Executive Committee Structure

The Executive Committee (EC) had evolved to be a mixture of elected and non-elected members with most of the members having significant operational responsibilities. As the activities of ACM SIGGRAPH  increased in size and scope it became more difficult for the volunteer EC members to both fulfill their operational responsibilities, have the time to be able to have a broad vision for ACM SIGGRAPH, and to think strategically. Also, the Bylaws had detailed descriptions of many of the EC positions so adding or modifying a position was difficult.

In FY 2007 the EC worked to create a new governance structure and set of Bylaws that would be both more functional and flexible. This new structure and Bylaws were approved by the members and took effect on 1 July, 2007. Under the new EC structure there are three Officers: President, Vice-President, and Treasurer, and six Directors at Large. All voting EC members are now elected. The following are ex-officio non-voting members of the EC:

•    The Chair of the Conference Advisory Group (CAG)
•    The Chair of the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (SACAG)
•    The SIGGRAPH Conference Chief Staff Executive  
•    The SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Chief Staff Executive
•    The ACM Program Director for ACM SIGGRAPH
•    The Past President, for the first year of the new President’s term.


All operational functions, e. g., Publications, Chapters, Education, Information Services, etc. have been moved into standing committees. The Chairs of these committees, who are appointed by the EC, are responsible for the operational functions. It is expected that EC members will serve as liaisons on the different committees so that they are aware of what is happening, so for example an EC member might be on the Information Services and Education Committees. But they will not be the ones who are responsible for ensuring that the committees perform their functions, as that is the responsibility of the committee's chair. This new structure will make the committees more efficient and allow EC members to spend more time thinking about broader strategic issues.

The current list of Standing Committees are as follows: Conference Advisory Group, SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group, Digital Arts Committee,Education Committee, Communications and Membership Committee, Small Conferences Committee, External Relations Committee, Information Services Committee, Publications Committee, and SIGGRAPH Student Services Committee.

Digital Arts Committee (Chair - Jacquelyn Ford Morie)

Meetings

One physical meeting with the core committee members was held April 26-27, 2008 in New York City, at NYU facilities Rick Barry was able to get for us at no cost.  Communication throughout the year was done by email, along with a Ning social networking site we established to facilitate communication and to have a central place to store conversations, work and ideas. We are also using Google docs  as a collaborative writing tool.  

Web Updates
Having a working, easy-to-use site for the web portal is a main priority for 2008-2009.   Due to the continuing poor performance of the Plone web site, we have decided to abandon it and go another route, using a social form of web site which seems a more appropriate direction for the arts portal.  To this end, we are protoyping a Ning social site which we will launch at the 2008 SIGGRAPH Conference, in a BOF meeting that has been scheduled for Tuesday from 3-4 pm at the International Center.  
This will be a preliminary site that we will solicit a volunteer for who can customize it with CSS.  This site will still use the current arts.siggraph.org url.

Committee Expansion
DAC invited several new outer circle committee members,  Rebecca Strzelec, Linda Lauro-Lazin, and Lina Yamaguchi.   These members (ultimately 5-7) will be called expert advisors and will assist the DAC in ideas for content, finding people who can contribute articles and other content. Due to the limited budget, only core members can currently travel, so those members local to NYC were invited to have dinner with the committee.
Future budgets should support meeting with outer circle committee volunteers.  After the meeting, through Kathryn Saunders, we added  Debra Luneau, an expert Information Architect in Toronto, to our experts group.


Other activities
1.Leonardo connection
We are also working with Leonardo and Roger Malina on the collaborative work between them and the SIGGRAPH Art Show. We will be meeting at SIGGRAPH 2008 to determine what the DAC's role can be to help in this effort.

2. Online journal
DAC is preparing a proposal to launch an online reviewed publication.  We are currently gathering new texts to create a proto-type edition, which we will submit to the EC for approval, before moving on to the ACM publications committee.  We are following ACM guidelines for publications, as our goal is to create a publication that qualifies to be archived by the ACM Digital Library.

3. Arts Lifetime Achievement Award
While not a DAC initiative, many of the DAC members preparing the proposal that was delivered to the EC.

The SIGGRAPH 2007 Conference (Conference Advisory Group Chair - Jackie White)

SIGGRAPH 2007, the 34th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, announced attendance of 24,043 artists, research scientists, gaming experts, developers, filmmakers, and academics from 79 countries for the annual conference and exhibition in San Diego. More than 230 companies exhibited - an increase in exhibit space of more than 12% from the previous year.

"From around the globe, the leading minds in our community united in San Diego for an impressive week that highlighted major breakthroughs, technical achievements, and exciting new programs," commented Joe Marks, SIGGRAPH 2007 Conference Chair from Walt Disney Animation Studios. "The strong attendance numbers indicated the strength and vibrancy of the SIGGRAPH community and the importance of computer graphics in today's society. Most importantly the open source spirit was once again prevalent throughout the conference."

