Sigaccess fy’10 Annual Report
Part I – SIGCSE Viability
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| Part I – SIGCSE Viability
Each SIG must undergo a Viability Study every four years, and the SGB (SIG Governing Board which is comprised of the chairs of each ACM Special Interest Group) votes on whether to deem the SIG viable for the next four years. This was the year for SIGCSE to be assessed and we are now assessed as viable until the next review in 2014. The SGB asked each SIG to reflect on its goals and how well the SIG met those goals. Begin quote: “What did I say? Let me first point out that the downturn in the economy did affect SIGCSE. Our financial report wasn’t as rosy as the one Henry gave in 2006. But listening to the reports of other SIGs and reflecting on all that SIGCSE does we are a very healthy SIG and we have much to be proud of. SLIDE 1: FINANCES. SIGCSE has a basically healthy $470,000 fund balance that is comfortably better than the minimum required by ACM. However, it was down almost $50,000 from the year before. Some of the specific reasons for our shortfall were due to quirks in accounting and the timing of when income and expenses from conferences were posted. SIGCSE incurred one-time large production costs by moving from its old Bulletin, inroads, to the new high quality ACM magazine, Inroads. The electronic version of the newsletter as the Bulletin, and the shorted page count of the new magazine with electronic conference proceedings will reduce our mailing costs in the future. A third area contributing to the decrease in our fund balance was the expense of volunteer travel. SIGCSE’s growing international presence will make this a continuing need. SLIDE 2: MEMBER BENEFITS – briefly tons of them! We have 2600 members who receive the proceedings of our 3 annual conferences on CD. Those conferences are the 1200-attendee US hosted Symposium, the ~200 attendee non-US ITiCSE Conference and the ~50 attendee research conference (ICER workshop) Through 2009, we had a quarterly newsletter (which included 1 issue Symposium proceedings, 3 magazine style including columns, edited articles, etc. and peer reviewed papers from ITiCSE working groups) SIGCSE received income from the ACM digital library based on the number of its articles that were accessed. In 2009 SIGCSE received $56,000 income from the DL. SIGCSE members are eligible to apply for small research grants in learning and teaching. Our able volunteers oversee our very active member list servs – e.g. members.sigcse.org has 1200 members who have opted in for discussions on all aspects of CS Ed SLIDES 3-5: GOALS Our mission states that SIGCSE is a “forum for educators to discuss issues related to the development, implementation, and/or evaluation of computing programs, curricula, and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy." We believe that SIGCSE continues to be perceived as the premier organization for computing education. SIGCSE primarily serves post-secondary Computer Science teaching faculty and Computer Science education research faculty with many of its activities focused on making CS1 and CS2 effective. SIGCSE secondarily serves pre-college faculty through our relationship with the Computer Science Teachers Association, CSTA and with other post-secondary teaching faculty in related computing disciplines SIGCSE has a goal to extend the reach and influence of Computing Education. A majority of the members on ACM Education committees are or have been SIGCSE officers or large conference leadership. SIGCSE also aims to extend its influence beyond US Computer Science through international conferences including ITiCSE and the ICER workshop which alternated being held abroad with the US. SIGCSE received an NSF grant in conjunction with CSTA. SIGCSE holds in cooperation status with many conferences, in the US and internationally including the CCSC conferences, the Australasian, New Zealand, Koli Calling, AAAI. SIGCSE funds SIGCSE presenters to take conference presentations to regional conferences, especially CCSC. SIGCSE was and continues to be a major player in the NSF funded Computing Education Summit. There continues to be a Broadening Participation in Computing thread at SIGCSE Conferences, with the goal to increase interest in computing. Some of those activities include a Kids Camp at Symposium, and a Doctoral Symposium. Our members have leadership roles in NCWIT, NSF BPC projects, CPATH SIGCSE provides continuing education members at Symposia where the number of workshops continues to grow, with 39 offered in 2010. SIGCSE also sponsors workshops for both new faculty and for department chairs. Bottom line – SIGCSE is not only viable, it is vibrant.” End quote SIGCSE Bulletin, Vol.42, issue 2, p.4. Part II – 2009-2010 Highlights Awards ========
Each year SIGCSE gives awards to those who have been particularly helpful to the computer-science-education community. SIGCSE gave two awards this year, both officially at the Technical Symposium which was in March, 2010. Sally Fincher, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, received the Outstanding Contribution award and gave the opening keynote address. The SIGCSE Award for Lifetime Service was presented to Peter Denning, Naval Postgraduate School, who addressed partakers of the first-timers luncheon. Conference Highlights ========= In 2009-2010, SIGCSE sponsored three main conferences: the Technical Symposium, the summer (Northern Hemisphere) ITiCSE conference and the research conference known as the ICER workshop. The SIGCSE Technical Symposium and the Digital Library revenues continue to generate additional revenue to support our many endeavors. SIGCSE 2010 in Milwaukee was remarkably successful, with very strong attendance in spite of a struggling world economy. This year’s Co-Chairs, Gary Lewandowski (University of Cincinnati) and Steve Wolfman (University of British Columbia) were incredible. Special thanks are due the 2010 Program Committee, led by Program co-chairs Tom Cortina and Ellen Walker who will be chairs of the 2011 Technical Symposium in Dallas, Texas. Additional keynote speakers at the conference were Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman and Michael Wrinn of Intel’s Intel's Innovative Software Education Team. ICER 2009 ======== The International Computing Education Conference (ICER) 2009 conference was at UC Berkeley, hosted by Mike Clancy with strong attendance. The number of participants in the co-located doctoral consortium was down significantly. We will watch the 2010 conferences in Aarhus, Denmark, carefully and reflect upon the advisability of the co-location of the DC with ICER rather than the Symposium. ITiCSE 2010 was held in Ankara, Turkey. Over 200 attendees from every continent except Antarctica made for a vibrant conference under the leadership of co-chairs Reyyan Ayfer of Bilkent University and John Impagliazzo (Qatar University) and program chair Cary Laxer (Rose Hulman). Keynotes by Nüket Yetiş, head of TÜBİTAK (similar to US NSF), Ali Ekrem Özkul from The Council of Higher Education (Turkey) and Jane Prey (Microsoft Research) set the tone for the meeting. Next year’s conference will be in Darmstadt, Germany under the leadership of Guido Roessling. Publications =========== John Impagliazzo became Editor-in-Chief of the new SIGCSE supported ACM magazine, Inroads, as 2010 also saw the unbundling of the conference proceedings from our newsletter. Curt M. White took the helm as editor of the SIGCSE Corner in that publication. The SIGCSE Bulletin was revamped and launched as an electronic newsletter under the editorial leadership of Z Sweedyk and Henry Walker.
