ACM SIGGRAPH EC Meeting Friday August 5, 2005 Wilshire Grand Hotel Los Angeles, California

Attendance

Alain Chesnais Scott Owen Dino Schweitzer Rob Cook Erica Johnson Colleen Case Fran McAffee Mk Haley Tony Baylis Stephen Spencer Bob Niehaus Alyn Rockwood James Mohler Masa Inakage Joe Marks Jackie White John Finnegan

Guests Dave Berevin- Soma Media Romy Randev- Soma Media J. Marshall Pitman Viveka Wiley Fontaine Jean Francois- Laval Virtual Michael Pique

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

Welcome and Introductions Review of Agenda

Presentation from Laval Virtual on their conference activity. Since 1999 w/ exhibits symposium and student contests and public presentations. S2005 had an agreement w/ E Tech for cross submissions and that agreement is continuing with S2006. ACM SIGGRAPH has entered into a cooperating society agreement this year w/ Laval Virtual.

SOMA Media S2005 Update

This year we collected 400 signatures in advance and 70 permissions on site as well as 250 images from speakers for inclusion in the DVD. Courses: of 39 total courses presented, 35 will be included in the DVD. Papers: almost all presenters participated. Special Session and Sketches will also be included. Overall there was much higher participation from presenters this year. The sales and marketing initiative this year was much more intense including 14,000 e-mails and on-site promo activity. Soma reported that there was confusion from FC attendees thinking this was included in their registration. Their recommendation was that this product must be on the registration form or included in the F C package. Soma felt that this could be done for under $100 increase in reg. There will also be a big post conference marketing push including a full page add in CG World and more e-mail marketing. Ship Date for the DVD is November and December for the OSA to go live. 50 Plus members also signed up through Soma in order to receive the member discount on the product.

Total Number of Pieces Sold for each offering 338 of S2005 550 of S2004 1088 of S2003

Honoring the Departing EC Members for their Service

Certificates of Recognition were presented to Jamie Mohler as S2005 Conference Chair, Judy Brown Outgoing Past President and Barb Helfer Outgoing Vice President MOTION: (Chesnais, Baylis) Thanks to Judy and Barb for their exceptional service throughout their terms By Acclamation

Alain Chesnais presented Scott Owen the new ACM SIGGRAPH President with the SIGGRAPH “little tuffy” toy tiger and wished him good luck.

Alain Chesnais was presented with a Certificate of Recognition for his service as President of SIGGRAPH. MOTION: (Baylis, Cook) Thanks to Alain Chesnais for his years of exceptional service to ACM SIGGRAPH as President of the organization. By Acclamation

S2005, S2006, and S2007 Conference Reports

S2005 Report Total attendance was 29,122 with representation from 80 countries. 67,500 square feet of exhibit space was sold. Exhibits slightly down but registration was up. FC registration 150-200 above budget. More EP than projected. Overall, the conference is projecting a surplus and return to the reserve funds. MOTION: (White, Baylis) Thanks to Jamie Mohler for his hard work to produce a conference that was a technical and financial success and Dino Schweitzer and his staff for their work on this conference. By Acclamation

S2006 Report It was a very busy week. The committee has put together exceptional program plans. Get involved went extremely well. New location helped support high attendance. Program Chairs interviewed many sub committee volunteers and there was a strong excitement and “Buzz” about Boston. John Finnegan also executed a Memo of Understanding w/ Laval virtual for reciprocal e-tech jurying.

ACTION ITEM: John Finnegan to Provide Copy of agreement to Erica Johnson for archival.

S2007 Report Joe Marks reported that he spent the week working on recruiting program chairs and visiting all venues. He’s excited for 2007.

Approval of August 2004 Minutes 2 small corrections Michael Pique and Marshall Pitman

MOTION: (Baylis, Chesnais) To approve the August 2004 EC Meeting Minutes Unanimous

July 2005 Conference Call Minutes MOTION: (Stephen, Case) To approve the July 2005 EC Conference Call Minutes Unanimous

EC Representative to the CAG

Mk Haley & Thierry Frey are candidates MK Haley has been selected as the EC Rep to CAG for the term beginning August 2005 to August 2007

Reports from EC about Conference Activities

Vice President

Alyn Rockwood gave a report on Cooperating Society Agreements SIGGRAD –Swedish Computer Graphics Society FMX Laval Virtual ACTION ITEM: Alyn Rockwood to provide Erica Johnson with a copy of all executed agreements for archival at ACM HQ. ACTION ITEM: Erica Johnson to work with web master to get all agreements with cooperating societies posted and archived on Plone site.

Concerns were brought up is there a formal policy for agreements and criteria with external societies. Alyn also mentioned that there were discussions with other groups that are still in progress. Erica Johnson reminded Alyn Rockwood to provide summary of external relationships/small conferences in the ACM SIGGRAPH annual report as notice to SGB EC of these external relationships. Five candidates were interviewed for the IRC Chair. All are qualified candidates. There was a discussion about splitting the responsibilities between two chairs: one for external relationships and the other for IRC. Goal is to have this position filled ASAP.

