Finances and Attendance

The last version of this document was written shortly before SIGGRAPH 2003 (S2003). At that time things looked fairly grim for the technical industry. Some very high profile technology shows, e. g. Comdex, either disappeared or were drastically reduced in size. ACM Conferences in general were suffering financial losses.

However, we are happy to report that the SIGGRAPH Conference has survived the technical recession and is on the rebound. Below is a table that shows the relative finances for S2002, S2003, and S2004. The budget forecast for S2004 is still preliminary since as of this date (October 1, 2004) we still do not know all of the expenses (SIGGRAPH is so big and complex that it takes us several months to get all the bills and close the books). However, the income figure is correct to within 1% and the expense figure is correct to within 1-2%. The table shows the total income, expense, and net income for the last three years. The next row shows the ACM allocation, i.e., ACM requires a certain percentage of all SIG revenues to be returned to ACM to finance the support of the ACM SIGs. For S2002 and S2003 this was 5.35% of the total Conference expenses. Because of the decline in Conference revenues across all SIGs, ACM was forced to raise its allocation from 5.35% to 7.35% of Conference expenses. The 7.35% rate was used for S2004 and will be used for S2005. The next row shows the ACM SIGGRAPH allocation, which is the money the conference returns to the organization to supports its efforts. The last row shows the net income for the SIGGRAPH Conference after all mandated allocations. If this is negative, as it was in 2002 and 2003, then we draw it from the ACM SIGGRAPH Reserve Fund. If it is positive, as it appears it will be in 2004, then that amount goes back into the reserve fund.

Thus, for the first time in several years, S2004 will return money to the Reserve Fund.

SIGGRAPH Conference	SIGGRAPH 2002	SIGGRAPH 2003	SIGGRAPH 2004
Total Income	$6,554,324	$6,856,817	$7,198,186
Total Expenses	$7,861,971	$6,307,152	$5,904,905
Net Income	-$1,307,647	$549,665	$1,293,281
ACM Allocation	$492,703	$337,433	$434,010
ACM SIGGRAPH Allocation	$294,945	$308,557	$323,918
Net Income after allocations	-$1,945,294	-$96,324	$535,353

Looking at attendance figures, S2003 total attendance was up about 40% over S2002 and S2004 was up about 14% over S2003. Technical attendance (full conference plus conference select) has also increased slightly each year since 2002. The exhibition declined from 2002 to 2003, but for 2004 was up about 10% over 2003. This is the first time that actual occupied exhibition space has increased in several years.

So, in summary, the SIGGRAPH Conference is on the upswing both in financial strength, total attendance, technical attendance, and exhibition space. We believe these trends will continue. We are still being extremely conservative with the S2005 budget and it is very tight.

Content

The Panels Program was back for S2004 in a revised format and was very successful. 2004 set records for number of submissions in most of the Programs. The number of submissions increased in 2003 compared to 2002 and increased again for S2004.

These increased number of submissions is causing a strain on our current structure and we are looking for ways to address this issue. This may be the creation of new categories or new programs or a redesign of the way we handle them. We have moved to electronic submissions which has helped considerably. For example, in 2004 the majority of submissions for the Papers Program were electronic submissions. We have increased the capability of the siggraph.org server to better accommodate this for S2005.

However, a rise in the number of submissions is a good problem to have since it reflects the vitality of our field and the fact that even more people believe the SIGGRAPH Conference is the place to present their work.

Co-Located Events

One of the strategic objectives of the CAG has been technical outreach. One way to achieve that has been to encourage more events to co-locate with the Conference. S2004 was our most successful conference yet for this as we had three co-located events: GP2: Workshop on General Purpose Computing on Graphics Processors, First Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, and the Adaptive Displays Conference. There was a total of almost five hundred attendees for these three events.

Summary

The SIGGRAPH Conference has survived the technical recession and is now rebounding. We are financially strong and are getting more and better technical and creative content than ever before. Come to S2005 and enjoy!