Highlights from this year's conference included engaging speeches from Featured Speakers Glenn Entis, SVP/Chief Visual and Technical Officer for Electronic Arts, and Scott McCloud, an internationally renowned author and graphic novelist. Also, 2007 marked the first annual FJORG! "Viking Animator" competition, which featured 16 three-person teams competing for 32 hours straight in order to create the best overall animation of at least 15 seconds in length.

Award Winners

ACM SIGGRAPH presented three awards at the conference: The Steven A. Coons Award given to Nelson Max of the University of California at Davis and The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the Computer Graphics Achievement Award, given to Greg Ward; the Significant New Researcher Award, given to Ravi Ramamoorthi of Columbia University.

Computer Animation Festival (CAF) Awards

The CAF Awards were as follows: Ark (Best of Show) by Grzegorz Jonkajtys and Marcin Kobylecki, Poland; Dreammaker (Jury Honors) by Leszek Plichta Institute of Animation, Visual Effects, and Digital Post Production, Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany;  En Tus Brazos (Award of Excellence) by Francois-Xavier Goby, Edouard Jouret, Matthieu Landour, Supinfocom Valenciennes, France.

Conference content DVD set

Conference content DVD set of recorded conference presentations was continued for 2007 with SOMA Media. It was offered for sale after the conference and was posted as streaming media in the ACM Digital Library. Again, this content was made available to all ACM SIGGRAPH members free of charge as a member benefit. These recorded presentations have been quite popular. For example, there have been almost 44,000 downloads in the period between February and July 2008. This was for just the Papers Program and did not include any of the other captured presentations.
 

SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (Chair - Alyn Rockwood)

The Executive Committee last year approved a new SIGGRAPH level conference in Asia, to be called "SIGGRAPH Asia". The first SIGGRAPH Asia will be held in Singapore in December, 2008. The Conference Chair is Yong Tsui Lee of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He has formed a conference committee and they have started meeting to plan the event. The second SIGGRAPH Asia will be held in December 2009 with Masa Inakage of Keio University, Tokyo as Chair.  A SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group, modeled after the SIGGRAPH Conference Advisory Group, has been formed.

External Relations and Small Conferences (Scott Lang)

ACM SIGGRAPH sponsored or co-sponsored fourteen small conference and/or workshops in FY 2007. In addition we were in cooperation with many more.

Gaming Alliances
We are working with members of the ACM SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Conference, IGDA, Educational, and other gaming communities to form alliances. One result of this effort is Sandbox: an ACM SIGGRAPH Video Game Symposium which was co-located with SIGGRAPH 2006. It was very successful and was co-located again with SIGGRAPH 2007.

Developing relationships with peers
We are actively working with quality teams in related areas to form official alliances, share resources, and cross promote one another. These include AWN.com, the Visual Effects Society, SIGCHI, IGDA, and Computer Graphics World Magazine. This is an ongoing effort to strengthen ACM SIGGRAPH's role within related communities. In particular we are strengthening relations with Asian organizations. We have had a long relationship with the Digital Content Association of Japan and the Computer Graphics Arts Society of Japan.

Membership and Communications Activities (Chair of Communications and Membership Services – Kathryn Saunders)

This fiscal year has been a very active one for the Chair of Communications and Membership Services. Many new initiatives were engaged with respect to our membership offerings and benefits, and our communications strategies.

SIGGRAPH Reporters Program

The Student Reporters Program that was in place in previous years has evolved into the SIGGRAPH Reporters Program in order to include journalistic talent from seasoned reporters as well as students. In addition, we are working together with the Chapters reporting team, ‘SCOOP’ to ensure better coverage at the conference, bringing a breadth and depth of reporting activity to our constituents worldwide. Our distribution channels have also been expanded. In addition to the siggraph.org site and the chapters site, our new co-branded SIGGRPH / CGSociety site www.cgsociety.com will broadcast the reports increasing our reach significantly.

The aim is to expand the reporting activity into a year round effort that captures content at both our conferences as well as our activities globally through our Chapters Members. We have done this in two ways:

   1.We have a new online Community News Page that is in the works that will highlight the content from our SCOOP and SIGGRAPH Reporters as well as SIGGRAPH Members and affiliates that want to submit a range of content including reviews, videos, photos and events.
   2. SIGGRAPH Reporters will now be permanent contributors to the E-Quarterly. Popular articles will be re-worked for the publication while other feature articles will be exclusive to this online magazine.


Five SIGGRAPH reporters will be covering the SIGGRAPH ’08 conference including our SIGGRAPH Reporters Coordinator, Jessica Fernandes. Jessica will also be personally covering the SIGGRAPH Asia ’08 conference in Singapore in December.

E-Quarterly

The E-Quarterly now has section editors who are responsible for contributions to their particular area. Editor Hans Westman has brought on Barb Helfer for Education

Kwan-Liu Ma as the VisFile Editor and Eric Paquette as the E-Quality Controller.

