ACM SIGGRAPH EC Meeting
Saturday-Sunday, November 5-6, 2005
Grand Hyatt Denver
Denver, Colorado

Attendance:
Alain Chesnais, Scott Owen, Dino Schweitzer, Rob Cook, Erica Johnson, Colleen Case, Mk Haley, Tony Baylis, Stephen Spencer, Bob Niehaus, Alyn Rockwood, Masa Inakage, Jackie White, Thierry Frey

Fran McAfee Absent- Via Skype beginning at 1:00PM

The meeting was called to order at 9:00AM (Owen).

Welcome and Introductions
Review of Agenda
Add item on Dues Collection for Chapters

Request for all back up for agenda items to be submitted by Friday the week before the meeting so that it can be posted to Plone and people can read before.


The ASAB list is live. People are encouraged to use ASAB for feedback and comments on initiatives and ideas.

Thanks to Tony Baylis for the Treasurer’s report he composed for posting on our web site.
______________________________________________________________________________

FY 2007 Budget Update (Baylis)

Please send Tony any questions or comments on the close of the FY 05 budget. The year ended with a modest surplus. FY 06 is being monitored. Everyone should be reviewing FMR’s for accuracy. Please bring any inaccuracies to Tony’s, Darren & Erica’s attention for correction. A request was made to review the SVR budget to evaluate the program’s financial health. A recommendation/suggestion was made that future treasurers and EC’s should consider conducting the budget process in real time. The EC discussed budgeting philosophy and whether to increase or decrease income projections based on different variables (membership, conferences, etc). Draft budgets are to be submitted to Tony by Nov 30th. Changes Due December 15. Goal is to have final budget together by Jan 15th.

ACTION ITEM: All EC members please submit drafts to Tony by Nov 30th. Changes Due December 15.

ACTION ITEM: E. Johnson Send EC Link to Historical membership statistics.
_____________________________________________________________________________

E-mail Votes Reviewed (Owen)
Motion to support Nomination of Ivan Sutherland for MIT Award
Vote Called: 8/23/05

For: unanimous
___________________________________________________________
9/28/05 Motion to approve Nov. 2004 minutes
For: Haley (motion), Baylis (second), Mcafee, Rockwood, Cook, Case,
Spencer, Chesnais, Inakage
Abstain - White (not on EC in Nov., 2004)
________________________________________________________________
Motion to approve CAG recommendation for S2006-2008 housing contract
Due by 5:00 p, EDT 10/14/05

For - White (motion), Rockwood (second), Case, Spencer, Baylis, Cook,
Chesnais, Mcafee,

Abstain: Inakage
___________________________________________________________________

Call for vote on 10/19/05 - Due on 10/26/05

Jacquelyn Martino be approved as Conference Chair for 2008
For: White (motion), Case (second), Haley, Cook, Spencer, Rockwood,
Mcafee, Baylis, Chesnais,
Abstain Inakage

Ronen Barzel be approved as Conference Chair for 2009
For: White, Spencer, Haley, Case, Rockwood, Mcafee, Baylis, Chesnais
Abstain: Cook (COI), Inakage

______________________________________________________________
Motion to approve August, 2005 minutes Made 10/17/05; due 10/24/05

For: White (motion), Spencer (second), Haley, Baylis, Mcafee, Rockwood,
Chesnais, Case, Cook, Inakage
__________________________________________________________________________

Vice Presidential Issues (Rockwood)

Appointments – Kirsten Cater appointed as International Relations Coordinator for the term: Present to June 30, 2008.
Scott Lang appointed as External Relations Coordinator for the term: Present to June 30, 2008.

ACTION ITEM: Alyn Rockwood to provide job descriptions for these two positions by the next EC meeting in January.

Support for Small conferences
Two items were discussed:

Reducing the standard allocation for these events to less than the highest threshold.
Creating a fund that conferences can apply to for funds to support their event based upon their past year’s success.

ACTION ITEM Scott Owen to create folder on Plone Site for VP Small Conferences Budget Memos.

ACTION ITEMS: E. Johnson to have Maritza Nichols send all Budget memos for FY 06 conferences to Scott for posting to Plone.

ACTION ITEM: Alyn Rockwood to submit proposal for reduced allocation for small conferences by next meeting.

ACTION ITEM: Alyn Rockwood to submit a proposal for small conferences grant fund by next meeting.

The Policy for Special Projects Grants Approval, developed by Alyn Rockwood, was approved and will be posted to our website.

There was a discussion on follow up and reporting for all projects and the EC felt strongly there needs to be stronger oversight.

Gaming Update
Gaming Workshop is moving forward. Expect a TMRF will be forthcoming.

ACTION ITEM
Scott & Alyn to work on creating a template for submissions of grant proposals to include things like basic contact info, description, term for the project, expected completion date, etc.

Rob Cook has been assigned as the EC shepherd for the Papers Demographics analysis project.
______________________________________________________________________________

SIGGRAPH Conference Financials (White)

MOTION : (White, Baylis)The EC reduce the mandated SIGGRAPH Conference transfer to the EC from 4.5% of total income to 3.5% of total income. This will take effect with the S2006 Final Budget.

Note that this 1% drop is about $70 - 75,000 for the 2006 Conference Budget.
Unanimous (McAfee-Abstain)

MOTION: (White, Chesnais) The EC uses all of the interest from the ACM SIGGRAPH reserve fund as income in its operations budget. Beginning with FY 07 Budgets.
Unanimous ( McAfee Abstain)
Note that this would mean an increase of $70-75,000 in EC income.

S2005 Conference update
Very successful conference in many regards. Most major bills are being paid. Smaller ones are still trickling in. The conference is expected to return a surplus of more than $400K. Congratulations to S2005 Committee for a great job.

S2007 Issues
Courses and Panels Chairs presented for approval. One change is the proposal of Co-Chairs. Separate Special Session Chair and Panels Chair. The current panels format was discussed and the attendance was reviewed.

MOTION: (White, to Approve SIGGRAPH 2007 Panels & Special Sessions Co-Chair Candidates:
Jessica Hodgins, CMU
Bill Kovacs, no current affiliation
Unanimous (McAfee Yes via Skype)

Subsequent discussion on panels program. For S2006 the content is expected to be curated. There are hopes this may help the program be more vibrant. There was a consensus from the EC that they are open minded to the CAG’s recommendations on continuing with legacy programs.

ACTION ITEM: Place this topic of Panels and other required conference programs on the January Strategy meeting agenda.

MOTION: (White, Spencer) SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses Co-Chair Candidates:
Sara McMains, UC Berkeley
Peter-Pike Sloan, Microsoft
Unanimous with Mk Abstain

There was some questions from the EC if there would be additional expense associated adding a co-chair

Foundation Proposal
The proposal by Joe Marks was reviewed and discussed. There was a concern that this might impact conference donations. There was also discussion about why this was different from previous endowment efforts. It was felt this was a "big picture" effort.

MOTION : (White, Mk Haley) To endorse the Foundation Proposal Concept and encourage Joe to move forward.

ACTION ITEM: Erica Johnson to work with Joe Marks to move this forward by working with the appropriate levels of ACM Governance and HQ staff including ACM’s Chief Operating Officer and Finance Staff.

S2007 Budget
Budget is forthcoming and will be sent to the EC via e-mail in the next few weeks.

ACTION ITEM: Jackie White to forward S2007 Preliminary Budget to EC for their review.

CAG Revised Policies
Jackie White presented the new Awards policy, which will be posted to our website.

A request was made in future for policies to be sent as red lined versions to highlight changes. The CAG for future should make the EC aware of any new awards proposed. There was discussion if all awards should be vetted and run through the Awards committee or even the EC for official approval.

MOTION (Chesnais, Cook) Any Award carrying the ACM SIGGRAPH name be brought before the EC for approval. List grandfathered awards. AMPAS, ED Committee SPACE and SPICE.
passed: Unanimous

Conference Dates and Pattern
There was a discussion about the conference dates and pattern. For 2008 we are required to shift the pattern from Sunday to Thursday to Monday to Friday to accommodate the LA Bid. Subsequently, there was discussion as to whether to switch back to Sunday or stay consistent. The consensus from EC was to allow the CAG to make a recommendation on this.

E Sub Contract
Request for extension of the Web Programming contract:

The Conference Advisory group requests approval to extend the Flenser contract for an additional year. The original term of the contract was to cover the SIGGRAPH 2003 through 2005 conferences. The contract was extended an additional year to cover the 2006 conference. We request that the contract with Flenser be extended to provide the on-line submission and review system and system support for the 2007 conference (until the 2008 conference). The likely cost of a one-year contract extension is approximately $80K.

Reason for extension:

The ACM SIGGRAPH Conference Advisory Group set up a Conference Database Task Force (CDTF) to come up with a recommendation for future directions for the Electronic Submission system and the other components of the SIGGRAPH on-line system. The CDTF will be making several recommendations at the January 2006 CAG meeting including:

-A new high-level specification for the on-line system(s)
-Technology recommendations
-Contract and RFP configuration recommendations

We believe that the final outcome of this process will be one or more RFPs to rebuild and/or retool the SIGGRAPH on-line systems and to add additional functionality to our on-line systems. With the current timeline, the earliest the RFP(s) could likely be issued would be March 2006. With this being the case, the CAG believes that that there is not sufficient time to go through a thorough review process, pick a contractor, and then have an extensive or even minimal re-write of the on-line systems in place by October 2006 (the start of the on-line submission process for the 2007 conference).

Next Steps
The timeline we suggest for the following year is to issue the RFP(s) by March 2006, pick a contractor no later August/September 2006, and have the contract(s) begin in October 2006 with the goal of having a new system on-line for submissions for the 2008 conference available in October 2007.

MOTION : (White, Chesnais) approval to extend the Flenser contract for an additional year. The original term of the contract was to cover the SIGGRAPH 2003 through 2005 conferences. The contract was extended an additional year to cover the 2006 conference. We request that the contract with Flenser be extended to provide the on-line submission and review system and system support for the 2007 conference (until the 2008 conference). The likely cost of a one-year contract extension is approximately $80K.
Passed: Unanimous
_______________________________________________________________________________

Web Site Update (Haley, Frey)
Mk Haley reported that the conversion to Plone is continuing. Content is continuing to be ported over. Great traffic on the website. Anyone has any issues, please let Mk and Thierry know. Plone 2.0.5 is on the server. Team would like to install Plone 2.1. E-Sub Challenges with simultaneous connections are being resolved by new data center. Data Center move is ongoing. One challenge with the layout of the website is how to make purchases, so a change is being made to offer a “SHOP or BUY” tab. Discussions are ongoing for additional member features via the web site.
CDTF met in SF last weekend and work is progressing in this area.

Removal of content
A Student Volunteer (SV) participated in SIGGRAPH 2002 Conference Fashion Show as a model. Requested removal of photos of hers that were on the web site. This was done. No formal policy is needed and we will deal with future instances on a case by case basis. Future requests will be dealt with by an EC member.

Soma DVD
This is a fabulous project. Unfortunately we can’t afford it. There was discussion about other ways the contract might be structured to make it less costly while still capturing the content so it can be made available in the ACM DL to our community.

ACTION ITEM : MK to take revised proposal to Soma and run it by Erica for content capture and Online Streaming Application only.

For 2006 Video Pod casting was proposed as an idea.

The issue came up about SVR’s in the ACM DL and the indexing of that content. Stephen Spencer (with Erica’s support) reported that he is working with ACM publications staff to get this content appropriately indexed and searchable in the DL.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Report on Publications Issues (Spencer)

Stephen Spencer is talking with Mark Mandelbaum about re-publishing SVR issues on DVD. "The Story of Computer Graphics" has specific copyright issues that need to be addressed. Stephen reported working with SVR and Conference DVD, CD Publications. Working with 8 small conferences and their proceedings publications. On-Line Member publications, working with Mk to find an individual to fill the position of on-line newsletter editor. Working with Eurographics on getting more Eurographics info into the ACM DL.

Internet Archive Site
Stephen Spencer recommends asking Internet Archive to pull down SVR content that is currently on line. Original Project Grant did not talk about placing this material on-line.
MOTION: (Spencer, Baylis) Direct Internet Archive to remove SIGGRAPH content from the site ASAP.
Unanimous (McAfee Abstain)
__________________________________________________________________________

Education Committee Report (Case)

1. FYI: Report from Eurographics Education Board meeting (Includes planning for the SIGGRAPH/Eurographics education workshop-CGE 06/ (Workshop report for publication in "Computer Graphics" and "Computer Graphics Forum”.)
This workshop will be endorsed by the SIGGRAPH and Eurographics Education committees and be held on the Saturday after EG06-Vienna. The general focus is on the European Bologna initiative and an integration of the work done by the SIGGRAPH Education Committee curriculum knowledge base group.

2. FYI: Preliminary work is being done with Patrick Marais for CGE07 in conjunction with Afrigraph.

3.FYI: The Curriculum Knowledge base working group is meeting on a volunteer basis to continue that work.

4. Academic Information Index port back to SIGGRAPH.org
http://cs.wcsu.edu/siggraph/ There are some technical issues that need to be resolved. ACTION ITEM: Colleen Case to connect with Sys Managers to resolve issues of content residing on outside servers.

5. Lack of documentation of the Educators Program-request to bring alternatives (e. g., cost comparisons of black and white vs. color documentation) to CAG.
The EC felt the current documentation (which appears on the conference DVD and CD as well as in the ACM DL) provided for this program was sufficient.

ACTION ITEM: Stephen Spencer will work with Leona and Conference to try to get this content into the Advance Program.

Should the Education Committee have a separate grants line item in its budget or should these be run through the VP current grants model. The Director for Education requested some feedback from the EC on three proposals presently submitted to her from Andy Kopra, Susan Gold and Cary Laxer. There was discussion on how these proposals relate to the strategic initiatives of the organization. Concepts gleamed will be further discussed in the strategic planning meeting but the proposals will not be funded in their current format.
______________________________________________________________________________

Chapter’s issues (McAfee)

DVD Outreach
We are working on a DVD Special Project. It was part of my Outreach budget for Chapters. We had a team of about 7 lead by Scott Lang. He is tweaking the project now and we should be able to ship DVD copies to the EC shortly.

The idea was to show extracurricular content (outside of the venues and courses that SOMA now covers) from S2005 and send copies to chapters around the world. Hopefully it will highlight the interaction among attendees, a strong reason for going to the conference aside from the program content. This should aid in marketing the conference for Boston 2006-that's the focus. Given the fact that we are probably going to have lower attendance than on the West Coast I think we should leverage the chapter’s presence around the world. Erica Johnson raised the question of appropriate permissions for this content and it’s distribution.

ACTION ITEM: Stephen Spencer agreed to follow up with the Scott Lang on this topic and verify necessary permissions are in order.

Chapter Activity

Most chapters are doing a great job. Some have at least 12 events a year plus special seminars.

We were putting some ACM SIGGRAPH chapters to task to increase activity, I feel that most are doing their best. Some of the problem chapters are now under new leadership. The new leaders are very diligent and have been conscientious in communicating to me.

Local Membership:

I think that we all were in favor of adding an option, Local ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter Membership, to the online ACM SIGGRAPH webpage. I would like to follow up with ACM and see how we can implement this. It would be a strictly voluntary option to those chapters that would like to recruit members in this manner.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Nominations (Alain Chesnais)
The slate is completed. Over 20 people came forward for open positions and there were many extremely qualified candidates. There are two candidates for Treasurer, two candidates for Director for Education and three for Director at Large. Candidates are presently being notified of the slate.

Candidates:
Treasurer
Jeff Jortner
Jamie Mohler

Director for Education
Rick Barry
Gary Bertolini

Director at Large
Sue Gollifer
Jim Kilmer
Tom Appolloni

Next Year the call will go out much earlier prior to the conference. Thanks to all the prospective candidates for their willingness to serve and thanks to the Nominations committee for all their hard work to put together this slate.

ACTION ITEM: Scott Owen to post Policy on Nominations to Plone Site.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Policy for outgoing EC Members
Motion (Chesnais, White) to approve the proposed Policy for outgoing EC members.
Unanimous (Case, Rockwood, Inakage, Baylis Abstain)

Draft Policy
We expect outgoing EC members to continue working to aid the transition with the new officers, including helping the new officers at the SIGGRAPH Conference. This help will extend through the Conference week and will end at the EC meeting at the end of the week. Therefore the outgoing officers will remain on the EC alias until august 31. In addition the outgoing EC members will be treated the same as the incoming officers during the SIGGRAPH Conference. This includes the following:
Travel, food, and lodging expenses for the Conference
Full Conference Registration
All materials and merchandise received by the rest of the EC
Committee Badge for general access purposes
Guest Passes same as the EC

_________________________________________________________________________________
Discussion on Strategy Session
Content
New Areas/Re-Visit Old Areas

There is a Cape Towng graduate student project to capture culture. History is communicated through story telling. Application of CG in cross culture areas does not fit in our traditional content venue areas. Another example is the automotive industry.
Cool Applications Group was suggested as a title; however, it might be confused with the current CAG.

One idea was to address it in a similar manner as museums and have special sessions or installations. Could this be articles in the Quarterly? Eurographics has a model where they have workshops on both sides of the conference. Look at other conferences that have different models.

What areas are we talking about? What are our targets?

Suggestion was for a three day strategy meeting. We would need an Organization Development facilitator. No warm and fuzzy exercises, just goals and objectives. Thursday Night arrival- Sunday night departure

Some possible topics:

Annual Conference
Small Conferences
Chapters
International
Integration of content across different venues
Cooperative Alliances
Community. How do we value that and nurture it.

There was discussion about the number of attendees and what the optimal size group would be. The recommendation was for the group not to exceed 30 participants. The EC + CAG and invited guests. A list of potential invitees was also discussed.

The group asked if another organization might have done some preliminary research or data collection on some of the topics we’d need background on for this meeting or would we have to pay for a report?.

ACTION ITEM: Scott to put a link to all older strategic documents for the EC to review.

Goal is to develop a Vision for 2025 and then 5-10 year goals.

ACTION ITEM: Scott to investigate getting some industry trend data for the strategy meeting to use as a jumping off point.

This was Dino Schweitzer’s last EC Meeting. A plaque was presented as a small token of appreciation for his service over the last 10 years.

Open Source for SIGGRAPH
Alain Chesnais gave some background on Open source freeware for SIGGRAPH. There was a comment made about laying out the pipeline for beginning to end projects. This would be a way to encourage people to use freeware, especially in those regions where there is large useage of pirated software. Should siggraph.org be a resource center to highlight freeware options? The point was made that it’s important for this to get out to institutions as well as individuals. This is an alternative to pirating. The EC could issue a call for Open Source content.

ACTION ITEM: Alain to work with sys mangers team and draft a formal proposal to create an area on the siggraph.org site.

Policy on EC Accountability for projects
Each EC member should be assigned to projects and be responsible for making sure results are published.


Conference Calls-None scheduled right now. Will re-visit in January
Web Ex Contract- Erica Johnson to cancel contract per Scott’s direction (saves several thousand dollars).

MOTION: (Spencer, White) To Adjourn. By acclamation