SIGGRAPH Conference Newsletter July/August 2002 ----- CSE News Whew! San Antonio was fantastic! SIGGRAPH 2002 was a huge success in terms of great content, great location, smooth operations, and attendee satisfaction. Unfortunately, attendance and exhibitors were down which impacted the bottom line financially. But, those who were there loved it! We are now completing the attendee survey (almost 500 responses), and should have some results in time for the Wrap Up. Many, many congratulations to Tom, Janet, and the entire S2002 Team for all the hard work and great results. S2003, which is now the infamous Year N, is moving full steam ahead! Meetings on-site with Program Chairs have helped firm up plans. The Web site and online CFP are live. A great look and an exciting location. We will be meeting in San Diego in November to do budgeting issues. Gotta love a challenge! Dena had a lot of strong interviews on-site and putting together her team. Still a few openings if you are interested in working with her. Final location is still unofficial until final negotiations and contract signature, but will definitely be west coast (most likely LA). We are still soliciting Chair applicants for S2005, location TBD. Deadline for applications is Sept 17. Please visit www.siggraph.org/volunteering if you are interested. Dino dino@siggraph.org RESULTS OF LAST MONTH'S SIGSURVEY: 68% of respondents to last month's survey would support corporate sponsorships of the conference and its programs (vs. 29% who said no & 3% with no opinion) ----- Fun Facts Did you know... A total of 17,274 professionals from 70 countries came to SIGGRAPH 2002. The top five countries in terms of attendance were Canada, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom, and Germany. More than 225 exhibiting companies made over 100 news announcements during the week. ----- EC News First, a big congratulations and thanks to Tom Appoloni and his outstanding committee for bringing together the SIGGRAPH 2002 Conference in San Antonio. Second, thanks go to Jan Hardenbergh and his group of intrepid reporters for making the SIGGRAPH Reporters a huge success, for the second year in a row. These 7 individuals managed to cover the conference from every angle, and their reports can be seen at www.siggraph.org/conferences/reports/s2002. And third, thank you to Stephen Matsuba and his Online team for capturing content from the Papers and Panels sessions, as well as select Courses and the Keynote. Just before the conference, we came to agreement with Computer Graphics World to provide a news feed to siggraph.org. Along with the Conference Reports and Online Content, news feeds will be able to provide current information to our members. The ACM SIGGRAPH booth was co-located this year with Chapters, Educators, ACM, and our welcome guests from our cooperating societies. The Saturday following the SIGGRAPH 2002 Conference, the Executive Committee held our annual onsite meeting, open to all members of the ACM SIGGRAPH community. At this meeting, we said goodbye to outgoing EC members Steve Cunningham, Alan Chalmers, Leo Hourvitz, Mike McGrath and David Ebert. August will be quite for us, as we recover from the conference and gear up for the next year of exciting programs. As always, we seek volunteers for a variety of positions. For more information, be sure to check out the Volunteers Needed area on siggraph.org. Gudrun enger@siggraph.org ----- CAG News SIGGRAPH 2002 was yet another great conference and a tremendous technical and creative success. Tom Appolloni and the 2002 committee did a spectacular job and the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee passed a formal resolution commending them for their role in producing the conference. San Antonio was a beautiful city and there were many positive comments from attendees who would like to return. Being able to walk to the conference along the river with all of the lovely plants and flowers was a great experience. San Antonio is definitely one of my favorite all time SIGGRAPH conference cities! While onsite I had the opportunity to speak to many different people and gathered input on the strategic direction of the SIGGRAPH Conference. In addition, the Future of the SIGGRAPH Conference BOF was very well attended and we discussed many important issues regarding the changes SIGGRAPH is facing. While it was successful in many ways, SIGGRAPH 2002 was not a financial success. This means that we need to retrench for SIGGRAPH 2003. There are some difficult decisions to be made in the next few months. To keep the community aware of our plans, we will post a statement on these decisions on the CAG site (www.siggraph.org/conferences/cag/) so be sure to check that site. At the EC Meeting on Saturday after the conference Alain Chesnais, newly elected ACM SIGGRAPH President, outlined his vision for the SIGGRAPH Hub. This will be the central place on the Web for people interested in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques to learn and interact with one another. The content of the SIGGRAPH Conference will be an important part of the Hub, so we will be deeply involved with this exciting new project. As noted previously, we are looking for candidates for S2005 Chair. If you or someone you know are interested, please contact me or visit: www.siggraph.org/volunteering. The deadline for applications is Sept 17th. Scott owen@siggraph.org ----- S2002 News SIGGRAPH 2002 was awesome! It had everything we had hoped we could present and it had to be up there as one of the smoothest running conferences in history. This is no small feat considering it was the first really technical conference that the HBGCC staff had worked on. The job done by everyone on the SIGGRAPH 2002 committee has set a standard on how you put together a conference. Congratulations to all of us. Since everything ran so smoothly, I got to spend a lot of my week talking to those who were there. I tried to get a good cross sample of people so I spoke with attendees, contributors, and exhibitors. I asked all of them what they thought of the conference and what they thought of San Antonio. The resounding reply that I received is that the conference had some of the best material seen in years and, although it was a little warm, almost everyone thought San Antonio was a wonderful city for a conference. Personally, I didn't quite understand the comments about it being too warm but then again, I had to travel north to get to San Antonio. It has truly been a wonderful adventure working with the S2002 committee that goes back to our first meeting as a group in January 2001. We met in San Antonio and spent the weekend trying to figure out what S2002 was going to be. After that first meeting, I received the comment that by the end of the weekend, the S2002 committee was functioning on a group level that you normally don't see until it has been together for a considerably longer time. From there we continued to get better, tackling each obstacle as it popped up, working together to help everyone achieve the vision of each program chair. Great job everyone! I look forward to seeing everyone again in Melbourne. Tom appolloni@siggraph.org San Antonio Factoid: San Antonio was the host city to the 29th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. ----- S2003 News SIGGRAPH 2002 was excellent. It continues to amaze me how our discipline marches forward. There is more and better science every year, more creativity and polish in all arenas. I talked to a number of exhibitor booth managers, who all said the exhibits were the best in years from their point of view. It all portends well for San Diego in 2003. The economy continues to create jerkiness, however; particularly in the exhibits, where the booth managers all said they want to be at San Diego in a big way, but it depends on an uncertain marketing budget. We see some weakness in our core registration numbers as well, mostly because some companies are tentative about sending their professionals. The SIGGRAPH 2003 committee is up for the challenge. They are concentrating hard on presenting the best content, and in providing a conference where attendees can network smoothly with each other and have fun in one of the most beautiful places imaginable. The torch has been passed and we are off and running. Congratulations and thanks to Tom and his SIGGRAPH 2002 committee for a fantastic conference. Rock rockwood@siggraph.org ----- S2004 News SIGGRAPH 2002 was a great conference from what Vicki and I saw. I confess, I was in a room much of the time talking with potential program chairs and subcommittee members for the 2004 committee. But I did get out for a few events, including the Web Graphics session I chaired on "Standards". The speakers in the "Standards" session were excellent, it was well-attended, the audience was engaged, and I learned new things. I think Simon Allardice put together a great inaugural Web Graphics program. I am in the process of putting together a committee from all the fantastic volunteers who have applied. I feel I am really fortunate in that my difficult decisions currently revolve around picking chairs for each program from all of the intelligent and enthusiastic candidates I met in San Antonio. In other 2004 news, the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee approved the CAG recommendation to move the 2004 conference to the West Coast. We are still negotiating location and will hopefully have an update in the next newsletter. Dena (slothower@siggraph.org)