Member Resource Guide

We created a printed Member Resource Guide for our members this year in order to clarify the Membership options, list the valuable member benefits, resources, discounts and opportunities and communicate the activities of our organization. The Member Resource Guide will be available in printed format at the Members Booth both at SIGGRAPH ’08 and SIGGRAPH Asia ‘08

Online activities:

We have maintained our partnership with CreativeHeads.net to deliver the weekly HeadsUp! Career Newsletter that goes out to our members and also have a prominent link to their Job Board on our website.

We have embarked on a revamping of the siggraph.org website and are currently reviewing the content and the way it is delivered in order to create a more social and interactive website with current content. The volunteer who is heading up this initiative is Debra Luneau.

ACM SIGGRAPH Village

The ACM SIGGRAPH Village is a venue at the SIGGRAPH conference that we organize to feature all of the organizational activities and promote membership. For SIGGRAPH 2008, we have adopted an ‘integrated village’ theme to support the SIGGRAPH ’08 conference format of integrated content. Further, we incorporated the former ‘International’ venue into the Village to reflect our global activities and the fact that we are an international organization. The Members booth manager is: Jacky Bibliowicz.

SIGGRAPH Asia will not have an ACM SIGGRAPH Village per se in Singapore but will have a booth and knowledgeable volunteers who can speak to the activities of the organization including Chapters, Membership and Education on a global scale.

Member Benefits:

A lot of time and energy has been put into expanding the range of Member benefits. However, many of them will take place in the next fiscal year. For example, we worked with industry members of the SIGGRAPH community to develop a list of companies willing to give deep discounts on merchandise to ACM SIGGRAPH members on merchandise featured at the SIGGRAPH conference. A list of the preferred companies will be handed out at the Members Booth.

Celebrating our Members:

During SIGGRAPH ’07 in San Diego, John Fujii assisted us in photographing new and veteran ACM SIGGRAPH members. The full-size photos will be on display in the SIGGRAPH Village along with with the member’s names and testimonials about SIGGRAPH. Some of the Members have elected to extend a special welcome to our inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia conference to be held in Singapore in December ’08. These panels will travel to Singapore to grace our booth there. It is our hope that we can begin a ‘dialogue between members’ that volley between our two international conferences. We intend to capture head shots of our members at the Members Booth in order to celebrate our members at our next year’s conferences.

Associate Membership

Our Chapters Chair, our Communications Chair in addition to our parent organization ACM, have worked together to create a more inclusive ACM SIGGRAPH Membership. In 2008, we offered a free ACM SIGGRAPH Associate membership to all of our approximately 5,000 Chapters Members worldwide. This means that all Chapters members are automatically ACM SIGGRAPH Associate members if they so desire. We are welcoming the new Associate Members with a range of new member benefits. However, we are also encouraging these Associate Members to become ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH members in order to support the global activities of the organization and to fully capitalize on the full range of member benefits and opportunities.

Student Membership Award

We are continuing the tradition of extending all accepted Student Volunteers a one-year free membership to recognize the honor in being selected as a student volunteer. Included in this membership is a free membership from our affiliate, CGSociety.
ACM SIGGRAPH Web Site (Director for Information Services - Thierry Frey)

The Information Srvices Commiittee was very busy this year updating our different web sites and giving technical support to the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia Conferences. We continued to update the Plone Content Management System. More content was moved from the old static site into our main Plone based system.

Education Committee (Director for Education - Rick Barry)

For a more comprehensive version of the Education Committee Annual Report please look at http://education.siggraph.org/conferences/annual-conference/siggraph-2008/annual-report/

C+IR: curricular and instructional resources

Chairs: Frank Hanisch, Peter Weishar
Contact: hanisch@uni-tuebingen.de, pweishar@scad.edu
http://education.siggraph.org/resources

How good can education in our field be, how good should it be and will it be if educational excellence is given the possibility to unfold? The Curricular and Instructional Resources (C+IR) working group’s declared goal is to improve both the quality and dissemination of helpful educational resources in computer graphics, digital arts, and related fields, and further to acknowledge and network outstanding educators worldwide.

The subcommittee can offer these products as free service for educators in computer graphics and digital arts:

• A knowledge base defining and structuring the discipline
• A peer-reviewed material source (CGEMS) publishing the best of today’s classroom materials, thereby qualifying and sharing educational excellence
• A community-rated collection (cgSource) lowering the barriers for sharing valuable teaching materials while still offering peer recognition
• Curricular efforts in Visualization Education, Digital Art, Game Education, Visual Arts,
    Primary/Secondary Education, and Computer Science

We are further constantly working towards integrating the committee’s community building efforts into the broader curricular efforts.

At SIGGRAPH 2008, we’re moderating a roundtable on Educational Resources. Here, teachers, curriculum designers, and other people involved in educational matters can meet other educators, learn about their approaches, and share their personal classroom experiences. Several self-made and third-party curricular and instructional resources will be presented;
as well as the CGEMS awarded materials of 2008.

