ACM SIGGRAPH EC Meeting
Saturday, March 25-26, 2005
Hilton San Francisco Financial Center
San Francisco, CA

Attendance:
Rick Barry, Sue Golifer, Jamie Mohler, Viveka Wiley, Tom Appolloni, Jim Kilmer, Jeff Jortner, Alain Chesnais, Scott Owen, Rob Cook, Erica Johnson, Colleen Case, Mk Haley, Tony Baylis, Stephen Spencer, Gregg Talley, Alyn Rockwood, Masa Inakage, Jackie White, Thierry Frey

The meeting was called to order at 8:50AM. (Owen)

Welcome and Introductions
Review of Agenda

E-mail Votes Reviewed (Owen)
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Motion to approve S2007 Preliminary budget
1/23/06
For: Jackie White (motion), Rob Cook (second), Colleen Case, Alyn Rockwood, Fran Mcafee, Stephen Spencer, Tony Baylis, Alain Chesnais, Masa Inakage, Mk Haley

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Motion to approve Los Angeles for S2008 and S2011
1/23/06For: Jackie White (motion), Mk Haley (second), Rob Cook, Stephen Spencer, Colleen Case, Tony Baylis, Alyn Rockwood, Fran Mcafee, Alain Chesnais, Masa Inakage

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Motion to approve by bylaws change for elections process
2/1/06
For: Alain Chesnais (motion), Rob Cook (second), Jackie White, Colleen Case, Mk Haley, Fran Mcafee, Tony Baylis, Stephen Spencer, Alyn Rockwood
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Motion to approve Bylaws change for Director of Information Services
2/1/06
For: Alain Chesnais (motion), Tony Baylis (second), Alyn Rockwood, Stephen Spencer, Rob Cook, Colleen Case, Jackie White, Mk Haley, Fran Mcafee
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Motion to approve Toshiba Digital Frontiers, Inc. (TDF) for a two year SVR DVD Production Contract.
2/2/06
For: Stephen Spencer (motion), Mk Haley (second), Rob Cook, Jackie White, Colleen Case, Alain Chesnais, Masa Inakage, Alyn Rockwood, Tony Baylis, Fran Mcafee
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Move to approve the S2006 Conference budget with the following changes:
3-13-06
1A. There will be an opt-in, opt-out for each printed book (Proceedings and EAAC) in FC registration; cost for each to be determined by John Finnegan and Stephen Spencer based on estimated print costs with a possible reduction in print run. A like amount will be returned to the 2006 budget under the publications expenses.

1B. The Conference Select registration has a similar opt-in/opt-out option for the EAAC.

2. Reduce the budgeted contingency from 2% to 1% (Tony has talked to Darren Ramdin about this and they agree). This offsets the added expense.

3. No formal survey of the technical community; the opt-in, opt-out is the best survey results we could get from the attendees (the ASAB has already been polled on this option per an earlier Ronen Barzel query)

For: Jackie White (motion), Mk Haley (second), Tony Baylis, Rob Cook, Stephen Spencer, Masa Inakage, Alyn Rockwood, Fran Mcafee, Alain Chesnais
Abstain: Colleen Case

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CAG Business (Jackie White)

Multi Year Networking Expenses
There was a discussion about the fact that networking has equipment different requirements from year to year and in years when they have major requirements they are spending everything in their budget because of uncertainty about funds being available in future years. There needs to be a general Program review of the Networking Program. Some of the open questions include the following: Is equipment leasing an option? Should the conference or EC own this budget item as a multi year/capital equipment expense? There was discussion about the bigger problem actually being East Coast/West Coast expenses and revenue issues.

ACTION ITEM: CAG to conduct program review on networking (including leasing option) and report back to the EC with a recommendation on how to address the networking equipment issues for future. A recommendation on how to deal with capital equipment purchases and amortization was also requested.

Chuck Csuri Retrospective Catalog

There will be a collection of Chuck Csuri's work displayed at the 2006 conference. John Finnegan, S2006 Chair, asked if ACM (or ACM SIGGRAPH) would be interested in assuming the financial responsibility of printing and distributing a catalogue which documents the Charles Csuri retrospective, which will be presented at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 conference. Details on what this may cost will be forthcoming before the meeting. The question was posed to the group if they felt itwas a good idea to have a catalogue. A suggestion was made to the CAG that they consider this activity as the first of a series for future years.

Some felt Ohio State University (OSU) has intentions to travel the show in the future. John Finnegan would write the forward and the book would carry the ACM SIGGRAPH organization logos. Some concern was raised about this setting a precedent and might there be an expectation from the community that we would support future similar projects.