Project Grants Committee. Thanks to Nan Schaller, David Arnold, John Fuji and Alain Chesnais for their service on this committee. The model has now been changed. The Project Grants Committee has been disbanded. There was a discussion about how future grant proposal might be handled. ACTION ITEM: Alyn Rockwood will draft a plan for the new grant approval model and send it to the EC for their review and endorsement.

Chapters Report

The Director for Chapters expressed a desire to have the option to be able to have ACM collect dues for chapters when people sign up for ACM SIGGRAPH membership. It was reported that the ACM MSB is discussing this and several other options. ACTION ITEM: Thierry Frey to take this request to the ACM Membership Services Board (MSB) and report back to the EC on the progress.

Director for Education Report

The ACM SIGGRAPH Pioneer Mentoring Program meeting was held on site and there was discussion about coordinating this program through the Education Committee. The Education Committee proudly presented the Curriculum Knowledge Base Report in the S2005 Education Catalog. This reflects the culmination of Education Committee workshops and forums over the past several years. In the last phase, educators met with industry professionals to verify the work. Our next step is to involve more international curriculum perspective as we continue to flush out the detail. During a CGAS meeting, several key volunteers were identified to participate. This should evolve into a full white paper and detailed curriculum recommendations for new and existing Computer Graphics programs. In addition the Education for Visualization materials were updated. Educators grantees were a diverse group that was representative of many different countries as a result of a focus shift to provide more assistance to international educators. Grantees came from Hangzhou, China; Vancouver, BC; Lima, Peru; Aotearoa, New Zealand, North Adelaide, South Australia and Shanghai, China. Colleen Case is also participating in the review of the Educators Program for the conference.

Director at Large Report

Rob Cook commented on good energy and buzz at the conference and a lot of positive comments about the DVD.

Director for Information Services Report

Thierry Frey reported on some server issues with acm.org and siggraph.org There was a concern from the Graphics Net team about availability of on-site contacts and communications. There are plans for improvement for next year. The Wiki had approximately 50 entries. The Wiki is now only available for registered users until the conference next year when it will re-open to the public.

Director at Large Report

Masa Inakage reported on a potential venue that would be between the art gallery and e-tech which would be something like a design show that could be a merger of the two, not specifically just fine arts or emerging technology. On the branding initiative, and continued confusion between the conference and the organization, he suggested a way to increase the organization’s presence would be to have more visible small conferences throughout the year. Also reported on discussions that are continuing with other groups like SIGCHI or other SIGs for co-sponsorship of other events and activities. Including areas like interactive entertainment.

Director for Publications Report

Stephen Spencer reported on the status of the SVD to DVD project and archiving of the film show. As of today all but 3 of the SVR issues have been digitized. Next steps are to work with ACM on permission and copyright issues with the goal to be able to offer this material for sale in this new medium. Next the goal is to work with all the film show chairs to find out what they have in the way of materials from their show and work to allow ACM SIGGRAPH to preserve that content.

CAG Chair Report

Jackie White reported on her interview process for perspective conference chairs. There will likely be at least 4 applicants. She discussed some Issues with networking including vendors and concerns for future locations. Redundancy was a problem. Full Dome experience, the organizers are interested in continuing this for multi years and maybe even a larger dome. Access Grid was well received and CAG requests feedback from everyone as the CAG considers continuing this project. Room Counts indicated participation was low for the Access Grid. We will need to weigh the cost vs. attendee experience when deciding whether or not to continue this activity.

Director for Communications Report

Student reporters program went extremely well and there are plans to create a relationship with CG world magazine that could help extend the scope of this activity. Village activity was high and despite server issues we had very few complaints. Creative Heads.net job board was a huge hit. Job Fair was also a huge success. Branding work was manifested in on site activity including wrist bands, etc. Village guests: MK encouraged the EC to review these agreements and participation in the village. Biggest requests from members are for more community type activities.

Past President’s Report

Alain reported on the nominations process. Many people commented on the new changes positively. Many excellent candidates were interviewed. Reference checks are in process. Jackie also reported high interest and good feedback from the get involved and the open call. Erica Johnson reported that the Pat Ryan and the ACM Office of Policy and Administration reviewed the proposed changes and were in support of the changes.

Treasurers Report

Tony Baylis reported that it appeared the impact of this year’s dues increase was not significant and that many people felt this was a good value for the benefits and service provided. He will continue to work on a plan for possibly phasing in annual dues increases.

It was mentioned that Volume Graphics and Point Based Graphics people are looking at a co-located event for S2006

External RSS feeds on our website - we need to create a policy/guideline CGW RSS feed is currently on siggraph.org without a formal agreement. How do we define criteria for these types of relationships?. We moved their location on the homepage and their daily hits went down 50%.

ACTION ITEM: Mk Haley to work on developing criteria and a plan for the RSS feeds relationships and bring that back to the EC for their review and endorsement. Mk Haley will work on formalizing the CGW agreement for their RSS feed on siggraph.org. The comment was made that RSS feeds should not go to sites that require subscriptions. She was also encouraged to keep the conference promo group in the loop on this topic as it relates to conference trade outs.