CKB: curriculum knowledge base

Contact: mjb@cs.oregonstate.edu
http://education.siggraph.org/resources/knowledge-base

Computer Graphics is evolving as a discipline characterized by the fusion of artistic and technical theories and skills. This project aims at defining this discipline by creating a curriculum knowledge base (CKB). The knowledge base is presented as a palette of subject areas and skills that forms the necessary educational framework for creating undergraduate curricula in computer graphics. By agreeing on a common set of curriculum paths and vocabulary, educators can more easily share course materials and students can more fluidly move between programs. It also facilitates the development of attributes that will create paths toward professional work, graduate studies, and lifelong learning in computer graphics. The CKB taxonomy may be found in CGEMS, the joint online educational resource of ACM SIGGRAPH and Eurographics [ http://education.siggraph.org/resources/cgems ].

At the SIGGRAPH 2007 Educators Program, the CKB Committee’s work on the curriculum knowledge base was officially awarded an Honorable Mention for Outstanding Contribution in the Special Issue: Spreading the Computer Graphics Curriculum, CGEMS: Computer Graphics Educational Materials.

Over the past year, the CKB Committee used their taxonomy as a starting point in the creation of a new keyword list for categorizing and searching CGEMS and cgSource [ http://education.siggraph.org/resources/cgems ] via the Education Committee’s Curricular and Instructional Resources (C+IR) [ http://education.siggraph.org/resources ]. This keyword list will be further refined through discussion and collaboration with C+IR during the 2008 SIGGRAPH meeting.

CGEMS: computer graphics educational materials source

Coordinators: Frank Hanisch, Joaquim Jorge
Contact: hanisch@uni-tuebingen.de
http://education.siggraph.org/resources/cgems
 
Additional Contributor: Frederico Figueiredo

The Computer Graphics Educational Materials Source (CGEMS) is a peer-reviewed online repository publishing curricula, course modules and syllabi, lab notes, problem sets, teaching gems, and student work. It is an ongoing, joint effort of the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee and the Eurographics Education Board. CGEMS offers published peer recognition in computer graphics education, and makes available excellent, ready-to-use teaching materials worldwide, free of charge, and ensured by Creative Commons licensing. All material is documented with educational goals, methodology, and assessment, and undergoes critique by long-term educators, professionals, and artists. More than 60 reviewers from 13 countries are involved.

While in the first years nearly all materials were rejected, 6 of 11 were published in 2007, 6 of 8  in 2008. Submissions generally require few revisions. CGEMS helps to establish a common sense of what makes good educational work in the field, and whether it can really be shared and applied in other educational setups. With more publications at hand, we are now reworking the CGEMS website. Material previews and direct downloads are implemented, and the material details page is redesigned. We have included visual indicators for licenses and awards; awarded materials are supplemented with an Editor’s Note. Reviewers are now acknowledged in public.

2008 CGEMS awards best material

Title:     X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors
Author:     Don Brutzman
Affiliation:    Naval Postgraduate School

CGEMS honorable mention

Title:    Parametric Polynomial Curves
Author:    David Stahl
Affiliation:    US Naval Academy

Title:    Realtime 3D Graphics Programming Using the Quake3 Engine
Author:    Daniel Wagner, Bernhard Kainz, Dieter Schmalstieg
Affiliation:    Graz University of Technology

CGEMS Award Jurors:

Colleen Case
Past-Director for Education
ACM SIGGRAPH

Tony Longson
Cal State University, Los Angeles, CA

Jacki Morie
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA

Anne Spalter
Brown University, Providence, RI
 & Anne Spalter Studios

cgSource: education committee resource collection

Coordinators: Frederico Figueiredo, Bridget Gaynor, Josephine Leong
http://education.siggraph.org/resources/cgsource

The cgSource is a simple and barrier-free community-based repository for curricula and educational resources in Computer Graphics (CG), Digital Arts, and related fields. Before being published online, all submitted materials are checked for basic acceptability criteria, carried out by one or more cgSource coordinators, which includes scope, licensing, affiliation, completeness, usability with free/available software, and specified technical requirements. Unless otherwise noted, all materials available in cgSource are licensed under Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0)
[ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 ].

Currently, submissions are sent via an email message to the cgSource coordinators at cgsource@siggraph.org. Authors of accepted materials are asked to read and sign the cgSource License Agreement. Materials are then made available and put in the cgSource repository (i.e. contents are frozen and uploaded). Similar to CGEMS, materials are planned to be structured according to the current CG taxonomy defined by the Education Committee’s Curriculum Knowledge Base (CKB). Based on each submission, keywords will be assigned to all content (existing and new). This work is ongoing and is expected to be finished before the end of this year.

Serving as a community-based repository, cgSource seeks to provide the CG community with a mechanism for commenting and rating published materials. Unlike CGEMS, which requires formal submission and peer review requirements, it is up to the online community to judge the quality of the materials published in cgSource. For this reason, in addition the work title, author(s) name/affiliation, license agreement, and all associated material, authors are encouraged to provide: short description; long description (a more detailed description of the content and the files included; plus the requirements for viewing); and keywords.