============ SIGCSE undertook a multitude of other projects, all of which have been documented in a detailed spreadsheet. Among these activities were funding for outreach projects, a doctoral consortium, a workshop for department chairs, and a workshop for new faculty.
The following is a brief outline of the challenges facing the 2010-2013 SIGCSE Board and the membership it represents. A critical challenge is returning the budget to a positive bottom line for the organization. The SIGCSE conferences continue to be well-attended, but have ceased to be making enough profit to sustain the ambitious goals of the organization. The new board must consider ways to reverse the trend. The registration fees may need to be increased to match rising costs, waived registrations for volunteers may need to be controlled, funding for good works such as outreach and special projects may need to be reduced, the recently increased monetary awards for award winners may need to be re-evaluated, and Board travel costs need to be examined. The SIGCSE By-laws are in need of a few small tweaks. For example, the recent changes in Inroads and the Bulletin have highlighted the need for a re-definition of the Publications chair, and the role of the past chair is ambiguous in the current version. SIGCSE has been faced with issues that may need thoughtful responses. For example, the Board recently took a stand on Academic Freedom and supported the AAUP and UNESCO statements. SIGCSE is faced with the need to address the National Research Council’s standards on education that omits Computer Science from those K-12 suggestions. There has been a possible infringement of SIGCSE conference name by one called ITCSE and that conference's procurement of the domain name cseducation.org SIGCSE needs to assess its continuing involvement in the formation of CECC (Computing Education Coordinating Council), and to maintain the SIGCSE voice within the ACM Ed Board, Ed Council (where we now have an appointed representative), the Education Policy Committee, and the Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA). With respect to conferences, SIGCSE needs to review its criteria for approving in-cooperation with conferences and to improve mechanisms for including in-cooperation with conference proceedings in the DL. For its own conferences it needs to look forward to site selection and consider the role and place of the Doctoral Consortium. Member benefits are changing. The Board needs to tackle such issues as the availability of the Bulletin to members only and the possibility of inclusion of the Transactions on Computing Education as a benefit. Where should the reports of the ITiCSE working groups appear? The new Board will need to assess its duties. New members entail new roles. The Board will need to consider the frequency and costs of both its face-to-face and teleconference meetings. An urgent challenge is that of SIGCSE’s role in Computer Science Education Week in early December. What activities can the Board encourage or sponsor? The opportunities and challenges are many. SIGCSE is vibrant and we are up to those challenges. I thank the membership of SIGCSE and all its volunteers for the opportunity to have served as Chair for the past three years and look forward to my more advisory role as past chair. I wish the new Board all the best! SIGDA FY’10 Annual Report July 2009 - June 2010 Submitted by: Patrick Madden, Chair ----------- Awards Given Out: SIGDA Distinguished Service Awards Prof. Matthew Guthaus, for service to the SIGDA CADathlon, and the SIGDA Newsletter Prof. Diana Marculescu, for work as SIGDA chair Prof. Alex K. Jones, for service to the SIGDA University Booth, and the SIGDA Board ACM Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in EDA to Himanshu Jain, Carnegie Mellon University SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award to Prof. Deming Chen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and to Prof. Puneet Gupta, UCLA
Hao Yu from NTU Singapore, Joanna Ho from Notre Dame, and Lei He from UCLA, for the paper titled “Allocating Power Ground Vias in 3-DI ICs for Simultaneous Power and Thermal Integrity” ACM/IEEE A. R. Newton Award to Randy Bryant, Carnegie Mellon University Pioneering Achievement Award to Martin Davis SIGDA Technical Leadership Award Cliff Sze from IBM Research, Austin, for service to the community through benchmarks, and administering the ISPD Placement and Routing contests. --------- Significant Papers Each of our major conferences and symposia have had best paper awards. The major award for a related transaction is: Hao Yu from NTU Singapore, Joanna Ho from Notre Dame, and Lei He from UCLA, for the paper titled “Allocating Power Ground Vias in 3-DI ICs for Simultaneous Power and Thermal Integrity” --------- Significant Programs University Booth: SIGDA sponsors a booth on the exhibit floor of the Design Automation Conference (DAC, the major conference in the area, with a total attendance of around 5000 people). Students from a wide range of universities have their travel expenses at least partially supported, and present their research projects along side industry vendors. This year, the University Booth went through a major change, integrating on-line video demonstrations. Fewer groups participated, allowing for increased travel support – and for the demonstrations to have wider visibility through the web. PhD Forum: Also at DAC are presentations from a carefully selected set of PhD dissertations. 27 students were supported to present at DAC, and were featured during the annual member meeting. SIGDA CADathlon: At the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), student teams compete in a set of design automation related programming problems. The contest is modeled after the ICPC, and attracts around twenty teams. --------- Innovative Programs Design Automation Summer School. The DASS is held in alternate years; planning for next year is under way. Design automation is something of a niche field, and only a handful of universities have departments large enough to cover the full range of design automation topics. The objective is to broaden the education opportunities, such that we can keep more students in the field. SIGDA has organized a number of technical committees (comprised of a chair, vice chair, and members), to help the SIG focus on more narrow research fields, while still allowing a good connection to the board. Our TCs selected new officers, and are beginning to do useful work. A “liaison” program has also been started, as a way to improve connections between the SIGDA board and the various sponsored and co-sponsored conferences. --------- Brief Summary SIGDA is under financial pressure. The major conference, DAC, has shifted from an event that brought in large surpluses (in the range of $200,000 or more), to one where we expect a loss (in the range of $25,000). The conference has not covered the allocation to ACM for the past few years; the final numbers for the most recent DAC are not in, but it appears that this year will be roughly break-even. DAC is jointly sponsored by IEEE, and EDAC (and industry consortium). The sponsors coordinating committee of DAC is now chaired by Patrick H. Madden, the SIGDA chair. During the next few years, the SCC will work aggressively to make DAC more profitable, and to address a disparity in administrative burdens (EDAC is a small organization compared to IEEE and ACM). All conferences and workshops encountered difficulty due to the economy, but DAC is the most significant problem. Relationships with IEEE counterpart organizations appear to have stabilized, with most design automation related conferences working through IEEE’s CEDA group. In prior years, the IEEE subgroups involved in any given co-sponsored conference were continually changing. After discussions with ACM staff, and in particular the SIGGRAPH leaders, SIGDA will