Current Issues
Current Issues
ThermoSense XXIII Steering Committee Minutes
ThermoSense XXII Steering Committee Minutes
ThermoSense XXI Working Group Minutes
ThermoSense XXI Steering Committee Minutes
ThermoSense XXIII Steering Committee Information
A graph showing the relative distribution of papers in the proceeding is now available.
A press release announcing Thermosense XXIII is now available.
ThermoSense XXII Steering Committee Minutes (April 28, 2000)
Ralph Dinwiddie called the meeting to order at 8:02 AM
Ralph handed out Agenda and reviewed agenda
Ralph made comments about the Proceedings, including comments from the Working Group concerning disappointment that the proceedings were not available in CD-ROM version without buying the hardcopy as well.
Short Courses—Herb Kaplan gave report on Short Courses. Don Grandstrom gave estimate of conference attendance at “about” 4000. Herb Kaplan asked Don Grandstrom about the chances of adding Short Courses or lengthening the existing courses from ½ day to full day. Don Grandstrom commented that there are not a lot of available resources to support many more courses or increasing length. Herb Kaplan reported that Steve Shepard, Dennis LeMieux and Rich Wurzbach have volunteered to do new tutorials, or extensions of existing tutorials. Ralph questioned whether we want to turnover the old courses to new ones, and keep the topics changing and fresh. Herb Kaplan noted that a lot of time was being put into the preparation of these courses, and that it may not be fair to the individuals putting the course together to only hold it one year. Marshall Weathersby commented on the availability of rooms to support the added courses, and the need to review attendance and feedback of this year’s courses before making decisions on next year’s courses. Lisa West proposed adding Rich Wurzbach’s course, and making the others (extensions) contingent on the availability.
Kantsios Award –Rich Wurzbach announced that General Motors would sponsor the 2000 Award with a $200 cash stipend and the plaque. Rich Wurzbach commented how smoothly the process went with Ralph Dinwiddie getting the papers to the Session Chairs in advance of the conference. Ralph Dinwiddie said that he would have liked to give the session chairs even more time to review papers. Comments were made about getting the papers to the session chairs directly from SPIE. Don Grandstrom said that it would be possible, and Marshall Weathersby said that if the papers were submitted electronically, there would be no problem at all. Lisa West also expressed interest in the papers going directly to the session chairs, to prepare for the conference and to edit and audit the submissions prior to publication.
Image Gallery—Comments were made by various members on the positive aspects of this first time event. Doug Burleigh questioned the policy regarding vendor materials on the boards. Ralph Dinwiddie said that future guidelines will be for vendors to submit images, but not in marketing materials. A student poster session will be set up by Jon Miles, and SPIE has travel grant money available. Don Grandstrom commented that increased student participation is a common theme in Aerosense discussions. Jon Miles is looking for input to compile a call for papers targeting students for student poster presentations. Marshall Weathersby was concerned about excluding students from oral presentations. Students will still be allowed to present a regular oral and written presentation. The students will be targeted for the poster session, but will also be required to present a manuscript, so that they can be qualified for student travel grants, etc. Marshall Weathersby commented that the student poster session may grow into a larger poster session with regular participants as well. Doug Burleigh added that presentation-only submissions are usually asked to submit their manuscript for the following conference. Marshall Weathersby said that if this session gets a lot of submissions, we could consider joining the main Aerosense poster sessions.
Concurrent sessions—there was some comment about the difficulty to attend papers running simultaneously, but that it was necessary to accommodate all the papers. Comment was made that it was nice that both rooms were next to each other. Lisa West said the joint session really wasn’t a joint session, it was coordinated and ran by Thermosense, with only 1 paper from the other conference.
Web Site—Ralph Dinwiddie commented that he is paying for the site (domain name and maintenance ~$200/year). Ralph Dinwiddie wanted to see if SPIE would reimburse and financially support this effort, but if not, it is still very valuable to us and will be continued.