Since SIGGRAPH 2007, the cgSource team has carefully reviewed and made available the acceptability criteria for cgSource. In addition, they defined the license agreement according to Creative Commons. In the meantime, the procedures were tested and successfully applied to six new submissions. All were accepted for publication and are posted on our current website at http://education.siggraph.org/resources/cgsource.

During this year, the cgSource team plans to further develop synergies with the CGEMS community to increase visibility of the contents and get new submissions. Similar to last year, solicitation is planned during SIGGRAPH 2008. Depending on the number of submissions to come, several new features are planned to further support the CG online community: online submission / review system, feature most popular material of the month, mechanism to invite / recommend submissions, among others.

visualization education

Coordinator: Gitta Domik
Contact: domik@siggraph.org
http://www.uni-paderborn.de/cs/vis

A rising tendency in visualization is the collaboration between different disciplines. In a recent panel, Alan Chalmers, Gitta Domik (chair), Dieter Fellner and Holly Rushmeier discussed “What Can We Gain from Transdisciplinary Visualization Courses?” with other participants of Eurographics 2008 in Crete, Greece. Speakers voiced the following possible gains, expected problems, and practical solutions.

digital art curriculum framework

Authors: Peter Weishar, Michael Tanzillo, Bridget Gaynor, Josephine Leong
http://education.siggraph.org/resources/artscurric/framework/view

The Digital Art Curriculum Framework is designed to assist educators in the creation of a Fine Art program with emphasis on digital assets, rather than traditional mediums. It incorporates research into some of the more well-established Digital Art programs in both North America, including Cornell University, Texas A&M, and The Ohio State University, and the world at large. Based on the research, this framework outlines the structure necessary for the creation of a Digital Art degree program.

This framework also serves as a guide for students creating individualized courses of study at institutions without Digital Art programs. It will also strive to create a clear definition of what distinguishes “Digital Art” from “Digital Arts.” In an academic environment, “Digital Arts” can refer to a broader range of topics including graphic design, visualization, architecture, and photography. “Digital Art,” on the other hand, will be defined as a subcategory within the broader “Digital Arts.”

In 2007, this project was devoted to researching and summarizing existing Digital Art programs. For 2008, the Digital Art Curriculum Framework will look to develop a standard curriculum based upon this previous research. In the future, this project will be distributed to members and organizations within the academic community so it can aid in the development of Digital Art programs and promote the services of the Siggraph Education Committee.

community building & support
education committee website

Coordinator: Wobbe F. Koning
Contact: wobbe@siggraph.org

Though regularly maintained, the website of the education committee did not undergo any major changes over the last year. However, we are proud to have added “The History of Computer Graphics and Digital Art Project”1 to our non-peer reviewed resources at cgSource. This project is headed by Anna Ursyn of the University of Northern Colorado.

Links:
1. http://education.siggraph.org/resources/cgsource/instructional-materials/history
2. http://plone.org
3. http://education.siggraph.org/resources/directory


P/SE: primary/secondary education

Coordinator: James Martinez
http://www.digital-evolutions.org

In continued support of our mission we are posting a new web site. Digital Evolutions is an accelerated exploratory technology program, introducing students to graphic design, multimedia, programming, and video production, with a heavy focus on 3D visualization & animation.

Links on the web at http://www.digital-evolutions.org/de.html

sub-committee growing
Dan Cornell is the Teacher who runs Digital Evolutions. He is a 3D teacher at Smoky Hills High School in Aurora, Colorado. He has taught 3D for the last 6 years to both middle school and high school students. His students have won numerous awards. Please take a look at his website (above). They are doing some amazing things. Dan has also agreed to be a part of the K-12 Primary/Secondary Sub-Committee. His knowledge will be a great resource.

Throughout the year several K-12 teachers have contacted the Sub-Committee about the Conference. Many are expecting to attend SIGGRAPH LA 08, and we are looking forward to creating a larger community this year. This will be accomplished with a stronger effort towards recruiting at the Education Booth.

undergraduate computer graphics initiative

Coordinator: William J. Joel, Western

Approximately four years ago, Dr. William Joel began a series of annual Birds-of-a-Feather sessions concerning undergraduate computer graphics research. Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions are informal gatherings that take place during the SIGGRAPH conference. Two years ago, the Education Committee decided to create an initiative in this area, coordinated by Dr. Joel. Last year’s BOF focussed on what the Education Committee could do to both foster and support student research projects. The primary outcome of that session was a recommendation that online tools should be provided to facilitate the development of student reasearch projects. These tools would allow faculty to share expertise and ideas concerning student research, and perhaps facilitiate inter-institutional endeavors. Dr. Joel will be working with SysMgr and Education Webmaster Wobbe Koning to develop these tools. During this year’s annual conference, Dr. Joel will again be hosting a BOF to create a cohort of faculty who would like their students to work together on projects.

global outreach

Global Outreach Coordinator: Rejane Spitz
Contact: rejane@puc-rio.br

One of the major objectives of the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee is to help establish a worldwide network of computer graphics educators. The Education Committee began its international activities in 1991, by appointing an International Representative in South America. Our worldwide connections and activities have substantially grown since then. Today our Education Committee is truly multinational and cross-cultural, with volunteer members from North and South America, Asia and Europe, thus creating a much wider educational network.