shift its web site to be based on Drupal. We are hoping to have the transition done before Fall 2010. SIGDOC FY’10 Annual Report July 2009 – June 2010 Submitted by: Brad Mehlenbacher, Chair _SIGDOC Purpose The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group (SIG) on the Design of Communication (DOC) — ACM SIGDOC — emphasizes the design of communication for computer-mediated information products and systems. SIGDOC fosters the study and publication of processes, methods, and technologies for communicating and designing communication artifacts such as printed and online information, documentation designs and applications, multimedia and Web-based environments. _SIGDOC Mission Statement Until 2003, SIGDOC focused on documentation for hardware and software. With the shift in focus from documentation to the “design of communication,” SIGDOC better positioned itself to emphasize the potentials, the practices, and the problems of multiple kinds of communication technologies, such as Web applications, user interfaces, and online and print documentation. SIGDOC focuses on the design of communication as it is taught, practiced, researched, and theorized in various fields, including technical communication, software engineering, information architecture, and usability. The mission of SIGDOC includes • Promoting the professional development of its members • Encouraging interdisciplinary problem solving related to online and print documentation and communication technologies • Providing avenues for publication and the exchange of professional information • Supporting research that focuses on the needs and goals of humans in technological contexts, and • Supporting the development and improvement of communication technologies, including applications, interfaces, and documentation. _SIGDOC Officers (effective July 1st, 2009) • Brad Mehlenbacher, NC State University, USA Chair Awards Chair 2009 General Co-Chair • Rob Pierce, IBM Rational Software, USA Vice-Chair 2009 Local Arrangements • Liza Potts, Old Dominion University, USA Secretary/Treasurer Newsletter Editor • Ashley Williams, Bridgeline Software, USA Information Director 2009 Program Co-Chair • Michael Albers, East Carolina University, USA Graduate Competition Chair 2009 Poster Sessions Chair • Gloria Reece, Researcher, New Media & IT, USA INTECOM Representative • Scott Tilley, Florida Institute of Technology, USA Past Chair • Aristidis Protopsaltis, City University, UK 2009 General Co-Chair • Shaun Slattery, DePaul University, USA 2009 Program Co-Chair • David Novick, University of Texas at El Paso, USA Member-at-Large • Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin, USA Member-at-Large • Henrique O’Neill, ISCTE, Portugal 2008 General Co-Chair • Manuela Aparicio, ISCTE, Portugal 2008 General Co-Chair • Carlos J. Costa, ISCTE, Portugal 2008 Program Chair • Irene Frawley, ACM HQ, USA ACM Program Coordinator _Viability SIGDOC was found viable in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. In 2008 and 2010, SIGDOC was found viable for two years to evaluate its decrease in membership and conference participation. The next viability review is in 2012. _SIGDOC Conference Updates The ACM SIGDOC 2009 International Conference was supported by Old Dominion University and hosted and supported by the School of Informatics and the Kelley School of Business at the Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana, from October 5th-7th, 2009. Brad Mehlenbacher and Aristidis Protopsaltis served as General Co-Chairs and Ashley Williams and Shaun Slattery served as Program Co-Chairs. Rob Pierce served as Local Arrangements Chair. The program committee had 37 members, the majority of which represented academic institutions from the United States. The conference cost was approximately $2500.00. The conference call for papers attracted 84 submissions from Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and the conference program included 43 papers, experience reports, workshops, and posters. The acceptance rate was 51 percent, an increase from 45 percent the previous year and a decrease from 71 percent the year before that. Highlights included papers on alternative design methods, on sensory, semiotic, semantic, and value-based methods for designing and evaluating websites, help systems, and user assistance, on rhetorical and cultural analyses of technical artifacts, on collaborative and peer-to-peer community formation and meaning making, and on the relationship between informatics and communication design. The conference papers were published in the Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Design of Communication (ACM Press). The invited speakers included Jason Melton, Michael Priestly, Dr. Karen Schnakenberg, Jim Shea, and Dr. Ramesh Venkataraman. Jason Melton is a Data Management Sales Specialist with IBM Software Group. Michael Priestly is a Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM, and its lead DITA architect. He was one of the original developers of DITA, and co-editor of the OASIS DITA 1.0 and 1.1 specification. Dr. Karen Schnakenberg, a Teaching Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Jim Shea is Director of Planning for the School of Informatics and Dr. Ramesh Venkataraman is an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Whirlpool Faculty Fellow at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. The 2009 Diana Award was awarded to Apple for its long-term contribution to the field of communication design. Apple was recognized for its outstanding achievements in the history of personal computing (the Lisa), in laptops (the Powerbook) and handheld devices (the Newton) and, recently, in telecommunications and music appliances (the iPhone and the iPod). Accepting the award on behalf of Apple was Dr. Sandy Korzenny, Director of Apple Product Documentation. Dr. Korzenny received her BA in Education (Spanish) from Indiana University, and an MS and PhD in Instructional Technology from Michigan State University. We are fast approaching our 28th International Conference on Design of Communication, ACM SIGDOC 2010, being held from September 26th-29th in São Carlos-São Paulo, Brazil (http://www.sigdoc.org/2010). The General Co-Chairs are Dr. Junia Anacleto and Dr. Renata Fortes, and the Program Chair is Dr. Carlos Costa. The international conference committee of 43 members is made up of 33 academic and 10 industry representatives. Twenty-six committee members are from the USA, 10 are from Brazil, and single members represent Portugal, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Mozambique. Discussions have also begun for SIGDOC’11 which the SIGDOC Board is planning to hold in Pisa, Italy. Discussions are also in process for Boston, MA, for 2012, and Seattle, WA, for 2013. Contact has been initiated with colleagues in India about a potential conference there. These efforts to plan further in advance for conference sites are related to our goals of increasing membership involvement and conference attendance.
Liza Potts has taken over the position as General Editor of SIGDOC’s Quarterly Newsletter from Rob Pierce who served as editor for 9 years. Release of the newsletter is announced each quarter via the SIGDOC members’ listserv and is available in general via the ACM SIGDOC website (http://www.sigdoc.org/newsletter/current/). Archived versions of past newsletters are also available (http://www.sigdoc.org/newsletter/archives/). The newsletter consists of news from members (notes from the chair and from the general conference chair), future conference information, interesting items, feature articles, and job market information. In addition, ACM SIGDOC has expanded its membership communications by creating a print brochure for distribution at related conference events and initiating social media efforts (via Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Slideshare, Twitter, and Wikipedia).