SPIE—Don Grandstrom commented that this was one of the best conferences ever, and the level of excitement was very high for the Thermosense group. Various members echoed this sentiment. Ralph Dinwiddie expressed his appreciation for SPIE’s support. Herb Kaplan said he tried hard to come up with something to complain about, but he couldn’t find anything. Ralph Dinwiddie explained the differentiation between Program Committee and Steering Committee. Bob Hammaker will be dropped from the Steering Committee at his own request. Wayne Ruddock and Alan Hines were raised as possible drops. Ruddock was agreed upon to be dropped; Alan Hines will be left on and he will be contacted to verify his commitment. Dennis LeMieux commented that any changes must be verified with SPIE because of past difficulties in getting the published version from SPIE to be consistent with our meetings and discussions. For new members, Mark Lanius will be added to the Program Committee, and considered for future Steering Committee membership. Vladimir Vavilov and Neal McNamara will be added to the Steering Committee and Program Committee. Paul Zayicek has resigned from the Steering Committee. Andres Rozlosnik has verified that Vladimir wishes to be on Steering Committee. Andres Rozlosnik listed a number of individuals for the Program Committee: Pierre Potet, Rebecca J. Whitworth, Steve Shepard, Piotr Pregowsky, Hermann Heinrich, Karl Haakon Grimnes. Lisa West also proposed that Karl Haakon Grimnes be added to the Steering Committee, Timo Kauppinen seconded motion. After further discussion, Herb Kaplan and Ralph Dinwiddie commented that new individuals should be placed on the Program committee before being added to the Steering committee. Karl Haakon Grimnes will be added to the Program Committee for now, and considered for Steering Committee in the future. Steve Shepard was nominated and approved for Steering Committee membership. Ray Peacock noted more vendors should be participating in the Steering Committee. After further discussion, it was agreed that we will keep Alan Hines on the Program Committee and review his status next year. Lisa West commented that she will be inactive for the next year, but the committee asked that she stay on the committee. Mark Lanius was also voted to be added to the Program Committee.
Election: Ralph Dinwiddie nominated Andres E. Rozlosnik for Thermosense XXIII Conference Chair. Herb Kaplan seconded nomination and elected unanimously. Herb Kaplan pointed out that Ralph Dinwiddie is co-chair and will aid this effort.
Session Chairs
Infrastructure and the Environment: Sven-Ake Ljungberg and Timo Kauppinen
Predictive Maintenance: Dennis LeMieux and Neal McNamara
Process and Products: Herb Kaplan and Katie Barker
NDT and Materials Evaluation: Doug Burleigh and a player to be named later
Research and Development: Bob Madding and Ray Peacock
Comments were made about the lack of quality in some papers in the Research & Development, and the high quality of Predictive Maintenance session.
Focus Group—Ralph Dinwiddie rolled out proposal to do targeted marketing across the sessions to target specific industry segments (Automotive Industry, Power Generation and Distribution, Materials Processing, Aerospace Applications, Environmental & Resource Monitoring, Research & Development, NDT & Materials Evaluation, Night Vision) comments: add pollution detection, plastics. Attendees were asked to mark-up the handout Ralph Dinwiddie circulated with ideas for the targeted marketing. There was discussion about including topics from other conferences, and soliciting or redirecting papers from these other conferences. Marshall Weathersby cautioned that as long as the conferences are at least 80% unique, he can accept 20% overlap. Online abstracts will allow conference/session chairs to view other conference abstracts to find papers appropriate for Thermosense. Marshall Weathersby also suggested Thermosense members’ participation in the Sensor group that talks about these overlaps and delineation of individual conferences.
Based on the marketing approach, it is agreed that the Focus Topic designation (i.e. previously Metals Industry, Automotive Industry, Power Generation, NDT in Aerospace Applications, etc) is no longer necessary. It also possible to have invited papers in each of the marketing targets.
Herb Kaplan expressed an interest in bringing Archaeology applications to Thermosense. Lisa West will check with a contact.
Andres Rozlosnik addressed to SPIE these concerns for Call for Papers: Poster Session, www.thermosense.org, comment about student session. Marshall Weathersby and Don agreed to include.
Jon Miles asked for Call for Papers in pdf format. Marshall Weathersby said no problem.
Timo Kauppinen asked about the keynote speaker for the conference. Ralph Dinwiddie said that since there is no one single focus, the invited speaker in each session can serve as a kick-off presentation. Program committee is invited to communicate with Andres Rozlosnik to nominate invited speakers. Invited speakers can receive waiver for registration fees (up to 3 waivers for all of Thermosense according to Marshall Weathersby).
Publicity—press releases were sent out to numerous industry journals using John Snell’s mailing list labels. Ralph asked for review of Press Release he distributed to be returned quickly to Herb Kaplan, so that comments can be made, and Press release quickly sent to these publications and journal meeting calendars.
New Business—competition with other conferences. Andres Rozlosnik commented that the strength of Thermosense is that it is international, the oldest conference, most professional. Lisa West commented that Thermosense is perceived as too scientific. We need to continue to work to target end users. Marshall Weathersby commented that the targeted advertising is a step in the right direction. Timo Kauppinen suggested directly contacting the organizations for Predictive Maintenance in each country to tap into this resource.
Ralph Dinwiddie suggested User Group sessions. Herb Kaplan expressed skepticism on the effectiveness of that. The workshops, it was decided, shall be cut to 30 minutes, with the other 30 minutes being added to the lunch break to permit more time at the exhibits.
The Steering Committee thanked Ralph Dinwiddie for his hard work and leadership in making Thermosense XXII a success.
