ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee July 2002 Meeting

July 27, 2002, San Antonio, Texas

Attending
Judy Brown
Alain Chesnais
Gudrun Enger
Thierry Frey
Werner Hansmann
Barb Helfer
Masa Inakage
Erica Johnson
Jacki Morie
Scott Owen
Dino Schweitzer
 

Guests
Tom Appolloni
Pere Brunet
Alan Chalmers
Steve Cunningham
David Ebert
Bob Ellis
Alice Enger
Leo Hourvitz
Stephen Matsuba
Mike McGrath
Rhonda Schauer

Recognition of outgoing members

The new President, Alain Chesnais, opened the meeting at 9 a.m. and all members and guests were introduced. The outgoing President presented the stuffed tiger to the new President, a tradition started by Jim George. Plaques and certificates were presented to those who were leaving the Executive Committee to thank them for their service, and outgoing officers each said a few words. A "For the Birds" poster was presented to Judy Brown for her dedication as President.

Meeting Minutes

Two sets of minutes were out for review, those for June and July conference calls. Motion(Brown, Hansmann) To approve the June conference call minutes.

Because the makeup of the Executive Committee changed between the time of the call in June and the time of this meeting in July, these minutes were

Approved by a vote of all present members who were on the call.

Because the July conference call minutes had not been out long enough for everyone to read them, they will be approved at the next meeting.

The NRC (National research council) proposal to develop an agenda for computer graphics research was discussed. There is a new program staff person in charge of this project, and. the project has been approved. They now need to go to the various agencies to raise funds. A 9-12 month time limit is needed to raise the $600,000. This study is to be international.

The Public Policy meeting during the conference week was attended by an enthusiastic audience of 75-100 people. The Public Policy Chair, Bob Ellis is looking for a Co-Chair , as well as participation on the committee by someone outside the United States. There was discussion of a new logo.

Stephen Matsuba presented the results of the data captured from SIGGRAPH 2002. They captured data for thirty sessions, and this information is located on the ACM SIGGRAPH website. Each session has either presentation slides or video. There is a Quicktime streaming file of the speakers and gif files of slides (if available) for each session. They captured sixty-seven hours of video, over 1000 gigabytes, of these thirty sessions. However, 50% of the presenters did not provide slides. Stephen Matsuba will follow up with all the speakers and get copies of their PowerPoint slides. He would like the Executive Committee to acknowledge the Online 2002 Committee for their hard work and dedication.

Motion: (Enger, Helfer) To thank the Online 2002 Committee.

Approved: unanimously

Action Item: Stephen Matsuba to have a report on the Online 2002 project by November 1st.

Fund Balance Update

Alain Chesnais presented a review of financials. We will have a large shortfall on the conference this year, and we will need to monitor very closely how our funds are going to be used. We’ve used our fund balance this year, and we don’t want to do it again next year. We need to cut projects where we can for this year because of these financial straits. We don’t want to cripple the organization, but we want creative ways of doing things for less money. Next year, we will have $150,000 less than this year. So, we need to budget conservatively and think about how to prepare for the tight year that is coming. We should only pull from reserves for strategic initiatives. The budget process was explained to the new Executive Committee members.

SIGGRAPH 2002 Report

Tom Appolloni gave the following conference statistics: attendance was 17,274 with full conference registration at 4,434 and conference select at 1,251. Exhibits had 79,000 square feet of exhibition space. The problems were that San Antonio was unknown to SIGGRAPH attendees and exhibitors, and the economy took a downturn. It was felt that the content was very good, and there was excellent support from the city and convention center staff.

Motion: (Owen, Enger) That the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee thank the S2002 conference committee for putting on a SIGGRAPH conference that was a great technical and creative success.

Approved: unanimously

SIGGRAPH 2003 Update

Alyn Rockwood, SIGGRAPH 2003 Chair is looking forward to the conference in San Diego next year. His committee worked on programs this week, and the next step is to budget for the programs. There is a certain amount of shell shock among program chairs due to the necessary budget cuts, but they are all committed to doing the very best they can for SIGGRAPH 2003.