The EC thinks that it’s a good idea and we should work with John Finnegan to see if there is a way for OSU to support the activity and ACM SIGGRAPH will consider funding the project at a certain dollar level. It was thought that we could get a lower cost printing estimate provided by CADMUS that assumes the same quality that we have in the EAAC.

ACTION Item: Stephen Spencer to work with John on the most appropriate arrangement for this work.
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Communication Area Update (Mk Haley)

We received a proposal from Soma for an Online Streaming Application (OSA - this is video capture and presentation of SIGGRAPH Conference content)without a DVD.

This is a great project and SOMA has done an excellent job in the past, however the organization can no longer afford this expense. We have not been able to re-coup the costs for this project.

The Soma proposal was for $125,000 with $65,000 for data capture (done by AVW) and $60,000 for post production. We asked AVW to submit a breakdown for their $65,000 cost for capturing the data and it was extra equipment and staff time.

There were concerns on how to get this content into the ACM Digital Library (DL). ACM needs raw content in MPEG format. The front end OSA application is proprietary to Soma and on their servers. The content is all on ACM servers. Soma said they would be happy to link to the DL.

As an aside Scott reviewed the ACM DL revenue distribution model for downloads.

AVW has offered to submit a proposal to capture and do post production and provide the content to us in our requested format. .

Many felt the having this content in the DL was ideal. It is essential to capture the content and in a form that can be included in the DL. There was a recommendation that this should go through a normal RFP process in future, as was done before in 2004.

ACTION: Once AVW submits a proposal Scott and Mk will forward a recommendation to the EC for their consideration to fund this activity via an EC Reserve fund request.

E-mail communications from the organization.
We have multiple electronic publications that are distributed to our membership and conference attendees. SIGGRAPHITTI, Creative Heads, E-Quarterly….At what point are we spam? The Opt out option is the standard for ACM. The group felt strongly that we should stay with Opt out Model. Try to make Opt out easier from members, i. e. more obvious in the email. We should move towards having opt out options for members when they renew. The Quarterly moving to E-monthly. All Communications from ACM SIGGRAPH should come from an ACM SIGGRAPH address, e. g. X@siggraph.org, rather than elsewhere.
ACTION ITEM: G. Talley and Jackie White to work with our conference contractors to have all communications come from the siggraph.org addresses.

Another idea was to do something similar to the SIGCHI announcements list, e. g., have a SIGGRAPH announcements list.
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Information Directors Update (Thierry Frey)

There was a discussion about the representation from different organization subunits and how the participation should be structured.

There was a discussion about the servers and hardware. Some comments were made that Plone is difficult to use. Plone is available as a tool. Individuals are not required to use this tool. What is the exit path?

There is a plan for Plone 101 Sessions Saturday prior to S2006 for users to get a tutorial on required skills.

ACTION ITEM: All content owners need to decide if they want to migrate their content to Plone and complete the migration by Sept 2006. Viveka to send out a “How to use Plone” fact sheet.
Thanks to Viv and the sys managers team for the migration and the work that has been done.
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Arts Portal Update (Masa Inakage)

A review of the Arts Portal site was presented including the home page and logo treatments. The site is powered by Plone. Plans are to include News Items. Top 10, etc. Alpha version is set to debut April 15. Beta version May 15. Public Launch is planned for mid June. Moving forward, there was a discussion about having a committee administer the program to help maintain the freshness of the content. A recommendation was made for an EC level appointed position that would represent the creative community.

One option is for the president to appoint a standing committee. There was a question whether or not the Art Gallery web site for each year could be incorporated into this portal. The decision was made to link but not to integrate 100% at this time.

A suggestion was made perhaps links to open source software for art community might be a helpful resource.
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Small conference issues (Alyn Rockwood)

Plans are for 5 small co-located conferences at SIGGRAPH 2006. New ones include Point Based Graphics, Volume Rendering, Display Technologies, Sandbox.

MOTION: (A. Rockwood, M. Inakage Passed-10, 0, 0 UNANIMOUS) create a Small Conference Reserve Fund (to be tracked by the organization treasurer) where conference organizers can write a grant proposal for up to 50% of the profit from the previous years conference for something that would enhance their conference.

Discussion on lowering allocation percentages charged by ACM SIGGRAPH to small conferences.
The issue is the ACM allocation rate for small conferences. Currently the rate varies for each conference and is usually around 14-16% of expenses. Rockwood proposed that we have a standard rate for each small conference and that rate be set at the current maximum rate minus 6%, or for FY 2007 it would be 16%-6% = 10%. This would accomplish two goals. The first is that a standard rate is fairer for each conference and they would better know what to expect. The second is that it would save each small conference some money and be perceived as providing more incentive for the small conferences. The allocation must come from somewhere, e. g., the general EC operating budget. For example, this year the difference between the current varied allocation scheme and the proposed flat rate is about $22,000, which would have to come from the EC general budget.