This year, SIGDOC committed to the following in cooperation agreements: • CNSR’09: Communications Networks and Services Research Conference • DPPI 11: Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces • DocEng 09: ACM Symposium on Document Engineering • IWCMC’09: International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference • WebSci 10: Web Science 2010
SIGDOC had 217 members last year and this number has been dropping a little for the last several years. The SIGDOC Website now explicitly details the benefits of joining SIGDOC (http://www.sigdoc.org/join/) in addition to encouraging existing members to volunteer (http://www.sigdoc.org/members). Following last year’s viability review, the SIGDOC Board has made it a priority to examine its membership and conference numbers and to write a plan for increasing them over the next several years. Our activities forming chapters and engaging new members at the local and regional level are certainly connected to this goal. As well, conference planning for the next several conferences is currently ahead of schedule, reflecting this commitment. Finally, we have been exploring social networking spaces such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Ning; the implications of creating an organizational presence in these environments is under review. _Key Issues for 2010-2011 Key issues for SIGDOC in the coming year include • Establishing a better understanding of our current members (including serving their needs more effectively) and finding ways to increase our membership by attracting new members, volunteers, and board officers. • Supporting our new SIG chapters (Europe, NC State, Old Dominion, and ECU), and developing policies for managing them effectively and for increasing SIG chapter activities. SIGecom FY’10 Annual Report July 2009 – June 2010 Submitted by: David Pennock, Chair SIGecom's two primary activities are its annual Conference on Electronic Commerce and its electronic newsletter SIGecom Exchanges. The Eleventh ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'10) was held June 7-11 2010 in Cambridge, MA. Over 220 people attended, breaking the previous record (2009) by over 40 and marking the first time the conference eclipsed 200 attendees. The healthy attendance combined with substantial corporate support, including from CombineNet, Facebook (a first-time supporter), Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, made this a financial as well as a technical success. The conference attracted 136 submissions. The 33 accepted papers formed a very strong technical program covering a range of topics from core theoretical foundations to practical innovations in the multi-billion dollar online advertising industry. Topics covered included areas of typical strength for the conference like economic computations, mechanism design, traffic pricing, online advertising, and auctions, including a fascinating analysis of pay-per-bid auctions, a non-standard auction format popularized by web sites like swoopo.com. Other topics included voting, platforms for innovation, peer-to-peer systems, vaccination strategies, crowdsourcing, recommender systems, and a record six papers on prediction markets. Moshe Babaioff (Microsoft), Robert Kleinberg (Cornell), and Aleksandrs Slivkins (Microsoft) won the best paper award for their paper "Truthful Mechanisms with Implicit Payment Computation". Over 100 people attended the two associated workshops: the Sixth Workshop on Ad Auctions and the Trading Agent Design and Analysis workshop (TADA'10). Four tutorials and two fascinating keynote speeches by Erik Brynjolfsson (MIT) and Ron Kohavi (Microsoft), both prominent scholars with strong business ties, rounded out the program. Next year's Program co-Chairs, Yan Chen (University of Michigan) and Tim Roughgarden (Stanford), will aim to continue the momentum, in conjunction with Yoav Shoham (Stanford) as General Chair. EC'11 will be held June 5-9 2011 in San Jose, CA in conjunction with the ACM Federated Computing Research Conference. Our newsletter, "SIGecom Exchanges", is published twice per year as a free online resource for members and others. Under the stewardship of Editor-in-Chief Vincent Conitzer (Duke), the newsletter has undergone a number of rejuvenating changes, including the addition of survey issues with articles written by invited leaders in the field, a re-design of the website with the help of Daniel Reeves (Yahoo!), and a mathematical puzzle accompanying each issue. The latter addition has proven very popular, with solutions often flowing in within hours of publication. We've announced Yiling Chen (Harvard) as the new Editor-in-Chief for SIGecom Exchanges, with Daniel Reeves serving as puzzle editor. Felix Fischer (Harvard) is the new Information Director for SIGecom. In an effort to serve as a hub for the growing number of researchers and venues at the intersection of computer science and economics, we've made a concerted effort to establish in-cooperation agreements with high quality related conferences and workshops. Joan Feigenbaum (Yale) and David Parkes (Harvard) have led this effort. We now have in-cooperation agreements with ACM Recommender Systems, the Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory, the Behavioral and Quantitative Game Theory Conference on Future Directions, the Workshop on the Economics of Networks, Systems, and Computation, and the Web Science Conference. In the next year, Vincent Conitzer, Joan Feigenbaum, and David Pennock (Yahoo!) are preparing a proposal for a new ACM journal on Computation and Economics. We plan to initiate an award for best Ph.D. dissertation at the intersection of computer science and economics. Our main challenge for next year is to maintain our strength in research at the intersection of economics and computer science and at the same time keep connected to practice, and include more application-related contributions in the conference program. Maintaining this balance and reaching out for opportunities in emerging areas will be a key focus of the conference officials for next year and beyond. SIGEVO FY’10 Annual Report July 2009- June 2010 Submitted by: Darrell Whitley, Chair OVERVIEW SIGEVO, the SIG on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, has an Executive Committee of 18 members, with elections held in odd-numbered years. Elections were held in spring 2009, with 6 positions on the committee being open for election. Three members of the board were reelected: W. Banzhaf, K. De Jong and E. Goodman. Three new board members were elected: J. Branke, A. Esparcia and P. Lanzi. The Executive Committee also voted to keep the current set of officers for 2 more years. The current officers are: Darrell Whitley (chair), John Koza (vice chair), Una-May O’Reilly (secretary), and Wolfgang Banzhaf (treasurer). Pier Luca Lanzi continues as editor of SIGEVO’s newsletter. A business meeting of the Executive Committee was held in Portland at the GECCO conference on July 7, 2010. The 2009 GECCO conference in Montreal had excellent attendance. The conference was also a financial success. SIGEVO continues to have a very solid budget and healthy reserves well beyond what is required by ACM. Our 2010 GECCO conference in Portland was of high quality, with attendance of approximately 375 individuals. The GECCO conference usually attracts about 500 people, so this was lower than normal. We attribute this to three reasons. More than 40% of our attendees are usually from Europe. The poor exchange rate for the Euro was a factor. Also, Portland is more difficult to reach for Europeans. The third reason is that there were many completing conferences this year in enticing venues. The 2011 conference will be held in Dublin, Ireland. We expect attendance to return to normal next year. Early planning is underway for 2012 which we plan to hold on the east coast of the US (or Canada). The General Chair for 2011 will be Pier Luca Lanzi and the editor-in-chief will be Natalio Krasnogor. The General Chair for 2011 will be Jason Moore and the editor-in-chief will be Terry Soule. Last year a survey of our community indicates that approximately 40 percent of our members are based in North America, 40 percent are based in Europe and 17 percent are based in Asia. This year attendance from Europe dropped to 35 percent, but we saw a modest increase in attendance from Latin America. The next Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA) workshop will be