By 5:30 am EST (00:30 am Hawaii time) on December 6, 2011, one day before the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the IMS 2012 technical program chair, Raafat Mansour sent out an e-mail to several members of the IMS 2012 steering committee (for which I am serving as the promotions co-chair) announcing that the IMS2012 has received the highest number of submitted papers since the inception of IMS. Including the Hawaiian time zone is noteworthy since the deadline for paper submissions was midnight December 5th, Hawaii time, thereby extending the deadline to the very last minute of the day on US soil. IMS steering committees have long recognized and tried to accommodate the procrastinating habits of certain researchers and academics (you know who you are) by setting the deadline to this time zone. I do not have information on how many papers came in at the last minute, but the 2012 steering committee is to be congratulated for achieving the following record breaking paper submissions:
- IMS2012, Montreal received 1231 papers ( New Record) compared to IMS2003 Philadelphia received 1094 papers ( Previous Record). The average number of paper submissions over the last 4 years (2008-2011) was 825 papers.

This is a fitting tribute to the hard work of this year's steering committee and helps commemorate the 60 year anniversary of the very first conference of what today has become the International Microwave Symposium or IMS. Congratulations.