A brief review of the ACM Allocation structure was discussed. The group also discussed that by making this change the organization would be absorbing any allocation not paid by the small conferences. The message is that this additional support makes small conferences a higher organization priority.

MOTION: (Rockwood, Case) To set a standard allocation rate for each small sponsored and co-sponsored conference and that rate be set at the current maximum allocation rate minus 6%, or for FY 2007 it would be 16%-6% = 10%.

Ideas were discussed on how to how to communicate this? E-mail. News article for the E- Monthly and on Web site. Also small conferences home page with FAQ, Policies, Added Value, etc.

ACTION Item: Erica Johnson to advise ACM HQ staff on new allocation percentage for ACM SIGGRAPH sponsored conferences.
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Education Committee Update (Colleen Case)

EDUCATION COMMITTEE/EDUCATORS PROGRAM
In response to the program review task force report on the Educators Program; we initiated the reciprocal inclusion of the Educators Program Chairs (Marc Barr and Janese Swanson) on the Education Committee and the inclusion of the Director of Education on the jury for the program. This tie will better integrate the year-round work of the committee with the annual conference event. 3 events that were reviewed and selected for the conference program reflect work done within the 3 working groups of the committee. (Community Building paper, Curriculum paper/forum/workshop, and the Ramp-out Conference Activities)

PIONEER MENTORING EFFORT
A local coordinator for the Pioneer Mentoring effort has been identified. Patricia Bode from Tufts University has agreed to assist David Kasik in that effort.

NEW COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Poster Competition Chair
LiQuin Tan
Head of Animation Program in the Fine Arts Department Rutgers University Camden NJ

Interactive Competition Chair
Scott Paul Dunham
CGI Producer
eVox Productions LLC
Rancho Dominguez, CA

Community Building
CGEMS-Co-Editor in Chief
Dr. Frank Hanisch
University of Tuebingen
Tuebingen, Germany

Faculty Submitted Student Work
Glenn Goldmann
Professor and Director of Imaging Laboratory, NJ Institute of Technology Newark, NJ

CGE06 Announcement:
ACM SIGGRAPH and Eurographics are pleased to announce that there will be another computer graphics education workshop this summer, held in conjunction with the Eurographics 06 conference in Vienna and its conference education programme. http://www.siggraph.org/newsfeed/cge06/
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Professional Chapters Update (Fran McAfee)

Traveling Art Show (TAS). There were some challenges with the past vendor for shipping and storage. We’ve changed that for 2005 and costs are better, however still expensive. Fran asked for feedback from the EC on this program. The S2005 show has not been exhibited. Has any marketing been done?

ACTION ITEM: EC members to send Fran information/suggestions on how to market the show to Galleries, Museums, Universities, Institutions.

ACTION ITEM: Fran to perform program review and cost analysis of TAS and report back to the EC.

The suggestion was made to use all mechanisms available to pursue returning works to artist via notification. Direct to artist e-mail and postal. Posting in EAAC and at conference for 2006. Web site, posting, EAAC, 1 Meter Sign board at S2006 to indicate past artists of works should contact Lina Yamaguchi.

Aligning Chapter Membership with the Organization
Discussion on what the status is with this initiative. The EC needs to determine its organizational structure before figuring out how to best proceed with this initiative.

ACM SIGGRAPH France/Paris Chapter
Has not held elections since 2001. Chapter by laws are standard and require elections every 2 years. Trademark infringement. Code of Ethics Violation. Provide them with a list of contingencies and actions that must be taken in order for them to retain their charter.

ACTION ITEM: Fran and Erica/Lauren to draft letter to Patrick St. Jean outlining action that are required in order for them to stay a chapter and address trademark infringement issue. Alyn Rockwood will present the letter and have a discussion with Patrick at the Laval Virtual conference in France.
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Past President’s Nominating Committee Report (Alain Chesnais)
Nominating Committee so far includes Nan Schaller and Dena Debry.
Alain is looking for a representative from the technical community. The nomination activities will start in April. The slate needs to be published by November 1st, but hope is by September.
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ACM SIGGRAPH Strategic Efforts- Update
This discussion continued the efforts initiated at the EC+ guests January strategy meeting.
Possible Mission Statements were reviewed and discussed.
If we are a Conferences Only SIG:

To create spaces where the diversity and excellence in the Computer Graphics and Interactive Digital Media fields can be expressed to inspire innovation and interaction.