held in January 2011 in Austria and will be chaired by Hans Georg Beyer. Professor Beyer was also recently elected to become the next editor-in-chief of the MIT Press journal Evolutionary Computation. We have been trying for three years to obtain an agreement between MIT Press and ACM to include our key journals in the ACM digital library. We are now happy to report that the journal Evolutionary Computation is part of the ACM digital library, including both back issues as well as the most recent issue of the journal. Another issue of concern to our community is that there are virtually no keywords in the ACM list of keywords to describe research in our field. Thus, every paper more or less uses the keywords AI and Search. We have raised this issue twice with ACM, but it is still an issue of concern to us. SIGEVO will continue to seek innovative ways to help its members garner success in their professional work, and to expand the influence of the field, including attracting new members and sponsoring additional professional activities. AWARDS: We have been working on a 10 year “Impact Award” for more than 1 year. We hope to have final approval from ACM in the next few weeks. The award will recognize 1 to 3 papers a year that were published in the GECCO conference 10 years earlier which are both highly cited and deemed to be seminal by the SIGEVO Executive Committee. Several competitions were held at GECCO-2009. Awards were presented at the SIGEVO Annual Meeting to winners of the Human Competitive Awards (the “Humies”), sponsored by Third Millennium On-Line Products, Inc. The prizes include 10,000 dollars provided by Third Millennium. First prize, second prize, and two third prizes were announced at the SIGEVO Annual Meeting on July 11, 2009. There is now a process in place so that select papers from the Humie Awards and the GECCO best papers award will be recommended to the Communication of the ACM for possible publication. The following paper from GECCO appeared in CACM (Vol. 53 N. 5, pp: 109-116) this year. It also received the 2009 Humie Gold Medal award. Automatic Program Repair With Evolutionary Computation Westley Weimer (University of New Mexico) Stephanie Forrest (University of New Mexico) C. Le Goues (University of New Mexico) T.V. Nguyen (University of New Mexico)
P. Widera (University of Nottingham) J.M. Garibaldi (University of Nottingham) N. Krasnogor (University of Nottingham) Condensed Abstract One of the key elements in protein structure prediction is the ability to distinguish between good and bad candidate structures. The energy function used in the best state-of-the-art automatic predictors is defined as a weighted sum of a set of energy terms designed by experts. We hypothesized that combining these terms more freely will improve the prediction quality. We designed a genetic programming algorithm to evolve the protein energy function. We compared the predictive power of the best evolved function and the linear combination of energy terms featuring weights optimized by the Nelder-Mead algorithm. The GP based energy function yields superior predictions compared to the traditional linear energy function. Select Best Papers from the GECCO Conference From the “Genetic Algorithms” Track NK-Landscapes, Problem Difficulty and Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms; Martin Pelikan From the “Genetic Programming” Track The Estimation of Hölderian Regularity using Genetic Programming; L. Trujillo, P. Legrand, J. Lévy-Véhel SIGGRAPH FY’10 Annual Report July 2009 – June 2010 Submitted by: G. Scott Owen, President Awards Committee (Jim Foley) In 2009 the following awards were given: Steven A. Coons – Robert L. Cook Computer Graphics Achievement Award – Michael Kass Significant New Researcher Award – Wojciech Matusik Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art - Lynn Hershman Leeson and Roman Verostko Finance Committee (Jeff Jortner) SIGGRAPH FY10 Budget Report Opening Fund Balance: $5,059,388 Closing Fund Balance: $2,366,956 Major Income Areas ------------------------- Dues: $226K Publications (includes DL): $307K Interest: $13K SVR Sales: $83K Contributions: $4K
-------------------------- Executive Committee (Includes EC Travel, Project Manager, and Special Projects (Siggraph ASIA)): $185K Publications: $190K Education: $15K Information Services: $36K Chapters: $35K Arts: $3K Communications (includes Village and SOMA costs): $68K SVR: $132K
-------------------------- SIGGRAPH 2009: - $1,970K (loss) All small conferences: + $22K profit SIGGRAPH Asia 2009: - $501K loss
Keynote presentations from industry experts representing this year's additional content focuses on Music and Audio, Games, and Information Aesthetics: Randy Thom, pioneer in sound and two-time Academy Award® winner with Skywalker Sound Will Wright, video game designer, creator of Spore™ and The Sims series Steve Duenes, Graphics Director, The New York Times Company The renowned SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival, highlighting juried and curated animation content from around the globe. Winners in several categories included: Best in Show Award Winner: French Roast, Fabrice O. Joubert, The Pumpkin Factory, France Jury Award Winner: Dix, BIF Production, The Mill, United States Jury Honorable Mention: Alma, Rodrigo Blaas, Cecile Hokes, Spain Student Prize Winner: Project: Alpha, Matthias Bjarnason, Christian Munk Sorensen, Nicolai Slothus, The Animation Workshop, Denmark Well Told Fable Prize: Unbelievable Four, Sukwon Shin, In Pyo Hong, United States A newly expanded focus on video games brought a mass of exciting gaming and real-time rendering content to SIGGRAPH 2009 including content exploring Real-Time Rendering as part of the Computer Animation Festival, Game Papers, and SIGGRAPH's first game development competition, GameJam!. Technical Papers, the premier global forum for presenting ground-breaking research from today's leading experts, covered the core topics of computer graphics, such as modeling, animation, rendering, imaging, and human-computer interaction, and also explored related fields of audio, robotics, visualization, and perception by presenters from all around the globe - from the Czech Republic to Japan. Art Paper presentations on topics exploring the creation of art and its place in society, helping people understand the changing roles of artists and art creation in the increasingly computerized, online world. SIGGRAPH 2009 collaborated with Leonardo, (The Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology) to publish the SIGGRAPH 2009 Art Papers in a special issue. Conference Advisory Group for SIGGRAPH Asia Conference (Thierry Frey) SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 – a kaleidoscope of digital media experiences Yokohama, Japan, 19 December 2009 – The city of Yokohama became the focal point for the digital media, computer graphics and interactive techniques community in Asia and the world this week. As the four-day SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 drew to a close, approximately 6,500 visitors from more than 50 countries all across Asia and globally made their way to Pacifico Yokohama to participate in the region’s largest display of the latest in computer graphics, interactive techniques, and digital media and content. More than 500 artists, academics, and industry experts presented a vibrant array of thought-provoking works, breakthrough ideas and radical innovations at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. “We are thrilled with the success of SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. Since its debut in Singapore last year, SIGGRAPH Asia has become a highly anticipated digital media and content show for enthusiasts and digital media professionals throughout Asia. The increased enthusiasm we see this year is also an endorsement of the quality of works presented at SIGGRAPH Asia,” said Masa Inakage, Conference Chair, SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. Accelerating knowledge-sharing and transfer Leading experts in the field of animation, computer graphics, digital media production, robotics and interactive techniques were also on hand at SIGGRAPH Asia. Through more than 200 talks, workshops and panels including three Featured Speaker sessions, SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 successfully connected enthusiasts and future talents in the digital media industry with established professionals and academics in the