The SIGGRAPH Asia conference is an exciting event, but it is often a confusing experience for first-time attendees. There are many new terms, new concepts, and new products to try to understand. This course is designed to ease newcomers into the SIGGRAPH Asia conference experience by presenting the fundamental concepts and vocabulary at a level that can be readily understood. Far from being made up of dry facts, this course will also portray the fun and excitement that led most of us here in the first place. Attendees in the course will be well-prepared to understand, appreciate, enjoy, network, and learn from the rest of the SIGGRAPH experience.

Level
Beginner

Intended Audience
This course is targeted at an audience who has never been to SIGGRAPH Asia before and needs to understand some basic things about computer graphics and the SIGGRAPH Asia conference.

Prerequisites
No graphics pre-knowledge is required, but a basic understanding of computers would be helpful.

Course Schedule
09:00-09:10 Mike Bailey: Welcome and Overview
09:10-09:40 Mike Bailey: How to Attend SIGGRAPH Asia 2011
09:40-09:10 Mike Bailey: Graphics Hardware
10:10-10:45 Steve Cunningham: Modeling

10:45-11:00 Break

11:00-11:30 Steve Cunningham: Rendering
11:30-12:00 Mike Bailey: GPU Shaders
12:00-12:15 Mike Bailey: Finding additional information
12:15-12:45 Both: Discussion and Questions

Presenter(s)
Mike Bailey is a Professor in Computer Science at Oregon State University (OSU). Mike has worked at Sandia National Labs, Purdue University, Megatek Corporation, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at University of California (USC) San Diego. Mike has taught numerous classes at conferences (SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), IEEE Visualization, and Supercomputing), at the college level, and commercially. Mike was five times voted Computer Science Teacher of the Year by the USC San Diego Computer Science seniors. He was also voted Most Enthusiastic Professor by Oregon State University students in 2005 and received the Austin Paul teaching award from the College of Engineering in 2008.

Steve Cunningham has been actively engaged in computer graphics education for many years. He has organized computer graphics education workshops developed by SIGGRAPH and Eurographics in Spain, Portugal, UK, China, and Austria. He has given computer graphics teaching workshops at the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) conference in Brazil, Botswana, and Mexico, and served as Chair of both the SIGGRAPH Education Committee and the Eurographics Education Board. He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited a total of seven books, mostly on computer graphics-related topics, including a recent textbook for a computer graphics course for beginners.