Member Profile: Ana María Díaz
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
I graduated as a Software and Computing Engineer, and worked as a front-end engineer, graphic designer, and project manager for technical and cultural projects. I was deputy director for a Colombian theatre, organizing their jazz festivals and hosting their international guest artists (which has come a very handy experience for the production of our Bogotá ACM SIGGRAPH events). In recent years I became Senior UX Content Designer and Strategist for an American ed-tech company. I am a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience, and I love to keep learning new skills.
2. What was your first job?
I was a student assistant for the Introduction to Computer Networks, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics classes when I was at the university.
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
I graduated as a Systems and Computing Engineer, and got a MSc. degree as well from the University of Los Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia. I also got a MA in Cultural and Creative Industries from King’s College London.
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
The first time I knew about SIGGRAPH was through the books I used to take from the university library for my computer graphics and virtual reality classes. I remember seeing the teapot modeling in a computer graphics book. In 2018, while I was working for a tech startup in Bogotá, one of my friends invited me to a conference with Adrian Molina, the director of Pixar’s Coco, who had come courtesy of Bogotá ACM SIGGRAPH. I didn’t know we had a SIGGRAPH chapter in Bogotá! I went to the conference, got my Coco copy signed by Adrian, and contacted Hernando Bahamón, chapter founder and chair at the time, and he invited me to my first Bogotá ACM SIGGRAPH board meeting in early 2019. The rest is history!.
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
In 2019, during my first time as collaborator, and part of the Bogotá team, we celebrated the chapter’s 10th anniversary during our main event! That was touching. But I remember that year we held a competition in collaboration with Cartoon Network to help find and promote a new animation talent who could bring a new series to the channel. The winner was announced: a Venezuelan boy who had immigrated to Colombia, and this was its first time trying to showcase his talent. I got tears in my eyes. The competition had been very tight, as all finalists were really good, but understanding the impact that the prize could have for this young boy was simply moving. I felt we had a mission, and that the chapter was really doing something significant for the Colombian animation ecosystem, as well as our society, for good.
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
More than a project fully formed, it’s the idea of it. For years, our chapter has focused mainly on animation as an art form. I’d like to connect and bring to the table the technical part of it through the science behind computer graphics and virtual reality, to contribute to its recognition and expansion, with the valuable connection and shared activities with tech universities, science museums, and other education partners, as we did for the animation industry (which has now reached a very professional level that rival with the international quality standards). Conversations on this have already started. Exciting!
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
I’d be honoured to have a chat with the Professor: JRR Tolkien.His masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, is my favourite book, and is always a source of new meanings, wisdom, kindness, bravery, and beauty every time I revisit it. The Tolkien I know has a wonderful way of seeing the world, to explain its mysteries and failures, and to appreciate its beauty among the chasms of its cruelty. His was a way of seeing beauty in the most unlikely places, and preserving hope against all odds, hope for a happy ending, which is something we always need in a world like the one we live in. He used to say, fantasy was all the most necessary to understand the real world, not as a way to escape from it, but a way to truly know and appreciate it. I am sure it would be such an experience to hear his thoughts over a cup of tea and biscuits, the hobbit style.
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I have a lot of books at home. I started to appreciate them as objects of beauty, as well as sources of wisdom, when I took drawing and illustration classes years ago. My then teacher used to collect children’s books because of its powerful and diverse ilustrations, and I started to do the same. I have a little collection of my favourite fairytale: Beauty and the Beast. It would be correct to say that I realized it was indeed my favourite tale when I discovered I had more than seven books of it. Now, it’s official. I will always appreciate a new addition to my collection of the original story or its variations (e.g. East of the Sun, West of the Moon, or The Black Bull), and it’s a bonus if it is beautifully illustrated or if it is vintage. Also, my favourite cookies are ginger with dark chocolate ones!
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
I can’t say there is just one person who has shaped my life. Most of the people that I still have in my life enrich it every single day, and at least three people who have already left, if not more, have also left some of their wisdom behind, even in the very act of leaving. Perhaps the most valuable lessons they all have contributed to are: time is short, a gift that must not be wasted; there’s always beauty to be seen even in the most dark and broken places; the amount of grief you could experience at one point in your life is just but a reflection of the immense love you’re capable of giving; and, that your true value is not placed in the material things you’ve got, achieved or done, but in the people you’ve left with a good memory or thought of you. The hearts you’ve managed to truly touch.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
All the incredible people we have the pleasure to meet while preparing our events, and the lovely and talented community we work for are an inspiration to all of us. For me, especially, the whole team at Bogotá ACM SIGGRAPH, now dear friends. In particular my two predecessors as chair of the chapter, Hernando Bahamón and Julián Calderón, who always taught and led by example, and left a legacy worth keeping, and last but not least, my first computer graphics and virtual reality teacher, Fernando de la Rosa, a commited professor at Los Andes University in Bogotá.
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
Actually, it is a sum of many events, both big and small. I am proud of what I’ve achieved so far. From being an engineer who can write very good children’s literature in a foreign language to the point of being recognized as such by a Cambridge professor, the excitment and pleasure a full house can produce when you have worked hard for a whole year to bring to life a music festival, the relief of having found a perfect cultural project to both make the most of a government grant for our non profit institution and at the same time manage to erase a long due debt to the senior artists, to the pride you experiment when your daily work as an engineer or designer is recognized thanks to your attention to detail and dedication, or to be elected as a new chair for our Bogotá ACM SIGGRAPH chapter, paving the way for the next ladies to come afterwards. There’s always a new summit to look forward to, while you still smell the little flowers scattered on the path on your way up. Let’s keep going forward.