British (International) English or American English on website

There was a discussion as to whether we should require conformity to one version of language. Consensus was that this is reflective of our international diversity and that the EC would not require conformity to one language version for siggraph.org.

Correct Bylaws to be in accord with our actual petition process

ACTION ITEM: Alain Chesnais to draft proposed changes to be reflective of current practice and forward to the EC for their review and endorsement.

SIGGRAPH Proceedings - how are they listed in ACM DL: TOG only or TOG + SIGGRAPH XXXX Proceedings ACTION ITEM: Wayne Graves to work with Stephen Spencer on meta data issues to allow searches for the SIGGRAPH papers to result in SIGGRAPH proceedings. This will eliminate the appearance that SIGGRAPH conference proceedings series ended with 2002 when citations switched to TOG.

Future Meetings The plan is to have one meeting in November and then 3 meetings in first 6 months of 2006 before the conference November 5th & 6th in Denver (1.5 days) ACTION ITEM: Erica Johnson to send out RFP for hotel for this meeting and forward to Scott Owen for review. Downtown Hotel Preferred.

A change was proposed in the date and direction for the EC Strategic Planning Meeting to allow the organization to provide strategic recommendation to the N + 1 Conference at their strategy meeting The EC supported this idea and will now host it’s strategy meeting in January prior to the N +1 Conference Strategy Meeting. January 21-22 in San Diego Strategy Meeting (1.5 days)

Co-Located Meeting with S2006-2007 committee meeting in Boston. EC could observe Sunday AM “vision statements” from the 2007 conference committee. This will allow both the conference committees and the EC better exposure to one another. Perhaps joint dinners or social functions could be planned.

June 10-11 in Boston Co-Located with S2006/2007 Joint Meeting ACTION ITEM: Erica Johnson to work with Cindy Stark on EC’s needs for this meeting.

March 25-26 Location TBD Suggestions include Toronto, Arizona or New Orleans

CG E-Quarterly The CG Quarterly will no longer have a paper edition, so should we put out something like the March, 2005 SIGCHI E-Bulletin? CG newsletter is no longer in print. How should we move forward? Perhaps an E-mail broadcast with links to the web. Will content in the print version continue to be published and now just be made available electronically? An editor needs to be appointed so that this is a document that contains the same content as well as some edited or invited content. There was discussion as to whether or not this should this be moved to the communications area. It was decided to leave it under the Director of Publications.

ACTION ITEM: Stephen Spencer to conduct a search for a new e- newsletter editor. Stephen and Editor to draft a recommendation for the format of this e-newsletter. The point was made that this is a membership obligation and an issue is due soon. There could be impact on ACM SIGGRAPH electronic services to the community.

ACM Data Center

ACM HQ is moving offices. The servers and data centers are moving to an off site MCI facility in NJ. This move will happen in September/October of 2005. The data center will contain all new equipment so physical boxes will not be moved just the applications running on those servers. Goal is to perform a stress test in November to judge the failure point of e-sub. Disc space for e-sub will not be an issue. This allows us the ability to offer additional member services.

ACTION ITEM: Thierry Frey to write up a summary of the hardware capabilities of the new data center and send to the EC for their information. Very important that ACM handles all authentication services and that will help us move forward with offering more electronic services for members.

MOTION: (Chesnais, Case) Thanks to ACM for providing new servers to ACM SIGGRAPH. By Acclamation

Request for new servers. No request at this time based on ACM HQ providing hardware.

Structure of ASAB (List of candidates) Insert ASAB formation proposal. Purpose of the Advisory Board is to use it as a sounding board for ideas and proposals from any EC member or CAG member before proposing the idea to a more official body.

ACTION ITEM: All EC members pick up to 5 candidates you would like to see appointed and send e-mail to EC alias with your choices by August 15, 2005.

Goal to have ASAB formed by September 15, 2005 or sooner. ACTION ITEM: Scott Owen to then develop a e-alias for the ASAB. This will be a moderated list. EC Mail List - Moderated or not? Decision to keep this a moderated list.

Appointments

The President re-appointed Stephen Spencer to the position of ACM SIGGRAPH Director for Publications.

The President re-appointed Thierry Frey to the position of ACM SIGGRAPH Director for Information Services.

EC wishes to thank Dino Schweitzer for over 10 years of excellent service to the ACM SIGGRAPH Organization, the SIGGRAPH Conference and the Computer Graphics Community.

Alain Chesnais thanked all the EC members for their service during his term and presented each EC member with a small token of appreciation.

Plone 101 - review of how to use Plone review of private folders and permissions and how to access them .

Other Business Treasurer reminded all EC members to review their FMRs and budgets. Tony will send e-mail reminders on a quarterly basis. He has also prepared a draft of the financial status of ACM SIGGRAPH for distribution to the membership and reminds everyone FY 07 budget process will begin in September. Also a note was made that fund balance requirements for FY 07 will be increasing from 30% to 35% of conference expenses.

Motion to Adjourn (White, Schweitzer) By Acclamation .