Our current International Representatives are:

• Werner Hansmann (2007) and Gitta Domik (2008) (Germany) – European Representatives
• Rejane Spitz (Brazil) - South American Representative
• Zhigeng Pan, Weihua Gao and Liuyi Wang (China) – Asian Representatives

Our ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee members have active roles in the planning and organization of education-related CG events in several countries, which offers an excellent opportunity for us to exchange information and promote our ACM SIGGRAPH educational activities worldwide.

For many years we have been actively involved in the organization and promotion of conferences such as Eurographics (held in the Czech Republic in 2007 and to be held in Greece in 2008), and SIGRADI (the Ibero-American Association for Computer Graphics), held in Mexico in 2007, and to be held in Cuba in 2008. This year we are also actively involved in the promotion of SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 - to be held in December 2008 in Singapore – which will present a very promising and innovative Educators Programme, chaired by Mark Chavez.
 
In this report we list several international educational activities, events and conferences in CG and related areas in which our Committee members and International Representatives are involved, which took or will take place in Europe, Asia and Latin America in 2007-2008.

europe
European Representatives: Gitta Domik, Werner Hansmann – Germany
 
At the International conference EUROGRAPHICS 2007, which took place September 3 - 7, 2007 in Prague, Czech Republic, an education track, chaired by Petr Felkel (CZ) and Isabel Navazo (ES) featured 3 sessions on CG education: Teaching Computer Graphics, Teaching with Computer Graphics and Panel Discussion. At the first 2 sessions, very good papers were presented to a highly interested audience. At the panel session, with Steve Cunningham (USA) as moderator, 4 distinguished panelists (Jean-Jacques Bourdin (France), Cecilia Sik Lanyi (Hungary), Marta Fairen (ES), Werner Hansmann (Germany) presented recommendations of the CG Education Workshop (CGEW’06), which was held in September 2006 in Vienna, Austria. The presentation proceeded into a spirited discussion with the audience.

At the International conference EUROGRAPHICS 2008, which took place April 14 - 18, 2008 near Heraklion, Greece, the education track was chaired by Steve Cunningham (USA) and Lars Kjelldahl (S). It also featured 3 sessions on CG education: Games for Education, Teaching and Panel Discussion. At the panel session, chaired by Gitta Domik (Germany), the panelists Alan Chalmers (UK), Dieter Fellner (Austria), and Holly Rushmeier (USA) captured the audience discussing the question: “What Can We Gain from Transdisciplinary Visualization Courses?”

The organization of future EG/SIGGRAPH workshops and the common participation of EUROGRAPHICS and ACM SIGGRAPH in the Educators Program at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 have been discussed with Rick Barry (ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee Chair). Mark Chavez (Chair of the SIGGRAPH Asia Educators Program) has suggested to organize a plenary opening session with a representation of both ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee and EUROGRAPHICS Education Board.

The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee is pleased to continue its support of Computer Graphics Education workshops. The next workshop is planned to be held at EUROGRAPHICS 2009 in Munich (Germany) in April 2009. Some possible topics have been proposed. Invitations will be distributed soon.

At a meeting of the EUROGRAPHICS Education Board in April 2008, it was agreed that a special Book Review Section on textbooks dealing with CG will be included in the Journal “Computer Graphics Forum.” The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee and the EUROGRAPHICS Education Board have agreed to renew support of the CGEMS project for another year, based on a 75% / 25% support arrangement.

For EUROGRAPHICS 2009, Gitta Domik will be co-chairing (together with Riccardo Scateni, Italy) the Education Program (Munich, March 30-April 3, 2009). The conference will also have an education workshop (Eurographics/Siggraph) bundled in that will be co-chaired by Steve Cunningham and Colleen Case. Education Workshop and Education Program Chairs will work closely together to define the Education program.

asia
Asian Representatives: Zhigeng Pan, Liuyi Wang, Weihua Gao – China

•    October, 16-18, 2007, ASIAGRAPH, Tokyo
    This is an event for Exhibition and show of CG product, emerging technologies, digital art, et al. Several hundreds of people attend the event. Invited speakers are from Japan, Korea, and China.
 
•    June 18-20, Edutainment’2007, Hong Kong
    This is an international conference on E-learning and games, sponsored by VR Committee, China Society of Image and Graphics. Approximately 150 people have attended that conference.
 
•    June 25-27, Edutainment’2008, Nanjing, China
    This is the third international conference on E-learning and games, sponsored by VR Committee, China Society of Image and Graphics. There will be approximately 150 people attending that conference.
 
•    October, 2007, CICDAF 2007, Beijing, China
    The 4th China International Animation and Digital Arts Festival (CICDAF 2007).

•    September 28-October 1, 2008, CICDAF 2008, Changzhou, China
    The 5th China International Animation and Digital Arts Festival (CICDAF 2008). More information on this event can be found at http://www.cicdaf.com/2008en.