Ralph Dinwiddie adjourned meeting at 4/28/00 10:05 AMRespectfully submitted,
Rich Wurzbach
ThermoSense XX Working Group Minutes (14 April 1998)
Paul Zayicek asked why their was no R&D workshop.
Herb Kaplan suggested it was an issue of not enough time. Herb Kaplan pointed out that the workshops were not listed in the program in a way that connected them to the Thermosense. Also that the website listing for the workshops contained a number of errors.
Ralph Dinwiddie asked "Do the workshops work?"
Rich Wurzbach suggested that, while the informality of them is valuable, they would also benefit from more structure.
Ralph Dinwiddie asked that authors be notified that their attendance is valuable and anticipated. Several people expressed disappointment that the first session lead off with three missing papers.
John Snell explained that the problem was related to the fact that he had tried to keep things open for late papers for too long, by which time the conference program was at the printer.
Ralph Dinwiddie suggested that session chairs should have some sort of fill-in paper or discussion in readiness.
John Snell indicated that this was, in fact, a standard SPIE suggestion. John also asked members of the working group to help solicit papers for Thermosense XXI (April 5-9, 1998 in Orlando).
Dennis LeMieux suggested soliciting papers for a medical session.
Sven-Ake Ljungberg said the Europeans are doing a lot in this area. He also suggested veterinarian applications. There was general discussion that workshops should feature cutting edge technologies.
Herb Kaplan offered to write a short piece about the purpose of the workshops for the Working Group and for authors that might go out with the Call for Papers.
Andres Rozlosnik suggested a session on surveillance, fire fighting and search and rescue.
There was general discussion about marketing of the conference. Several people asked if the manufacturers could not do more to promote the conference including mailing to their users lists. Ralph Dinwiddie asked for ideas for the focused discussion panel. Several people suggested the metals industry.
Ray Peacock offered to help establish contacts, solicit papers and participate on the panel. Ralph said he had contacts with the Metals Industry Association. There was a general discussion about how to increase attendance.
John Snell said that attendance seemed to be up (end of week figures indicate that attendance was up by 20-30% over last year).
John Snell suggested that the Working Group could do a great deal to increase attendance both by helping to publicize and by personal invitations to colleagues.
Ralph Dinwiddie asked how we could use the world wide web more effectively.
Ray Peacock asked about the Thermosense discussion group.
John Snell reported that it had been very poorly used in the past year. (Subscribe by going to <www.spie.org>).
Sven-Ake Ljungberg urged Working Group members to establish links between their websites and the Thermosense web site. Sven challenged the group to think about how to get more participation from young people. He also suggested that the referee process used to select papers should perhaps be more formal and said he would bring up the topic at the Steering Committee meeting on Friday.
Ralph Dinwiddie suggested that perhaps students could participate in a poster session.
Steve Shepard suggested that we may not want to solicit a lot of "academic" papers at the cost of losing applied papers.
The possibility of having a joint session with Infrared Technology and Applications conference, a suggestion brought to the Group by Takahide Sakagami, was discussed, and passed on to the Steering Committee for further discussion.
Ralph Dinwiddie shared a letter from Inside R&D magazine soliciting stories about infrared. Ralph volunteered to continue as chair next year. Ralph then turned the meeting over to Gary Orlove, chair of the Thermal/Infrared Committee of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) who opened the spring meeting of the committee which for the past few years has been held in conjunction with the Working Group meeting. Gary Orlove summarized the minutes of the last meeting (10/97).
Gary Orlove indicated that the committee needs additional Level I and Level II sample questions and asked for people to submit them, following the ASNT guidelines and referenced to a source. Gary Orlove indicated that Wayne Ruddock will be sending out a mailer to all committee members regarding these questions as well as SNT-TC-1A 2000 and the Body of Knowledge.
John Snell pointed out that SNT-TC-1A 2000 affords us the chance to modify the curricula as well as the Body of Knowledge. Several people asked about how questions are reviewed once they are received by the committee.
John Snell said there is a formal process that has been used successfully in the past.
Doug Burleigh asked if any changes of substance had been made to the Level III exam.
Gary Orlove said he did not know of any.
Doug Burleigh suggested that the committee send a letter to ASNT stating our extreme displeasure with he exam as it currently exists.
The committee agreed and asked Doug Burleigh and Kathryn Barker to draft a letter that would be reviewed and then signed by as many people who hold Level III certificates as possible. John Snell felt a letter might make a difference since the current ASNT President, Hussein Sadek, is a thermographer.
Gary Orlove reported that a majority of people taking the Level III exam are from the Far East.
Herb Kaplan reported that problems still exist with the Level III Study Guide. He said that while it matches the content of the Level III curriculum, it does not necessarily match the content of the exam. He said he thought ASNT would publish it as a resource, but not an official Study Guide.