Strategic Goals
Advance the connections/synergy across the field
Encourage creative applications
Support Education and professional development
Create dynamic organization

If we use our Current Membership Model:

To enhance and leverage the creativity and knowledge of ACM SIGGRAPH members and broader community to benefit the CG and IDM fields through programs and services which harness the diversity, excellence and innovation and which inspire more of the same to benefit other fields through the use of this technology.

Strategic Goals
Same as Above

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Conferences Structure Working Group Update (Rob Cook)


This is a follow-up to the discussions of the Structure-of-the-Conference working group at the strategy retreat we had in January. Those discussions can be put into 3 categories:

1. Restructuring the conference and committee to break down barriers between programs. Since January, Jacquelyn Martino (S2008 Conference Chair) and Ronen Barzel (S2009 Conference Chair) have been actively engaged in planning some possible changes to the conference committee structure that are very much in line with the hub and spoke model. What they are proposing is to replace the one program-per-committee-member model with one in which committee member responsibilities can cut across programs / venues. I’ve included in the backup material a presentation they gave on this at the last CAG meeting (see noboundaries.pdf).

2. Building on our co-located conference experiences to provide attendees with a more intimate, focused experience in conjunction with the larger SIGGRAPH conference experience. Joe Marks (S2007 Conference Chair) has continued to be active in expanding our co-located conferences and in having more curation of events. John Finnegan (S2006 Conference Chair) and Rockwood have also been working in this area.

3. Rethinking the papers review and publication process. There has been a lot of discussion about papers program recently, especially about whether or how to decouple publication from presentation. Doing this would mean making the SIGGRAPH and TOG review and publication processes more integrated and re-thinking what the conference presentations should be to make them more interesting and useful to the technical attendees. Those involved in these discussions have included myself, Ronen Barzel, Adam Finkelstein, Marc Levoy (2007 Papers Chair), and John Hart (Editor-in-Chief of TOG). Hopefully we will get future papers chairs involved in this process, and to that end I would recommend appointing not only the 2008 Chair but also the 2009 Chair soon. (see Siggraph-TOG-proposal.html)

What seems to be emerging is the ideal situation – one in which the people who will be most responsible for implementing the changes are the ones leading the charge in planning what those changes should be. With that in mind, I’d like to propose that going forward we structure this effort as follows:

1. Form 3 groups
a. Committee structure (led by Jacquelyn & Ronen)
b. Co-location (led by Joe & Alyn)
c. Papers (led by Rob & at some point the upcoming papers chairs)

2. Each group’s leaders keep the leaders of the other groups up to date on their progress.

3. Next fall, the group leaders meet to check in on progress and take what we’ve learned and look again at the long term structure.


The EC Supports this initiative and encourages the S2008 & S2009 conference chairs to continue moving forward with this plan.

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Membership and Benefits Mk Haley)

Mk presented a complete PowerPoint slide presentation summarizing their progress.

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ACM SIGGRAPH Oragnization Structure (Tony Baylis)

An update was given from this working group and the open question is are we a Conference only organization, a membership organization or membership/community service organization. After some discussion it was decided we are a membership/community organization and not a conference only organization.

Are we integrating and leveraging all the conference products appropriately if we want to emphasize the membership aspect of our organization? We like the opportunities that being a membership organization presents. All programs are part of serving membership/community. We need to restructure ourselves to function in alignment with our priorities and goals.
We need to build a compelling case for membership. We need to unify the membership and conference attendees.

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FY 2007 Organization Budget (Tony Baylis)

The proposed FY 2007 budget was reviewed and discussed.
We discussed Program Reviews for SVR or other organization activities.
We want to investigate the possibility of a DVD on demand from the ACM DL. There are bandwidth and capabilities issues.

There was some discussion about the current EC policy to use N - 2 transfer for budgeting, e.g. to use the S2005 SIGGRAPH Conference transfer in budgeting for FY 2007. Since ACM uses the current year, i. e., N -1, it was decided to revise the policy to align with the ACM practice.

MOTION: Baylis, Chesnais (10, 0, 0) UNANIMOUS For Fiscal year budget N the EC will use N-1 conference return.
ACTION ITEM: Tony to update FY 2007 final budget and send to the EC for approval.

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There was further discussion on the structure of the EC.

We discussed a Board of Directors structure that would move the operational aspects down a level and leave the Board members better able to focus on strategic issues. This would also allow Board members to more easily influence different oragnizational activities.

It was decided that at the next EC meeting in June the major portion of time would be spent on further discussion of the membership and organizational structure issues with the goal of having some preliminary ideas to report at the Keynote at S2006.

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MOTION: To Adjourn. By acclamation (Sunay at 12:00 noon)