computer graphics and interactive techniques field. A total of 400 experts from universities such as Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Stanford University, Tsinghua University and The University of Tokyo as well as corporations including Pixar Animation Studios, Imagica and Sony Pictures Imageworks offered their insights, experiences and speculative ideas at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. Computer Animation Festival honors the finest works Always a highpoint at SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia, the winners of the Computer Animation Festival Best of Show Award and Best Technical Award received their prizes on 17 December 2009. The winning pieces were chosen by a panel of industry experts based on their commendable use of computer-generated imagery, animation and storytelling. A total of 79 animation pieces, from 16 countries were screened at the Festival. The award winners are: Best of Show Award: Anchored by Lindsey Olivares, Ringling College of Art and Design This production truly deserves the Best of Show title for its innovative and creative expressions of emotions. The skillful integration of sound, character design, art direction and typography creates a beautiful, heartfelt piece that captured the judges’ attention and won their commendation. Best Technical Award: Assassin’s Creed 2, by Istvan Zorkoczy, Digic Pictures This work was selected for its distinct mastery of the finer points in 3D computer graphics production. Incredibly detailed and realistic main characters, clear cinematography, amazing surfacing, and world-class rendering made this a standout piece. Japanese works well-represented Leveraging on its presence in Japan, the second largest computer gaming market in the world, SIGGRAPH Asia included many well-known names in the gaming industry such as Sega Corporation, Square Enix Co., and Namco Bandai Games Inc. On the exhibition floor, the Advanced Robotics Lab pavilion showcased a dazzling display of robotics. A special program to market the Japan debut of SIGGRAPH Asia, the Advanced Robotics Lab invited visitors to glean from the cutting-edge technologies that Japan has to offer in the field of robotics, such as human-like robots with the appearance and performance similar to humans, home-assistant or domestic help robots, and guide robots for the visually impaired. In addition, household Japanese brands Sony, NEC and JVC also showcased 3D displays and high-end screens for both industry as well as future use by consumers. Japanese works were also well-represented in the Emerging Technologies
“There is great variety and creativity demonstrated in this year’s Emerging Technologies program – from display technologies and virtual reality, to gestural interface innovations and robotics. Pointing towards future applications that will be cheaper and simpler to use, you can see the momentum is building for the digital do-it-yourself revolution. For instance, there are displays showcasing instant broadcasting through live video mixing, toolkits that make it easy to assemble your own electronic devices, and new forms of music jamming,” said Lars Erik Holmquist, Chair, Emerging Technologies program, SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. Converging Diversity A hot-pot of the best and latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques, SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 offered participants a mind-blowing array of the best ideas and possibilities in the digital media field. The Art Gallery program drew both interest and curiosity with innovative installations such as Artificial Nature, a bio-inspired, immersive art installation; Swiss-Japanese collaboration Happy Wear that brought a tee-shirt or a bag to ‘life’ through animation; A Head of View, a new approach to player navigation and manipulation of game space through video tracking of body movements; and the sensual Light and Shadows display by WOW from Japan. Said ACM SIGGRAPH President Scott Owen, “Asia is fast becoming a focal
The next edition of SIGGRAPH Asia will take place in Seoul, Korea, on 15-18 December 2010. SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 will be chaired by Ko Hyeong-Seok, Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering in Seoul National University, Korea. Professor Ko’s research focus is in the reproduction of clothes, hair, fluids, and deformable solids. His new fluid simulation method was presented at this year's SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers program and as part of the Electronic Theater program. Professional and Student Chapters (Scott Lang) The ACM SIGGRAPH Professional and Student Chapters continue to be the largest network of SIG Chapters within the ACM organization. Fifty chapters exist in over fifteen countries around the world. During the last year, we chartered new Professional Chapters in Rio Grande (New Mexico / US), Bangalore (India) and Austin (Texas, USA), We also have several chapters In-Formation, including one which is very close to being chartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Professional and Student Chapters Committee (PSCC) We have continued to focus the duties of those on the Chapters Committee over the last year. In addition to the positions outlined last year, we have added the following during 2009 – 2010: Student Chapters Sub-Committee At SIGGRAPH 2009, two recent Student Chapter leaders, AJ Christensen and Madelin Woods, stepped forward to take charge of this sub-committee. Over the last year, they have worked to contact all of our existing and probationary Student Chapters. With this information, we are developing a sub-network to encourage a greater exchange of information and collaboration between our Student Chapters. European Chapters Council Mashhuda Glencross is heading up this effort and organized our first meeting at SIGGRAPH 2009. One of the products of this gathering was the SIGGRAPH 2009 CAF Tour which Carlye Archibeque organized in the fall of 2009. Web Site Guidelines For the first time since web sites became the primary means of communications for our chapters, we now have a set of guidelines for the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters. Eric Paquette, chair of the Web Site Committee, has worked with his committee and the chapters network to finalize this document. We will now work through the 2010 – 2011 year to make sure that all chapter web sites adhere to these guidelines. SIGGRAPH 2009 Podcasting / SCOOP Collaboration For the last four years, a team of chapters’ volunteers has attended the conference and helped in the production of a variety of video segments. Last year was our most successful venture yet, as we partnered with the SIGGRAPH 2009 Podcasting Director, Jim Hillin. We were able to produce and upload 20 podcasts on site with another six longer-form SCOOP venue overviews finalized post-conference. All our segments were uploaded to the ACM SIGGRAPH YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/siggraph). These videos covered a range of topics, from interviews with the keynote speakers to venue spotlights to attendee interviews. In addition to these videos, we also produced four promotional videos for SIGGRAPH Asia, recorded the Student Volunteer Orientation and produced a DVD (overnight) that was used by SVs to review the orientation session, and recorded the Pioneers Reception speaker. For SIGGRAPH 2010, our team will continue to work with the SIGGRAPH Podcasting Director. We have already been asked to record and produce many more segments this year so we are very excited to see what SIGGRAPH 2010 has to offer. Associate Membership Program The NYC and Paris Chapters continue their work with this system and we are now at the point where we are able to add new chapters. These include Silicon Valley (USA), Madrid (Spain), and Cascade (Portland, USA). Over the last year, credit card processing has been added and is in use by the NYC Chapter. We have also added a Technical Profile Area which will allow us to capture member information in areas such as Job Title, Areas of Interest, and Volunteer Availability. Having this bank of information will allow our chapters to identify areas of interest amongst their members and this will help them to plan better events within their program calendars. SIGGRAPH 2009 Conference Activities The ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters are involved with many activities at