• The APEC Organizations
• The Sponsor's Agreement
• The Paper Review Process
• Volunteering To Review Papers
• Choosing APEC Locations
• APEC MicroMouse Contest Rules

SPONSOR'S AGREEMENT

on the

CONTINUING OPERATION

of the

APPLIED POWER ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE

Written by Robert V. White
c/o Digital Equipment Corporation
146 Main Street MS:MLO4-2/T84
Maynard MA 01754
Voice: (508)493-7647
Facsimile: (508)493-8780
Internet: white@gr8ful.enet.dec.com

Revision 1.7, 27 September 1991

Changebars in the left margin indicate differences
in this document as compared to:
Revision 1.6.
[Note: The HTML version does not show changebars (JF)]

1. APEC Charter

The Applied Power Electronics Conference provides a forum for the exchange of information among practicing professionals in the power electronics business. The emphasis is on the applied and practical.

The scope of the conference interests include all technical aspects of the design, manufacture, application and marketing of devices, circuits, and systems related to power electronics.

It is a goal of the APEC to provide a conference that has a unique identity that is consistent and uniform from year to year.

2. Sponsors

• IEEE Industry Applications Society
• IEEE Power Electronics Society
• Power Sources Manufacturer's Association

3. Duration of This Agreement

This agreement continues in perpetuity unless otherwise amended according to the terms in Section 7 or a sponsor withdraws from the conference (see Section 7.3).

4. Administrative Responsibility

On all contractual, legal, or other agreements requiring the signature of an officer of a sponsoring organization, the APEC will be represented by the APEC Administrator. All such signatures require the prior approval of the Designated Responsible Individuals (see Section 5.2 below).

The APEC Administrator is elected annually at the APEC and serves for a one year term. There are no restrictions on how many terms an individual may serve in this capacity. Those eligible to for election as the APEC Administrator are the Designated Responsible Individuals and the members of the APEC Steering Committee (see Section 5.3 below) that will be serving in the year following the election. The electing group are those individuals serving on the Steering Committee at the time of the election. Any one person has only one vote. Election is by a simple majority.

5. Sponsor Representation

5.1 Chief Executive Officers>

For the matters of approving, amending, or withdrawing from this agreement, the sponsors will be represented by their respective Chief Executive Officers.

These are the current holders of the following offices:

• President - IEEE Industry Applications Society
• President - IEEE Power Electronics Society
• Chairman of the Board - Power Sources Manufacturer's Assoc.

5.2 Designated Responsible Individuals

For the matter of approving major administrative matters, such as budgets, selection of future conference locations and selection of conference and exposition management firms, the sponsors will be represented by Designated Responsible Individuals.

These are the current holders of each of the following offices:

• Chair - Industry Applications Society Meetings Department
• Chair - Power Electronics Society Meetings Committee
• President - Power Sources Manufacturer's Association

5.3 Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is charged with the responsibility for managing strategic and long term issues related to the APEC. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Development of recommendations for future locations of the conference,
• Recommendations for conference and exposition management firms,
• And negotiation of contracts with hotels, exposition halls, conference and exposition management firms and other providers of goods and services to the conference.

The members of this committee are:

• Two individuals appointed by and representing each sponsoring organization,
• The immediate Past General Chair,
• The current General Chair, and
• The next General Chair (see Section 9.1 below).

5.4 Conference Committee

The routine administration of each year's APEC is managed by a Conference Committee. The principal chairs and a brief description of their responsibilities are listed in Appendix B.

The principal chairs are appointed by the General Chair with the advice of the Steering Committee. The General Chair is charged with finding the best people available for the committee. It is desirable, but not required, that the sponsors be equally represented on the Conference Committee.

Additional chairs may be appointed by the General Chair as needed. See also Section 9.2, Other Principal Chairs.

6. Financial Agreement

6.1 Sponsor Commitment and Liability

Each sponsor shares equally in all financial obligations associated with the conference, including advance funding for the following year's conference.

6.2 Funding Process

The funding process has three stages:

a. Advance publicity request and sponsor's advance

b. General conference request and sponsor's advance

c. Closing the books

6.3 Advance Publicity Funding

Advance publicity are those activities, principally the creation and distribution of a Call for Papers, that take place before a complete budget and request for funding has been prepared. The advance publicity funding activities begin in the calendar year preceding the year of the conference for which the publicity is being planned.

No later than 15 January of that year, the Publicity Chair shall submit to the Designated Responsible Individuals a plan for the advance publicity and a request for funding to carry out the plan. See Appendix A, Status Reports and Documents, for what is required in this proposal and request for funding.

After review by the sponsor's representatives, approval is expected no later than 15 February. The due date for submission of the funding to the APEC Finance Chair is thirty days after all sponsor approvals have been obtained.

Approval of funding for the advance publicity of the following year's conference is not a commitment to sponsor the conference. However, should a sponsor withdraw after funds are advanced for the advance publicity and before the approval of the complete conference budget, no refund will be made.

6.4 General Conference Funding

A preliminary budget for the following year's conference will be prepared by the APEC Finance Chair and submitted to the Designated Responsible Individuals of each sponsoring organization no later than 1 May. Budgets must be prepared in accordance with IEEE guidelines as put forth in the Conference Operations Manual. Following revisions, this budget, accompanied by an advance funding request, will be submitted to each of the sponsoring organizations no later than 1 June.

Granting of approval for the budget and advance funding request shall constitute commitment by the organization to sponsor the APEC for the following year.

It is agreed that the deadline for granting approval of the budget and advance funding request is 30 June. The due date for each organization for submission of the advance funding to the APEC Finance Chair is 31 July.