 •    December, 10-13, 2008, SIGGRAPH Asia 2008, Singapore
    This can be seen as the winter conference of SIGGRAPH, as the summer conference is usually in USA. This event will attract more people in Asia area to attend SIGGRAPH, and push SIGGRAPH around the world. SIGGRAPH Education Committee has active roles in the promotion, and will also have some kind of education events planned.
 
•    July 18-20, 2008, 2nd. Asian Youth Animation & Comics Contest, AYACC, China
    More information on this event can be found at http://www.ayacc.org.
 
south america
South American Representative: Rejane Spitz – Brazil

Computer Graphics conferences (as well as conferences on Electronic Art, Games, Entertainment and other CG related subjects) are excellent venues for connecting to educators and encouraging them to join and participate in ACM SIGGRAPH events, thus expanding our educational network in South America. In 2007-2008 we have been involved in establishing links and promoting ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee initiatives at the following conferences, held (or to be held) in South America:

•    SIGRADI Conferences (organized by the Ibero-American Association for Computer Graphics), Mexico (2007) and to be held in Cuba in 2008. International symposiums hosted by educational institutions located in different Ibero-American countries. Our Education Committee South American Representative, Rejane Spitz, has been actively involved in this Organization, as a member of the Executive Committee of SIGRADI 2000 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and as a member of the Scientific Committee of several SIGRADI symposiums, such as 2001 (Chile), 2002 (Venezuela), 2003 (Argentina), 2004 (Brazil), 2005 (Peru), 2006 (Chile), and 2007 (Mexico). Considering their wide spectrum of presenters and attendees, SIGRADI symposiums offer an excellent opportunity for the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee to get in touch with CG educators from Latin American countries.

•    8th P&D Design 2008 (Congresso Brasileiro de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento em Design), October 2008, São Paulo (Brazil). This is the major Design conference in Latin America. The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committeee’s South American Representative is a member of the P&D’2008 Scientific Committee, as well as a speaker at the Papers Session.

•    Anima Mundi International Animation Festival 2008, held annualy in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil. This year we have helped to establish a link between Marcos Magalhães (member of the Organizing Committee of ANIMA MUNDI and Professor at PUC-Rio University) and Patricia Beckman (Chair of FJORG /SIGGRAPH 2007 and 2008), which will hopefully increase the participation of South American animators at SIGGRAPH conferences.

•    SBDI Conference 2007 (organized by the Sociedade Brasileira de Design de Informação), October 2007, Curitiba (Brazil) – a biennial international conference which congregates designers from different parts of the world, mostly from South American countries.

•    SBGames 2008 (Brazilian Symposia on Games and Digital Entertainment) to be held in Minas Gerais, Brazil in 2008. In 2009 the conference will be hosted by PUC-Rio, Brazil. Our Education Committee South American Representative has been invited to take part in the SBGames 2009 Organizing Committee, and would like to establish a collaboration between SBGames and ACM SIGGRAPH.

•    Encuentros de Intercambio Interdisciplinario Brasil-Argentina (Interdiciplinary Exchange Meetings Brazil-Argentina) (Universidad Buenos Aires, Argentina and PUC-Rio, Brazil) - our first Meeting was held at Universidad Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 2007, and we are planning to host a 2nd Meeting at PUC-Rio, Brazil, in 2008-2009.

We have also established an important partnership with the international association LEONARDO/ISAST (International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology), whose projects, publications and activities congregate CG professionals from all over the world. Being an ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee’s International Representative, and a member of the International Board of LEONARDO/ISAST, Rejane Spitz has been involved in several collaborations between LEONARDO/ISAST and SIGGRAPH. This year, Roger Malina (Chief Editor of LEONARDO Journal) has proposed to Rick Barry (Director for Education) to publish a series of education-related texts on a regular basis. One of LEONARDO’s major initiatives this year is the LEONARDO Education Forum, congregating educators from all over the world.

Chapters (ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters Committee Chair - Scott Lang)

The ACM SIGGRAPH Professional and Student Chapters continue to be the largest network of SIG Chapters within the ACM organization. Sixty-five chapters exist in over fifteen countries around the world. During the last year, we chartered new Professional Chapters in Shanghai and Madrid with another In-Formation in Manila. Several Student Chapters are currently In-Formation as well.

Associate Membership Program
The biggest initiative for the chapters over the last year has been the new ACM SIGGRAPH Associate Membership Program. We have been working with staff at ACM headquarters to implement this new membership category using two chapters as test cases. These two chapters, NYC ACM SIGGRAPH and Paris ACM SIGGRAPH, have turned their membership databases over to ACM in order to set up the system that will ultimately be opened up to every chapter and chapter member. We are currently finalizing the procedures for using this mechanism so that a presentation can be made at the SIGGRAPH 2008 Chapters Development Workshop in Los Angeles.

Professional and Student Chapters Committee
A big change for the Professional and Student Chapters Committee (PSCC) in 2007-2008 was the dissolution of the Director for Chapters position as part of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (EC) re-structuring. The PSCC is composed of 11 members with positions covering areas such as Electronic Services, Publications, Start-Ups, Web Site Maintenance, and Conference Activities. Many of the PSCC members are former / current chapter officers so they have a great deal of real-world experience to draw from when discussions are held and decisions are made that affect the governance of the chapters network.

SIGGRAPH 2007 Conference Activities
The ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters are involved with many activities at each year’s conference. The single most important event for the chapters is the Chapters Development Workshop that is held the day before the conference officially opens. Last year’s workshop drew over 50 chapter leaders from all around the world. Sessions at the meeting included “Electronic Services for the Chapters”, “Collaborative Events”, and “State of the Chapters”, among others.

Over the course of the conference week, the Chapters hold several public meetings. One such meeting is the Professional and Student Chapter Start-Up Meeting. Last year’s meeting drew over 20 interested individuals.

The annual Chapters Party was held at the popular “On Broadway” nightclub. Over 1,500 people attended this event. For the second year in a row, we also co-hosted the ACM SIGGRAPH Fashion Show, one of the most popular media events at the conference. Finally, we also hosted and funded the first annual Student Volunteer Alumni Reunion. Though lightly attended, it was a success and we look forward to hosting it again in 2008.

Our SCOOP Team collected hours of video footage that was edited into short venue overviews. They also worked with the S2008 Media Team to capture footage that was ultimately used to produce the S2008 Media Preview DVD.

Finally, the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters worked with the International Resources Committee to provide financial support for musical performers throughout the course of the week. These lunchtime and late-afternoon breaks gave attendees to enjoy music from different regions of the world.

Program Year 2007 – 2008
After the conference, the chapters get back to work. Events range from lectures to screenings, from multi-day conferences to art talks. Some examples of topics covered over the last year include: “Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution”, “Dynamic & Destructible Environments”, “Compositing Methodology”, “Two-way Coupling of Rigid and Deformable Bodies”, “Fast Light – Creating a Light Field Display”, “Hiring a Creative Team: The Company Perspective”. These are just a few examples of the hundreds of presentations that are hosted by the chapters each year.

Many chapters also presented the SIGGRAPH 2007 Electronic Theater, including ten or so that hosted a special screening of the full-uncut version. This was made possible through close coordination with the S2007 CAF Chair, Paul Debevec, and his committee. The Chapters Committee also helped to support these screenings financially when necessary.

Collaboration with other groups is also important for the chapters network. Over the last year, our chapters have worked with groups that include the following: Center for Advanced Digital Applications (CADA-NYU), Vancouver International Film Centre, the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, Electronic Arts, nVIDIA, Autodesk, and the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy.

Two chapters hosted the SIGGRAPH 2007 Traveling Art Show (TAS): Hong Kong and the University of Wisconsin Student Chapter. The TAS is being shut down after this year so it will no longer be a part of the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters Committee after January 2009.

Finally, several of our chapters have started (and are nurturing) local animation festivals and multi-day conferences that have great potential beyond the local chapter area. It will be interesting to see what effect these activities have on the other chapters in the network over the coming years.

Nominations and Elections (Past President - Alain Chesnais)

The major responsibilities of the ACM SIGGRAPH Past President, Alain Chesnais, are to chair the Nominations Committee and manage the election process. The other members of the Nominations Committee were Jessica Hodgins, Sue Gollifer, and Nan Schaller. The committee held many candidate interviews during the week of the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference and continued for a few weeks afterwards talking to potential candidates by telephone and email. As is usually the case, there were more good potential candidates than we had positions to fill. This is good for ACM SIGGRAPH but difficult for the Nominating Committee. The following excellent slate of candidates was selected: Scott Owen and Anthony Baylis for President, James Foley and Paul Debevec for Vice President, and Marie-Paule Cani and James O'Brien for Director at Large. The winning candidates were Scott Owen, James Foley, and Marie-Paule Cani.

ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services (Director at Large - Jim Kilmer)

The ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services Committee (S3) serves as a resource and information hub for ACM SIGGRAPH Student Members, and other students who volunteer their time for ACM SIGGRAPH activities, such as the conferences' Student Volunteer programs.  Since formation in 2007, S3 has been working to organize a core of key volunteers and resources who will provide year-round information and services to the students we serve.  To this end, ACM SIGGRAPH entered into a cooperative agreement with The CGSociety, an online global organization for creative digital artists, to co-brand certain online resources that will provide student members of both organizations with a variety of online services, including a professional portfolio, group and one-on-one mentoring services, and community forums.

S3 is actively recruiting mentors and career councilors to begin working with students in 1-2 week structured sessions online, accepting questions and providing subject-matter expertise through our online systems.  Our Resume, Demo Reel and Portfolio review service will be available beginning in the Fall 2008 academic semester.  S3 is also working with the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee and other groups to integrate student opportunities with all aspects of the organization and our conferences, and hope that these efforts will serve to enhance the career opportunities and value of ACM SIGGRAPH students as they proceed into their professional lives.