each year’s conference. The single most important event for the chapters is the Chapters Development Workshop that is held the day before the conference officially opens. Last year’s workshop drew approximately 35 chapter leaders from all around the world. In addition to our usual sessions, we tried our very first Logistics Fair. Modeled after the conference Logistics Fair, it allowed each chapter to meet with the different members of the Chapters Committee and ACM representatives to ask questions and exchange information in a very short amount of time. The session was very successful and as a result will be a part of our SIGGRAPH 2010 Chapters Development Workshop. Over the course of the conference week, the Chapters hold several public meetings. One such meeting is the Professional and Student Chapter Start-Up Meeting. Last year’s meeting drew over 20 interested individuals. We also had several chapter-specific meetings. These included one for our Web Site Committee, one for our Student Chapters, and one for our European Chapters. The annual Chapters Party was held at the “Generations Hall” nightclub. Over 1,900 people attended this event. For the third year in a row, we also hosted and funded the annual Student Volunteer Alumni Reunion. Attendance was excellent and saw a major surge from the two previous events; close to 100 people attended this activity. Program Year 2009 – 2010 During the 2009 – 2010 year, our chapters were very active. Total chapter membership around the world is between 2,600 and 3000 professional and student members. Total attendance at chapter events (from those chapters reporting) is over 17,000 people during the course of the year. Events range from lectures to screenings, multi-day conferences to art talks. Some examples of topics covered over the last year include: “Aliens Among Us: The VFX Behind District 9”, “Computer Vision and Computer Graphics for the Analysis of Fine Art”, “Illustrators: Analog to Digital”, “Computer Graphics in Protein X-ray Crystallography and Drug Discovery””, “The Democratization of 3D Cinematography”, “To Middle Earth and Back”, and “Virtual Cityscapes: Recent Advances in Crowd and Traffic Simulations”. These are just a few examples of the hundreds of presentations that are hosted by the chapters each year. Over 15 chapters presented the SIGGRAPH 2009 CAF DVDs. In addition, several chapters also presented the SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 and 2009 Electronic Theater DVD. The Chapters Committee helps to support these screenings financially (when possible). Collaboration with other groups is also important for the chapters network. Over the last year, our chapters have worked with groups that include the following: RIT School of Design, Escuela Da Vinci, Hong Kong Comics and Animation Federation, Thai Association of Computer Graphics and Animation (TACGA), National University of Singapore, Visual Effects Society (VES), Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), The International Academy of Design and Technology – Detroit, Bogota Film Festival, Electronic Arts, Casual Games Association, and Tourism Vancouver, just to name just a few. Digital Arts Committee (Jacquelyn Ford Morie) The DAC has over 450 members on our Ning social networking site! There is a constant buzz of activity there with well over 1500 artists' works being featured on the front page in an ongoing slide show, along with postings, events, blog entries and conversation between the artist members. The NING site became a fee-based, rather than free site this year. We have decided to pay the $499 annual fee to allow the momentum to continue, as it is only about twice what we were paying to keeps the site ad free up until now. Ad-free is included in the new payment structure. We have also started a FaceBook group and have over 300 members there. The Traveling Art Show continues to be a challenge. The remaining artworks being stored at the Freeman warehouse in Anaheim have been inventoried but it has been slow going to find the artists and return the work. Even with contact, some artists have not been there when the work is delivered, resulting in it being returned to us, and wasting what little funding we do have to return works. With the recent extremely reduced funding it is expected that this process will take a few years now, rather than several months. We interviewed a number of highly qualified candidates for the core committee this year and formed a vibrant new group to lead the DAC into the future. The SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community Committee Core Board now comprises: Jacquelyn Morie, Chair. Cynthia Beth Rubin, Li Qin Tan, Greg Garvey, Hye Yeon Nam, and Patricia Galvis-Assmus. Our new Production Assistant is Darold Davis. The new DAC Expert Advisors are: John Hyatt (Global Outreach), Copper Giloth (Digital Art History) and Sue Gollifer (Organizational Outreach). Since Jacquelyn Morie has been elected to the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, finding a new Chair for the DAC will be part of the new year's work. We are looking forward to another great year! Education Committee (education.siggraph.org) (Marc Barr) Through this annual report, the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee aims to help the SIGGRAPH community become more familiar with its year-round education and conference based activities, and seeks to demonstrate ways in which passionate members of the community can participate. The past year brought important changes to our format and contents. The pages of this 2010 Annual Report contain detailed descriptions of the various activities of our subcommittees and also presents an elaborate celebration of the spectacular work of students from around the globe who participate in our prestigious annual juried competitions. The SubCommittees Curricular and Instructional Resources is responsible for managing the Curriculum Knowledge Base (CKB), the Computer Graphics Educational Materials Source (CGEMS), the cgSource education resource collection, Visualization education, and the Digital Art Curriculum Framework project. Community Building and Support administers the Education Committee Website, the Education Index, Games and Interactive Media, Primary / Secondary Education (P/SE), the Undergraduate Research Initiative, and all Global Outreach, and Conference Activities. SpaceTime conducts the SpaceTime Student Competitions and Exhibitions For a comprehensive report of all activities please see (http://education.siggraph.org/conferences/annual-conference/siggraph-2010/annual-report/) Information Services Committee (Jenny Dana) The Information Services Committee (ISC) provides information services support to the ACM SIGGRAPH community. Our responsibilities include managing/maintaining thesiggraph.org servers infrastructure (software/hardware), managing the infrastructure of the ACM SIGGRAPH organization website, handling community (volunteer, contractor, member) requests for access to installed technologies, evaluating and installing new technology offerings both by request and proactively, acting as a liaison on technical tasks between ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM, contractors (Q, Talley, etc.). The ISC does not develop large scale applications internally though we serve as a technical support resource when such systems are being developed by a group within the community. For example, the Drupal site for S2010. Website content is provided and maintained by the client committees Conference, Arts, Communications, Chapters, Education, Publications, S3 either as a sub-section of thesiggraph.org site or on an independent site. Management and decisions about content are the responsibility of the Communications committee especially for sections that don't have a clear owner and provide information to the ACM SIGGRAPH members such as (News, Social Networking buzz, general Membership/Committee/Organization Information, inquiries from members via webmaster of a non-technical nature). In practice, many of these tasks are being handled by ISC which puts an extra strain on our resources or they are falling through the cracks. The ISC is made up of a core team of two part time paid consultants - Ken Bauer - system administrator, Viveka Weiley - web design consultant. The role of CMS consultant (renamed from Plone Consultant) was cut from the FY2010 budget, it was requested again for FY2011, so is currently unfilled. The