6.5 Financial Closing

No later than 90 days after a given year's conference the Finance Chair will provide the Steering Committee with a financial status report. This report will provide the best information available on:

• Actual versus budgeted expenses and revenues
• Any outstanding receivables and expenses
• Status on any and all bank accounts

Based on this information, the Steering Committee will direct the Finance Chair to return to the Sponsors as much of the funds on hand as is deemed prudent.

No later than six months after the conference all outstanding receivables and expenses will be settled. The Finance Chair will arrange for auditing of the conference financial records in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the IEEE for IEEE sponsored conferences. A pre-auditing status report will be provided to the Designated Responsible Individuals.

No later than the end of the calendar year in which the conference was held, the Finance Chair will provide to the Designated Responsible Individuals a Final Report including the auditor's report and a disbursement of any remaining funds. All bank accounts are to be closed by this time.

6.6 Year to Year Accounting

Each year's conference will have a separate set of books and bank accounts. Funds will not be rolled over from one year's conference to the next.

7. Amending This Agreement

7.1 Amendment Approval Authority

Any amendment to this agreement requires the written approval of the Chief Executive Officer of all of the sponsoring organizations.

7.2 Means for Adding an Additional Sponsor

A new sponsor of the Applied Power Electronics Conference can be added only by an agreement in writing of the incumbent sponsoring organizations. Such a sponsor addition shall be formalized by appropriately amending this operating agreement. The amended operating agreement must then be approved by the Chief Executive Officer of each sponsoring organization. Any such agreement must specify the duration of such sponsorship and proportionate share of financial responsibility of each sponsor.

7.3 Means for Withdrawing from this Agreement

A sponsor may withdraw by presenting to the Designated Responsible Individuals of the other sponsors a letter signed by the Chief Executive Officer stating that the organization is withdrawing from sponsorship of the APEC. Should withdrawal of sponsorship become necessary, the withdrawing organization will make every effort to submit their notification of withdrawal no later than 1 June of the year preceding the conference.

If a sponsor withdraws, this agreement becomes null and void on the remaining sponsors. It must be redrafted and reaffirmed by the signatures of the Chief Executive Officers of each organizations now proposing to continue to sponsor the APEC.

8. Reporting to Sponsors

The General Chair will provide to the Designated Responsible Individuals the reports and documents listed in Appendix A.

9. APEC General Policies and Procedures

9.1 General and Program Chairs

Except in extenuating circumstances, an individual succeeds to the General Chair of the APEC the year after serving as the Program Chair. It is also usual that one serves on the APEC Committee in a chaired position for at least a year before being appointed Program Chair.

Recommendations for appointment to the Program and General Chair are developed by the Steering Committee with the advice of the Conference Committee. This recommendation is communicated to the Designated Responsible Individual of each of the sponsoring organizations no later than 1 April (see Appendix A).

These appointments will become effective in the absence of a veto submitted to the Steering Committee no later than 1 May by any of the Designated Responsible Individuals.

The General Chair shall be successively occupied by an individual holding a major association with one of the sponsoring organizations. The rotation is as follows:

IEEE PELS: 1991, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2002, ...
IEEE IAS: 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, ...
PSMA: 1994, 1997, 2000, ...

9.2 Other Principal Chairs

It is the tradition of APEC that those volunteering for a chaired position on the conference committee are making a multi-year commitment. It is specifically not the practice of APEC to have most or all of the principal chairs change from year to year. It is expected that the roster of the principal chairs will change slowly over time. This is in support of the goal to maintain continuity and uniformity.

9.3 Paper Selection and Program Development

For the Technical Sessions of the APEC, solicitation of abstracts and digests for will be made both through Calls for Papers and direct solicitation of qualified individuals.

Calls for papers will be distributed at other conferences, sent by mail, published in the sponsors' newsletters, published as advertisements in trade publications and by any other means deemed appropriate.

Digests from all sources, so long as the content is substantive and consistent with the charter of the conference are welcome. Digests that promise presentations that are principally advertisements for particular products or services will not be accepted.

While it is not generally the procedure of the APEC to determine all or most of the session topics in advance, it is important that topics of particular and timely interest be adequately covered in the conference. To assure this, the Program Chair, with the advice of the Steering and Conference Committees, will seek to identify individuals both knowledgeable in these topics and known to give good presentations. Papers so sourced will be considered invited and will generally be identified as such in the program.

All abstracts and digests, whether invited or submitted in response to a Call for Papers, will be peer reviewed before being accepted into the program. The goal is to have three anonymous reviews per digest.

The general practice of the conference in developing the technical program is:

• Score all the digests in a peer review process
• Sort the digests according to score
• Select the highest scoring digests that fill the available program time and space
• Sort, select, adjust, and iterate to create and balance the sessions

Invited papers will generally not be rejected, but may be returned to the author for significant rewriting.

The digest selection and technical program scheduling described above are traditionally accomplished in a face-to-face meeting to which are invited: all members of the APEC Program Committee, the APEC Conference Committee, the APEC Steering Committee, the Designated Responsible Individuals, and the Chief Executive Officer of each sponsor. It is strongly recommended that this meeting be held in the facility hosting the conference.

9.4 Recruiting at the Applied Power Electronics Conference

It is agreed that that recruiting will not be permitted or condoned at the APEC. Additionally, it is agreed that firms and organizations for whom recruiting and/or staffing is a significant function of their business will not be permitted in any way: to participate in the conference or exposition, be affiliated with the conference or exposition, or have use of the conference or exposition spaces.

Appendix A: Status Reports and Documents

Appendix B: Principal Chairs and Responsibilities

Appendix C: Approval Signatures: