ACM SIGGRAPH EC Meeting
May 4-6, 2007
Schaumburg, IL

Attendance: Jackie White, Scott Owen, Thierry Frey, Jim Kilmer, Stephen Spencer, Alain Chesnais, Jeff Jortner, Fran McAfee, Alyn Rockwood, Jessica Fried, , Rob Cook, Rick Barry and Gregg Talley
Guests: Kathryn Saunders, Bruce McDiffett; Peter Schröder, Martin Talbot
Absent: Mk Haley

Note: The final name of the Conference in Asia is yet to be established so we will use SiA.

Motion: To establish the SiA CAG with Alyn Rockwood as temporary chair, John Finnegan as Associate Chair, YT Lee as SiA Singapore conference chair, and Leo Hourvitz as CAG member at Large with Jeff Jortner, Scott Owen and Jackie White as lurkers.

For: White (motion), Kilmer (second), Barry, Chesnais, Jortner, Cook, McAfee, Frey, Spencer,
Abstain: Rockwood

Motion: EC to instruct SiA CAG to present a preliminary budget at the June meeting not to exceed $1.25 Million USD which includes all expenses and allocations required.

For: White (motion), Barry (second), Kilmer, Chesnais, Jortner, Cook, McAfee, Frey, Spencer,

Motion: To approve overall goals and objectives in launching SiA as follows:

The overall Goals and Objectives in launching SiA are:

1) to produce an event that embodies the quality of the SIGGRAPH conference with content that complements existing events
2) to build and serve a vibrant and diverse ACM SIGGRAPH membership in Asia
3) to build and maintain the SIGGRAPH culture.
4) to produce a financially viable event

For: Rock (motion), Barry (second), Kilmer, Chesnais, Jortner, Cook, McAfee, Frey, Spencer

Motion: To approve the SiA Guidelines as follows:

Guidelines for SiA

The SIGGRAPH Conference has a well developed set of policies and procedures and a well structured process for its development. This is currently undergoing change, but SiA will use SIGGRAPH and the current and historical set of policies, procedures, and processes as guidelines for its development. John Finnegan, SIGGRAPH 2006 Conference Chair, was chosen as the first Associate Chair. The SiA CAG (defined below) will work with the SiA Conference Chair to advise them on budget, organizational, programmatic, and process issues as the CAG does with the SIGGRAPH Conference Chair.

Structural and Organizational Guidelines

• The SiA Conference Chair should be Asian and should be located in the host country. The reason for this is that it will be more difficult for someone not in that country to negotiate with local entities. This may be relaxed after SiA becomes more established, e. g., the second time it is held in a country the Chair may be from somewhere else.

• SiA is an International Conference with an International Program Committee. While the Program Committee will probably be primarily Asian, it should have people from other regions, just as SIGGRAPH has a Program Committee that is primarily from North America but has members from elsewhere.

• SiA will be treated the same as SIGGRAPH with respect to required approvals from the EC: host City/Country, Conference Chair, Preliminary and Final Budgets.

• The SiA Technical Chairs (Papers and Courses) will be approved by the EC.

• The content of the SiA will be published in a similar fashion to our other conferences. There will be a conference DVD-ROM and there may or may not be hard copy proceedings. It will all be available in the ACM Digital Library.

• Each SiA will have a Conference Chair and an Associate Chair. The Associate Chair will be someone who has already been a SIGGRAPH or an SiA Conference Chair. The relation between the two should be similar to the SIGGRAPH relation between the Conference Chair and the CSE, i. e., while final decision making authority rests with the Conference Chair, the Associate Chair will work closely with them and advise them.

• An SiA CAG will be created that will have a structure similar to the current CAG, i. e., a set of Conference Chairs, an SiA CAG Chair, and representative(s) from the EC.
  

Financial and Contractor Guidelines

• No contracts should be signed that have significant financial penalties. Since as SiA moves from country to country, at least for the first time in a country each SiA will have a relatively high risk factor. This is because there will be no history of how we might expect SiA to draw delegates or exhibits in that country. Therefore if SiA needs to be drastically reduced or even canceled there should not be significant financial loss to ACM SIGGRAPH.

• Some of the contractors may change with every SiA and there may be fewer multi-year contracts as compared to SIGGRAPH. This is because SiA will be held in different countries and the local contractors will be used. As much as possible, contractors that are familiar with and have offices in all the SiA cities and so can serve multiple years will be sought out. One of the great strengths of SIGGRAPH is the set of contractors who have worked on SIGGRAPH for many years and are very familiar with its structure, organization, culture, and with each other. We should strive to build a similar set of contractors for SiA so that it will also enjoy this advantage, if possible.

• If possible, SiA should strive to use contractors that have strategic relationships with the SIGGRAPH contractors. This would be so the SiA contractors can learn from the experience of the SIGGRAPH contractors. If this is not feasible then the SiA CAG needs to educate contractors to the SIGGRAPH “way”.

• Contractors will be chosen by the standard ACM Request for Proposal process which will be directed by the SiA CAG. The choice of contractor will be recommended by the SiA CAG and approved by the EC, as is done with SIGGRAPH. In order for a contract to be valid, the President of ACM SIGGRAPH must sign the contract. It may be possible, after approval of the preliminary SiA budget, for the SiA Conference Chair to choose contractors and sign contracts, with the approval of the SiA CAG Chair, that are below a certain amount, e. g., $25,000USD. ACM and the EC will have to approve this.

• The Contributor Recognition (CR) policy of SiA should be similar to that of SIGGRAPH. It may not be exactly the same but we want to avoid the problem of SIGGRAPH and SiA having quite different CR policies such that contributors prefer one over the other because of what they receive. The SiA CR policy will be recommended by the SiA CAG and approved by the EC. This assumes that the CR is about the same but we will reserve assessment as we see what evolves with conference planning.

• SiA should should strive to have a registration structure similar to SIGGRAPH’s. The SiA fee levels may be somewhat site specific since some cities may be much more expensive than others.

Absent: White

Motion: SiA CAG, President, Current CAG chair and ACM representative to go to Singapore to evaluate, determine status and report back to EC for a decision before July 1, 2007.

For: Jortner (Motion), Chesnais (Second), Barry, Kilmer, Spencer, McAfee, Frey, Rockwood

Absent: White