Dear ACM SIGGRAPH Community,
TL;DR – Vote by August 11. We are making data-driven changes to our conferences—please fill out your surveys so we have the feedback we need. We’re also forming an Industry Relations Advisory Board, welcoming four new Chapters, and looking for volunteers to help shape our future.
I’m writing this one week before SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles. It’s coming a bit early this year due to preparations for the 2028 Olympics at the LA Convention Center, and we also believe attendance will be impacted due to increased travel costs, concerns over international travel to the US, economic factors, and, as you’ll see below, a likely need to adjust.
You’ll see in the updates below that we’re doing a number of things to address this. While the conferences are largely controlled by the Conference Advisory Group (CAG) and the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (SACAG), the Executive Committee is responsible for the ongoing sustainability and growth of our community, with the conferences being the primary driver of our survival.
Thank you to those who volunteered for our vacated Executive Director position. For vacated positions, the EC appoints a new person to fi ll the role, and I couldn’t be happier that Chris Bregler accepted the EC’s request to serve our community. He will fi ll the position through August 2027, at which point a newly elected Director will replace him. Speaking of Director elections, we have some exceptional candidates for the three Director positions that are being vacated this August. Please vote before 11 August!
We held our third full-weekend EC meeting at the beginning of June, virtually to reduce costs. Please see the full Executive Committee meeting notes for all the details, but I’ll summarize below.
Financial Solvency
A key part of our organization’s long-term survival is financial solvency. ACM SIGGRAPH has a healthy reserve fund balance of around $8M. That seems like a lot, right? However, taking into account the required reserve levels set by ACM and SIGGRAPH to prevent intervention, we have only $2.3M in surplus.
And while $2.3 M is still a lot, when the conference itself costs between $6-$8M to produce, and the likely revenue is only known 1-2 months out from the conference, when it’s too late to adjust contracts, it is easy to see quickly that the gap can disappear. A single conference can and has lost over $1M in the past! Three of those, and the community loses control of the organization. This is why we have focused so much on Los Angeles and Vancouver in recent history as the two locations that have typically delivered the necessary return. But with last year and this year’s anticipated outcomes, even that isn’t enough.
As an Executive Committee, we are working hard to establish the right balance between oversight and granting independence, allowing the CAG and Conference leaders to make responsible decisions. And we are attempting to do this through as many indicative data points as we can gather. Session attendance, pre-attendance (new) and post-attendance surveys, relative costs per program or experience, and more all go into that oversight structure, which we will work to fi nalize during an all-day session at the conference itself. I truly believe we can actually make a better conference experience with less money by reassessing the value of our expenses. We need data to drive those decisions and validate them in the future, and that is data we intend to share with you all. Please help us by completing any surveys you receive so we can truly take our community’s voices into consideration.
Industry Relations
Industry is instrumental in this financial solvency. Not just for a conference, but for all our conferences and year-round member benefits as well. To that end, we have approved the formation of an Industry Relations Advisory Board (IRAB) with a chair to be appointed by SIGGRAPH. Please see section 6.7 of our Guidelines for more details on its mission, though their activities will be defined between now and end of the year and through participation with representatives from industry as well.
Without the ability to effect change, these efforts would have limited value, but the ability to effect too much change threatens both the CAG and the core of a lauded, peer-reviewed technical conference. That balance will be critical to get right. The initial step in that control is to incorporate the External Relations Committee’s activities into this new Advisory Board. Thank you to Miho Aoki for her efforts during her term, which ends in September.
Officer Term by Law Change
Mentioning again, as I see this as a critical change for the future of this organization. On your ballot you will see a by-laws proposal change to return to our starting point and to match the election cycle of every other SIG. I implore you to consider voting “yes” to allow our membership to select the Chair and Vice-Chair roles, not just the Executive Committee, and to restore their terms to three years. If passed, this would go into place after both the Chair Elect, June Kim, and I have completed our one-year tenures, so this isn’t self-serving!
While I am proud of what we have accomplished in the past year as Chair, it was nowhere near the time required to achieve what is needed. As you can see above, many initiatives are just starting and need continual focus to conclude, and non-profit, volunteer-run organizations need time to change course. That course needs to be set by consistent leadership.
Member Benefits and Chapters
We have made some, but not nearly enough, progress on giving greater year-round benefi ts to our members. More will happen over the next year, especially if we can adjust the conference to return funding to the organization as intended for such activities. However, while the organization itself can do more, I wanted to highlight what an important role Chapters play in our year-round efforts. Student and professional chapters are our best port of call for engagement because they are local to communities. The community and connection created by our conferences is as important as the material and learnings being shared at them. Chapters are an extension of that. I was lucky enough to meet with the SIGGRAPH Sydney Chapter since the last Chair’s Corner and heard about the activities that they have planned, the local struggles that their chapter membership faces, and what we can do as an organization to help them.
I truly believe that Chapters are the lifeblood of our community, which makes me so excited to share that four new chapters have been established since my last post, bringing us to 60 total: Manila, Calgary, SRMIST, and NMSU!
Volunteerism
Thank you again for the opportunity to serve our community. There will likely be just one or two more posts before term, as your Chair is complete, but it’s been an honor to contribute back to an organization that has given me so much. If you need a bit of inspiration about the value of serving your community, or just a few chuckles at my expense, please watch this keynote I gave at the co-located ASWF Open Source Days at SIGGRAPH in 2024. And if it helps inspire you, there is a link on this page to get you started or if you are attending the conference, please consider visiting SIGGRAPH 365 in the SIGGRAPH Village at the conference to learn more!
We need lots of help and fresh perspectives on what our future holds.
Sincerely,
Darin Grant
ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee Chair (1 Sept 2025 – 30 August 2026)