were agreed as they stand.

There were no items under AOB.

2.1. Matters Arising: Phillipe J Lefebvre has been appointed as the RENOIR project officer (EU).

2.2 Paul Gough (Philips Research Laboratory), Chair of the Industrial Liaison committee, has notified the Director that he is no longer able to devote sufficient time to RENOIR, and that he wishes to withdraw from the Executive Board. It was agreed that the Board would look for a new Industrial Chair. The Board would like to thank Paul Gough for his past contributions to the Board.

3.1. The Director reported that work was going well. However, progress on the Roadmap was slow, but a compendium of Requirements FAQ was being constructed.

3.2. The Co-ordinator has drafted a progress report (attached to the documentation for the meeting). RENOIR had undertaken much very substantial work, including for example, the doctoral consortium. Members of the Board were asked to consider the report and suggest improvements and additions to the Co-ordinator. Comment and inclusions from the rest of the Network would also be welcome. Members’ activity bids should be summarised and appended to the report.

Applications for membership from:

4.1. Comverse networks Systems Ltd., Israel.

4.2. Universita dell'Aquila, Italy.

4.3. Faculty of Informatics, Politecnica de Madrid, Spain.

were discussed. They were all admitted to the membership of the Network. The Co-ordinator is to advise them accordingly, and to request the necessary additional documents. ACTION: GHG

4.4. Policy on new membership applications: There were questions relating to RENOIR’s policy in its last year of operations, in particular the question of new members. It was agreed that there might still be benefits to existing members from expanding the network. However the Co-ordinator pointed out that budget is finite and admitting too many new members late to RENOIR is likely significantly increased the pressure on the budget in the last year of the Task.

4.5. Following an expression of interest in joining by Magnet, Malta, the Co-ordinator will write to Phillipe Lefebvre concerning the principle of admitting a member form an applicant country. ACTION: GHG

5.1 Bids approved by the Director since the last meeting were tabled. 25 bids had been made, totaling approximately 24 KEuro. The Board accepted that several bids from individuals attending the same activity could be aggregated to ease administration, but the Board requested that one such bid should be de-aggregated for reporting purposes.

5.2. The bid for an experience exchange/ workshop on "Participative Requirements Engineering" in 5-6 August, 1999, from the University of Jyvaskala was accepted. This workshop had been sparked by Industrial Liaison work, and has a specifically industrial focus. RENOIR will fund accommodation and meals for RENOIR members.

5.3 The Director reported that he received a bid form Neil Maiden (City University) for 6 KEuro to support 5 research trips by one of his PhD students to Norway. The Board felt that this bid proposal seemed more like a research project than networking activity and was more properly the subject of a research grant. As RENOIR under the terms of its Task is unable to directly fund research, the bid can not be accepted. However, RENOIR is prepared to fund one exploratory visit of the type suggested in the bid, costing up to 1700 Euro.

5.4 The budget: The Co-ordinator introduced a budget proposal, pointing out that approximately 90 KEuro are currently allocated to Networking activities. The Co-ordinator warned that it is difficult to make exact estimates because of bids in the pipeline and because of fluctuations in exchange rates. However, there is likely to be a fair amount of pressure on the budget in the final year.

5.5 It was agreed that some networking activity would be labelled as "RENOIR Ambassador" visits, to emphasise the work done to promote RENOIR and Requirements Engineering.

6.1 Roadmap and Roadshow.

The Co-ordinator presented a progress report by Sofia Guerra on the Roadshow activity, where a Roadshow architecture is suggested. An FAQ is being constructed. The intent is to configure the Roadshow according to the audience and parties volunteering to instantiate parts of it. Members of the Executive Board are asked to study the proposed structure and make suggestions to SG. ICRE is a likely target of the Roadshow.

An XML tutorial has been produced and presented at RE 99 by ACWF and Andrea Zisman. The Roadmap and other material are being developed. ACTION: All

6.2 Research training.

6.2.1 There has been work on the database/ search engine to make it more user friendly.

6.2.2 The doctoral consortium has been a success. There had been a noticeable increase in the proportion of student attendees at RE99 and this was welcomed.

6.3 Industrial liaison

A document outlining industrial liaison strategy was presented by BAF. BAF reported on her work to realise an "Educate for Business" initiative to encourage commercial spin-offs from academics. BAF is to elicit information on industrial contacts.

BAF and GHG are in discussion with the London School of Economics to see whether there is a basis for mounting a RENOIR type exercise in developing countries.

6.4 Infrastructure and Network communications

GHG reported that the Web site has been substantially improved, and that there were reports from Ph.D. students who found the site very useful for their investigations. DB also reported that he found the site useful in his work. It was pointed out that collecting data on the hits to the web site would be useful.

ACWF expressed thanks to the GHG for all the hard work he has done in administering RENOIR.

Events of interest to RENOIR members were: RESG: Managing Changing Requirements. Keble College, Oxford on 31/8/99. ICSE 10/11 February, 2000.

It was decided to hold the next (11th) meeting of the Executive Board in conjunction with the ESEC conference in Toulouse, France, on 9th September 1999.

The 12th meeting of the Executive Board is likely to be held either in late January 2000 in London or in conjunction with the ICSE2000 PC meeting (10-11th February 2000) in Vienna. Date and venue to be finalized during the forthcoming EB meeting.