Motion: (Owen, Enger) That the Executive Committee express thanks to Alyn Rockwood for his positive and upbeat manner regarding budgets and to his program chairs for their creativity.

Approved: unanimously

SIGGRAPH 2004 Report

Dena Slothower has talked to a lot of potential program chairs. A large number of people have said that they are interested in being program chairs. The conference will be held on the west coast.

Conference Activities Group Report

In the open meeting, it was stated that communication is an issue especially with the major changes for SIGGRAPH 2003. Scott Owen will post these changes to the website. There were many positive comments on the web graphics sessions. There is a plan to create an endowment for the conference programs, and Adele Newton has agreed to serve as endowments chair. Sue Ebert has been appointed to handle the SIGGRAPH Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions (BOFs). Budget cuts of over $2 Million have been proposed, and they are setting up a task force to look at cuts in contracted services and moving work to volunteers. They are also setting up a contributor recognition committee.

Eurographics Activities

Pere Brunet, Eurographics Chair, discussed the activities Eurographics has in collaboration with ACM SIGGRAPH. There is an agreement between the organizations for discounts on joint membership and an increase in co-sponsored events in the past few years. Eurographics proceedings are being published by ACM press. The exchange of booths at both Eurographics and SIGGRAPH conferences has been extremely successful, and there is an exchange of representatives between the two groups’ executive committees. Eurographics has created a new educational board, with Steve Cunningham appointed as chair. Pere extended his thanks to past presidents of ACM SIGGRAPH for their help in increasing collaborations.

Other Societies

Barb Helfer, Vice President, discussed some activities with other societies and conferences. Graphite is a new international conference that will alternate location among three sites: Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. The first conference will be held in November, 2002, in Australia, and the call for papers has a deadline of September 15.

The President and Vice President signed a one year cooperation agreement between ACM SIGGRAPH and IGDA (International Games Developers Association.)

CG Arts, a Japanese society, will do translations in key areas of conference material and will promote participation in the annual conference.

Voting practices: email and proxies

There has been email discussion on voting practices, and Alain Chesnais would like to use email votes for certain topics, such as procedural issues and minutes. This would be dependent on no objections to the particular topic under discussion for email voting. If someone objects, then we would wait to have a conference call or in-person meeting for the vote.

Proxy voting was discussed for use on occasions when an Executive Committee member can’t make it to a meeting. He/she would then assign a proxy to another Executive Committee member, and have this member vote. Absentee voting was not thought to be a good idea because the absent person would not have the benefit of the discussion prior to taking a vote. It was felt that a proxy vote is much more appropriate. The procedure we will follow for a proxy is that an Executive Committee member should inform the President if he/she is unable to attend a meeting and name a proxy.

Motion: (Owen, Enger) That ACM SIGGRAPH accept proxy votes for absent Executive Committee members.

Approved (7,1,0 – against, Brown)

The Executive Committee agreed to try email voting but did not pass a motion for it at this time.

Meeting Schedule
The next meeting will be Friday, September 13th, probably in Miami. This is intended to be a strategy meeting to look at what we will be doing over the next year. Alain Chesnais said he would like to have only four meetings per year to save money.

The budget meetings is in January, and was set for January 10-12, with the location to be determined. The spring meeting was set for May 2 – 4, 2003 as first choice, and an alternate date of May 16 – 18.

Monthly conference calls will be scheduled. If there is no business to cover, these calls can be cancelled. Calls will need to be scheduled on a time rotation because of the geographic diversity of our membership, with members in Europe, North America and Japan.

Website

There was a discussion on how the web can be used to serve our community better. We need content from activities in every ACM SIGGRAPH committee. We need information and reports on all small conferences. Personalization is important. It would be valuable to have sketches and abstracts in the digital library, as well as videos.

Motion to Adjourn – by Acclamation