Jeff Garchow is supposed to be reviewing the book to make sure it matches the Level III curriculum, but Gary Orlove thought he had not yet accomplished anything.
There was no consensus on the part of the committee about what action, if any, should be taken regarding the Study Guide.
John Snell presented to the committee an outline he developed for a standardized presentation about the technology. The idea is to have volunteers make standard presentations to local chapters of ASNT in an effort to spread the word about the technology. *John asked that people try the outline out and suggest modifications to him.
Gary Orlove said that Xavier Maldague has taken over the Handbook project from Russ Mack but has not yet accomplished much.
Gary Orlove asked the group if they had any suggestions for how the committee might work form effectively. All agreed that e-mail was a key. They also asked Gary Orlove to develop specific tasks and timelines for all items that need to be done. He also said the committee’s discussion group on the web had been getting very little traffic. Gary Orlove adjourned the meeting at 9:00.
Respectfully submitted,
John Snell
jsnell@snellinfrared.com
ThermoSense XXI Working Group Minutes
April 5, 1999
Chairman Ralph Dinwiddie called the meeting to order and explained that the purpose of the Working Group is to give feedback to the Steering Committee. He then thanked Conference Chair Dennis LeMieux for working hard to create such a successful conference. Dennis indicated that 63 papers were included in the Proceedings, and that seventeen people were registered in each of the two Short Courses. He was also pleased to announce that his company, General Motors, had supported his efforts to have a Cadillac Night Vision car at the conference.
Ralph Dinwiddie was pleased to note that a full day had been devoted to the R&D session. Herb Kaplan expressed mixed emotions about the need for a dual session on Thursday, as well as the scheduling of a Short Course during the conference. Dennis LeMieux indicated that he has scheduled the Short Course at that time to try to increase attendance. Several people suggested that the Steering Committee consider beginning the conference on Monday afternoon and extending it until Friday at noon. Others suggested using poster sessions to accommodate extra papers. Ralph asked whether the Working Group meeting should be on Monday or Wednesday evening. There was no consensus.
Ralph Dinwiddie asked for input on what the focus of the next conference should be. Steve Shepherd reminded the group that the Focus Session was started as an effort to attract new people to the conference who would then bring their problems to us to find solutions. Several people suggested medical be the focus, while others advocated for aerospace, law enforcement, surveillance, pulp and paper, and fire fighting. There was discussion but no consensus.
Several people suggested that communications with SPIE could still be improved. Sven-Ake Ljungberg said the author kits were very late in Europe.
Dennis LeMieux said that E-mail had improved things but work still needed to be done. While electronic submittal of abstracts and papers is now possible, there have been problems with data corruption in the process. People agreed that the color reproduction in the Proceedings this year was superior. They also overwhelmingly favored continuing to have them available at the conference.
John Snell announced that he and Doug Burleigh had edited a collection of papers from past Thermosense Proceedings which is now available on CD-rom ($110) from SPIE. All agreed that this would be a wonderful resource to supplement our aging hard copies of the Proceedings.
Dennis LeMieux discussed his thoughts on how to improve attendance at the conference. He said he had tried a number of ideas, but that continued work was required. He suggested that all Working Group members make an effort to publicize the conference, especially on their web sites. Links to the SPIE/Thermosense website are encouraged. Ralph Dinwiddie asked is we couldn't have a sample web page available for people to use.
Dennis LeMieux also said that the Publicity subcommittee needed to try again to get press releases out. He noted that even OE Reports had nothing about Thermosense. Many people also asked that the equipment vendors do more to promote the conference, especially on their websites where that information had been, for the most part, noticeable absent.
There was discussion about whether the conference had to be scheduled immediately after Easter. Herb Kaplan said that SPIE gets preferred rates during this week and that they are going to continue with it for the next two years.
Ralph Dinwiddie suggested that we have a thermal image contest and reception as part of next year's Working Group meeting. He felt it would be an added incentive for people to attend.
All agreed that both Short Courses were excellent and should be repeated.
The meeting adjourned at 8:45.
Respectfully submitted, John Snell (Acting Secretary)
ThermoSense XXI Steering Committee Minutes
April 9, 1999, Called to order at 8:10 AM by Dennis LeMieux
SPIE Technical Programs Coordinator
Jonica
Todd-Gallery
Technical
Programs Coordinator
ph:
360 676 3290 x 613
fax: 360
647 1445
email: jonica@spie.org
SPIE, PO Box 10, Bellingham, WA 98227-0010
Shipping address: 1000 20th St.,
Bellingham, WA 98225-6705
Visit SPIE at http://www.spie.org
Last Updated on 23 April 2001
By R. B. Dinwiddie