budgeted hours for the two remaining consultants was also reduced for FY 2010 causing an increased workload for the volunteers and a reduction in our capacity to improve existing systems or rapidly deploy new systems (e.g. FAQ, Drupal site, Google Docs integration). Ken is supported from two system administrators from his company, Eduardo Romero and Belia Romero. The two paid consultants are supported by a number of volunteers including the ISC Chair - Jenny Dana, ISC past-chair - Thierry Frey, Leo Hourvitz - application/utility expert and sysmgrs, John Michael Pierobon - events calendar. The sysmgrs are a team of approximately 20 dedicated volunteers/contractors including representatives from the EC and ACM’s system administration team who monitor, discuss and handle requests from the community. However only a small subset of these 20 people work on any ISC tasks/projects (4-5), so this can be somewhat misleading in terms of available resources. It is possible and desirable to expand this volunteer pool. However it must be done with care to only include experienced, talented, careful and trusted new volunteers since they require some level of training and privileged server access to do most useful tasks. ISC Activities: • Sysmgrs meeting and wrap-up held at S2009. Annual sysmgrs meetings arranged for SIGGRAPH 2010 • Submitted FY 2011 Budget for ISC • Submitted ISC annual, mid-year and Viability reports to the EC • ISC representatives met with chapter leaders during S2009 and SA2009 and staffed a Chapters workshop logistics fair station. This will be continued for S2010 and possibly SA2010. • Introductory presentation of ISC services to the S2011 committee and S2010 pre-conference meetup were canceled due to budget cuts - should consider making this part of annual conference budgets since it is important for communication flow and helps reduce last minute scrambles on technical projects that don't get communicated to ISC. • 100% budget freeze with the exception of contracted invoices and sysmgrs/S2010 attendance for chair/sysadmin/webmaster. • Organization tasks included streaming media solutions investigation (video), media storage (video, audio, images), Social Media maintenance, FAQs link, new website, software/website task force, Mint and Analytics stats access/maintenance, content updates, events calendar, Encore support, reduce annual website maintenance work - by reducing references that require updates (for example specific year/person mentions), Plone2 editor fix. • New Drupal install/maintenance used for conferences websites and intended for newsiggraph.org website. Also being evaluated for use for Treasurer financial reporting. • WordPress MU (Multi-user) trial completed and is now available to chapters and other groups. • Helpdesk requests from Talley/Koelnmesse for conferences lists, aliases, redirects, schedulers, submission deadlines for SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia. • Additional technical advice and assistance on database requests during papers submission, and new conference interactive scheduler PDF generation. • Standing Committee Support -
• Social Network Stats
Webmaster Report (Viveka Weiley) - contracted for 50 hours per month (budget reduced to 30 hours per month) 1. Content & Design Maintenance: 20 hours per month - Content, information architecture and visual & interaction design updates (adding & editing pages, sections and templates). - Odd tasks such as updating archived content, Plone disaster recovery, updating the Wiki templates, updating the web stats engines, mailing list management, making banners for the social sites (facebook, youtube).
- Assisting users: setting up accounts - Assisting teams such as SIS, newsletter, education - Responding to Webmaster enquiries These tasks are ongoing, and have no beginning or end date. However some others do: 3. Pre-conference and conference activities: 100 hours. - Pre-conference support activities: updates, redirects, logins, wiki and blog config etc. - Support and training for content contributors during conference Three weeks before the conference content maintenance and assistance requests begin to ramp up, totaling perhaps 10 hours that week, 20 hours the next, 30 the week before the conference and then of course full-time during the conference week. 4. Migration of left over original website content sections to plone. These were generally sections without a clear content owner (jobs, CG resources, travelling art show, art & design). Completed August 2009. Approx. 40 hours. 5. Plone 3: Approx 60 hours. * Setup completed August 2009. * Skin design & implementation: completed September 2009 * Plone 3 content migration: - has been cancelled in order to evaluate shift to Drupal.
* Drupal setup - January 2010 (10 hrs) * Templating, info architecture, configuration for new Drupal site - February 2010 (10 hrs) * Testing Drupal extensions and theming - March 2010 (10 hrs) * Drupal content management & IA research - April 2010 (10 hrs) * Implement Drupal site to committee spec. - May 2010 ( 30 hrs) The bulk of my responsibilities involve a large variety of ongoing maintenance tasks and helping users. While I was contracted at 50 hours per month, those took approximately 30 hours per month, leaving 20 hours for work on new projects, such as the initial design and setup of the plone site, setup of the wiki, and work on committee websites. With the budget cut to 40 and then 30 hours, the maintenance tasks are still essential, and as the number of sites has increased and the main site has grown their number has increased. However with efficiency measures and increased help from the committee chair they now take around 25 hours per month, leaving 5 hours for work on new projects, such as the design and setup of the Drupal site. This is still clearly not enough. The proposed Drupal shift presents the opportunity to revisit information architecture and design decisions. Moving the intranet portions of the site to a separate system is eminently sensible. However ACM SIGGRAPH is a large organisation with a lot of activities and a lot to communicate. Any redesign should be undertaken as a main project, not a side activity. Use case scenarios should be written. Business goals should be set; requirements gathered. Card sorting and other contextual investigations into user understanding of the site structure should precede large-scale modifications to the information architecture. The current budget and volunteer base allows us to maintain what we have, and to set up new sections when we have eager volunteers to run them (e.g. education, arts, chapters). I am happy to work as a volunteer to progress new sections of the site, but my efforts alone are not going to get us big new things quickly. If we want to move faster on new projects, then we need to devote more resources to them. Commercial rates for this kind of expertise and work are high, so perhaps the right answer is to recruit more volunteers for these projects. I don't know the answers, but I do know that there is a lot more demand for web projects than there are currently resources to meet that demand. System Administrator Report (Ken Bauer) - approx. 30 hours per month #1 Drupal setup and support for SIGGRAPH conference and SIGGRAPH Asia. This includes SIGGRAPH 2010, 2011 and the Asia 2010 conferences. Lots of discussion and support with the web design team of the conferences for this. This is about 40% of our time from my team on this project. #2 System maintenance and support. Keeping the systems updated, responding to account and mail setup requests. This is about 50% of our time from my team on this project. #3 Plone maintenance and planning for the migration. We have not done any migration but the movements on Drupal seem to point in that direction. This build of Plone for the main site needs to get moved. Whether manually or some systematic approach, it needs to get moved off. This is about 7% of our time from my team on this project. #4 Authentication systems. We already had authentication with ACM logins for the SIGGRAPH wiki. We have done a proof of working setup on a Drupal install and are currently working on getting this working for our Plone3 installs. This is about 3% of our time from my team on this project.
Kathryn Saunders, Chair Hans Westman, e-Quarterly Editor Claudia Chagui, Booth Manager, Photographer Newly recruited: Teresa Hardy, Website Strategist
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