SIGGRAPH Conference Newsletter January 2002 CSE News -Happy 2002! In Chinese, it is the year of the Black Horse. For SIGGRAPH, it is the year of San Antonio. We closed the year with a fiscal bang - final budget preparations and approval for S2002 and getting ready to close the books for S2001. As a reminder, if you have any outstanding expenses for S2001, we must receive them for processing soon. We begin 2002 with a lot of SIG-activities. S2002 is getting lots of content and going through the jury process (see Tom's notes). S2003 had their first meeting to begin developing their vision for San Diego (ask someone about Pygmy Hippos). S2004 had a Conference Chair Orientation, and the Executive Committee held a meeting to discuss organization activities. I would like to encourage everyone to think of 2002 as the Year of the Volunteer. SIGGRAPH relies on the dedication and creativity of hundreds of volunteers at both the organizational and conference level to make a truly great professional society and event. Go to www.siggraph.org to find out more about volunteer job descriptions and opportunities. RESULTS OF LAST MONTH'S SIGSURVEY: 70% of the respondents said they would purchase SIGGRAPH merchandise if it was offered online. Dino dino@siggraph.org ----- Fun Facts S2002 Papers Trivia· One lucky individual got a trip to Colorado Springs to hand deliver several paper submissions from the University of Utah. One submitter called a local Colorado Springs Kinko's to print and deliver his paper submission. The Paper Advisory Board is so efficient, they even had time to take a break and hike Pulpit Rock, behind the Capstone offices. S2003· The official mascot of S2003 is the Pygmy Hippo....just ask Rick! ----- EC News Membership Statistics: ACM SIGGRAPH Members for selected countries paid through November 2001(total ACM SIGGRAPH membership as of then was about 6610) Note: This is NOT a complete list of international members. Japan: 331 Canada: 300 Germany: 230 UK: 98 Australia: 88 South Korea: 76 France: 60 Sweden: 57 China: 11 (there are some Hong Kong listed here) Hong Kong: 28 (but most Hong Kong residents are here) Switzerland: 39 Spain: 39 Italy: 31 Norway: 21 India: 21 Austria: 20 Denmark: 20 Israel: 19 Greece: 18 Finland: 18 Belgium: 17 Ireland: 16 New Zealand: 16 Portugal: 13 Mexico: 13 Hungary: 8 South Africa: 7 Poland: 4 Holland: 3 Russia: 0 (kind of surprising, huh?) Czech Republic: 0 Report on ACM HQ Meeting We had an orgnaization meeting with ACM about how to work better together at ACM Headquarters on January 14, 2002. Judy, Alan, and Alain Chesnais met with ACM staff member from several areas. We discussed financial management and reporting, in particular creating an action item to revisit cost centers to see if they correspond to current practice. ACM is still looking at the issue of SIG-only membership cards across ACM. However, as an interim solution, we can immediately send new members ACM membership cards that say "affiliate" and "ACM SIGGRAPH" on them. This would be accompanied by a welcoming letter from an EC member. We met with the new media communications person at ACM, Ginny Gold. Ginny has a lot of experience with other technical groups, such as AT&T. We talked about the need for her to coordinate what she does with Sheila Hoffmeyer (so that she and Sheila know what the other is already promoting, not so that Sheila would be asked to do organizational PR.) So that Ginny can understand all our committees and what we do that might be newsworthy, we think she should attend S2002, so she could sit in on the meetings that take place there (education, chapter, public policy, project grants,etc.) and also get a feeling of the conference. We also discussed the need for an ACM SIGGRAPH volunteer to be the liaison to Ginny and get information to her on events that might be of interest. RBL Service In an attempt to lessen the amount of spam flowing through siggraph.org aliases, we are in the process of subscribing to RBL. Leo hourvitz@siggraph.org ----- CAG News Due to the Holidays, December was a fairly light month for the Conference Advisory Group. In the midst of all the holiday cheer, we did manage to have a budget meeting, and had the proposed budget approved by the Executive Committee. In January, I attended the S2003 Strategy meeting in beautiful San Diego. Rock has gathered an impressive group of people. I'm excited to see what develops. In addition to the S2003 meeting, I just returned from the latest Executive Committee meeting. Thanks to Thierry for being a wonderful host. We are currently preparing for our next CAG meeting, to be held March 2002 in San Francisco. This is the beginning of our yearly strategic planning and conference chair selection cycle. If you have any ideas for individuals who may have interesting input on the direction of the conference, as well as anyone interested in the S2005 Conference Chair position, please email me. Scott owen@siggraph.org ----- S2002 News December and January have been very busy months for the S2002 committee. December started off with the CAG reviewing and refining the S2002 conference budget which, later in the month, was presented to and approved by the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (EC). In addition to having our budget approved, the EC also approved a CRF initiative to basically fund the advancement of new technologies into the conference. This is a three year initiative starting with S2002 so we're excited about having the capabilities to curate some new works that may not have ordinarily been submitted. While all this was going on, Val was receiving a record number of Course submissions with a great selection of material. January began where December left off and continued to build on the amount of things going on for the committee. After getting all the Course reviews in, the Courses jury met and, after a very difficult selection process, they whittled the nearly 100 viable courses down to the 59 to be held Sunday through Wednesday at S2002. In addition to Courses selecting content, the Papers and Educators deadlines came in the second week followed by the Panels submission deadline the following week. I'm told Capstone looked like a paper repository with all the deliveries that were being made. A record number of Paper submissions - Happy reading Spike! We've now closed the month with the ETech submission deadline on the 30th. There have been a lot of email inquiries to Scott about the program so we'll all be interested in seeing what he has in store for us. Everyone is busy with their programs and as we move into February. The first thing on our agenda is to make a decision about possibly changing our policy of accepting only original SAFs now that ACM will allow faxed signatures. We all seem to be in favor of making the change but we'll be quickly working out the logistics so that those programs whose submission deadlines are on the horizon have make use of this newly discovered policy change. Phew, quite a couple of months and the exciting thing is that we're just getting started! San Antonio Factoid: The Paseo del Rio, or River Walk, is the No. 1 visitor attraction in Texas. (Sorry, no, it's not the Freeman carpet cleaning facility in Dallas) Stay tuned, Tom appolloni@siggraph.org ----- S2003 News SIGGRAPH 2003 held it's Strategy Meeting 10-13 January in San Diego. It was a very exciting and productive meeting -- what a group of volunteers!. Our visioning sessions brought out words like community, discovery, interactivity, art & technology, crossing bridges, soapboxes or open forums, 24-7 conference, mentoring, and much more. I was really pleased to see the committee come together, they are even better than I imagined (which was awfully good). The San Diego convention center also has a beautiful Sail Pavilion, which is open and airy. Lots of ideas cropped up on how best to use this space, centering around a community space that encouraged non-reception receptions and lingering around. Behind the scenes, we have been working on initial concepts for the Graphic Identity. Starting with a very successful brainstorming session at the Strategy meeting, Todd used the committee's ideas to come up with some really great preliminary concepts. We will continue to refine these over the next few months... stay tuned. Rock rockwood@siggraph.org ----- S2004 News Happy New Year! Vicki Caulfield, S2004 Conference Manager, and I attended Rock's strategy meeting in San Diego. The SIGGRAPH 2003 committee is great! Pygmy hippos seem to have set a theme. SIGGRAPH 2003 is off to an excellent start. After spending time in sunny San Diego, Vicki and I headed back to Colorado Springs for orientation. This gave us the opportunity to focus on 2004, discuss the weekend, plan for the future, as well as peek in on the SIGGRAPH 2002 Papers sort. We will be talking to people in the spring and at the SIGGRAPH 2002 conference. Stay tuned for revised committee position descriptions. If you have any questions or ideas, please send me an e-mail. Dena slothower@siggraph.org