SIGACCESS FY’04 Annual Report
SIGACCESS FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Andrew Sears, Chair
SIGACCESS continues to refine its activities to meet member needs. This report highlights SIGACCESS Awards as well as the SIG’s conference, publication, and other activities.
Awards
ACM Student Research Competition (SRC)
SIGACCESS continues to conduct this competition in conjunction with the ASSETS conference. For ASSETS 2010, the winners are:
Undergraduate category:
First Place: Samuel White, University of Rochester
"AudioWiz: Nearly Real-time Audio Transcriptions"
Second Place: Timothy Walsh, University of Delaware
"Utterance-Based Systems: Organization and Design of AAC Interfaces"
Third Place: Jason Behmer, University of Washington
"LocalEyes: Accessible GPS and Points of Interest"
Graduate category:
First Place: Shiri Azenkot, University of Washington
"GoBraille: Enhancing Independence and Safety for Blind and Deaf-Blind
Public Transit Riders"
Second Place: Kristen Shinohara, University of Washington
"Investigating Meaning in Uses of Assistive Devices: Implications of
Social and Professional Contexts"
Third Place: Kyle Montague, University of Dundee
"Accessible Indoor Navigation"
ACM Grand Finals:
Third Place, Undergraduate category: Timothy Walsh, University of Delaware
"Utterance-Based Systems: Organization and Design of AAC Interfaces"
ACM SIGACCESS AWARD for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility
The inaugural ACM SIGACCESS AWARD for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility was awarded in 2008. The award, given every other year, recognizes individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the development of computing technologies that improve the accessibility of media and services to people with disabilities. Outstanding contributions through research, practice, or advocacy are recognized. The award recognizes members of the community for long-term accomplishments or those who have made a notable impact through a significant innovation. The 2010 recipient was Dr. Albert Cook of the University of Alberta, Canada. He received the award, and delivered a keynote address, at ASSETS 2010, in Orlando, Florida.
SIGACCESS Best Paper Award
Jennifer Mankoff, Gillian R. Hayes, and Devva Kasnitz. 2010. Disability studies as a source of critical inquiry for the field of assistive technology. In Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility (ASSETS '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3-10. DOI=10.1145/1878803.1878807
SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award
Anne Marie Piper, Nadir Weibel, and James D. Hollan. 2010. Introducing multimodal paper-digital interfaces for speech-language therapy. In Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility (ASSETS '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 203-210. DOI=10.1145/1878803.1878840
SIGACCESS Scholarship in Computers and Accessibility
The SIGACCESS Scholarship Award aims to provide support for participation in the ASSETS conference for individuals who would not otherwise be able to attend. Practitioners, researchers, members of advocacy groups, or individuals with disabilities are eligible to apply. Applicants must have a demonstrated interest in accessible computing. Awardees will have the opportunity to actively participate in the ASSETS conference and gain experience and knowledge from interacting with experts in the field. The scholarship award is in the amount of $2,000. SIGACCESS awards up to two scholarships per year, pending availability of funds. The first two scholarships were awarded to Makayla Miranda Lewis and Michelle Burton to attend ASSETS 2010.
Supporting ACM-W Scholarships
Beginning with ASSETS 2010, SIGACCESS now supports the ACM-W Scholarship program by providing a complimentary registration to ACM-W Scholarship recipients. For ASSETS 2010, SIGACCESS provided a complimentary registration for Renata Cristina Barros Madeo.
SIGACCESS Impact Award
SIGACCESS has proposed a new award that was approved by ACM in June. The intent of this award is to recognize one paper, every other year, which was published/presented at the annual ASSETS Conference at least ten years earlier and that is considered to have had a significant impact on the field. This award will be given in odd numbered years, alternating with the Outstanding Contribution award mentioned above, starting in 2011.
Significant Programs
ASSETS Conference
ASSETS’10 was held in Orlando, FL. Once again, conference attendance exceeded projections, with over 130 attendees. Submissions for the technical program were received from Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The papers accepted for inclusion in the technical program addressed a broad range of issues including non-visual access, issues involved in evaluating accessibility, sign language, accessible education, supporting mobility and communication, and various other topics.
Once again, the conference featured an NSF sponsored Doctoral Consortium (see ). This consortium allowed doctoral students to present their dissertation topics and receive feedback during formative stages of their work. The conference also hosted a Microsoft Student Research Competition (SRC) event (see information about the winners of the competition above).
The SIGACCESS Business Meeting, held at ASSETS, updated attendees on SIG activities and discussed ideas for new activities. The idea of holding ASSETS in another country has been discussed for several years, leading to ASSETS 2011 being held in Dundee, Scotland. There was also continued discussion of supporting workshops or other smaller events that were more focused with regard to topic or geographical location.
ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing The inaugural issue of the ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) appeared in May, 2008. Volume one included three issues, with volumes two and three both including the full set of four issues. The number of submissions continues to grow. TACCESS is a quarterly journal that publishes refereed articles addressing issues of computing as it impacts the lives of people with disabilities. It provides a technical forum for disseminating innovative research related to computing technologies and their use by people with disabilities.
The SIGACCESS newsletter continues with its regular online publications: see . Jinjuan Feng (Towson University) has served as the Newsletter Editor since June, 2010.
Also available on the SIGACCESS website is the monthly ‘Left Field’ column (see ) by Yeliz Yesilada. The goal of Left Field is to bring to the attention of members publications from the ACM Digital Library that are of interest, but published in venues typically outside the reading of SIGACCESS members.
SIGACCESS Website
The SIGACCESS website was created and maintained by the SIGACCESS webmaster, Darren Lunn of the University of Manchester. Darren Lunn stepped down in February 2011 with Jeffrey Bigham (University of Rochester) assuming these responsibilities at that time. The SIGACCESS web site provides information about the SIG’s activities including awards and conferences as well as a repository of dissertations and theses, our newsletter, the “Left Field” column, writing guidelines, and other resources which may be of value to the community.
Innovative programs
SIGACCESS has developed several resources which are made available to the community at large via the SIGACCESS web site. The first is a set of writing guidelines which reflect current thinking on language for writing in the academic accessibility community. Certain words or phrases can (intentionally or unintentionally) reflect bias or negative, disparaging, or patronizing attitudes toward people with disabilities and in fact any identifiable group of people. Choosing language that is neutral, accurate, and represents the preference of the groups to which it refers can convey respect and integrity. The second resource is a guide for planning accessible conferences. This document contains information for organizers of academic conferences who wish to make their events as accessible as possible, so that people with disabilities can participate fully.
Key Issues
Moving forward, there are a number of issues that SIGACCESS must address including developing future leaders for the community and continuing our efforts to reach new audiences. The SIG is actively engaged in developing leaders, recruiting new members of the community to participate both in the conference organizing committee and in other SIG activities. To reach new audiences, and become a more international organization, the SIG has once again arranged for ASSETS to be held in Europe. Assuming this is successful, we anticipate holding ASSETS outside of the US more frequently. We also continue to explore the idea of organizing workshops in addition to the annual ASSETS conference. One workshop was co-located with ASSETS 2010 and was successful. This model is likely to be repeated for ASSETS 2011. Additional workshops, reaching new communities, will continue to be on the agenda in the future.
SIGACT FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Lance Fortnow, Chair
1. Awards
▪ 2011 Gödel Prize: Johan T. Håstad for his paper: Some optimal inapproximability results, Journal of the ACM, 48: 798--859, 2001.
o The prize is awarded jointly with the EATCS and this year was awarded at the STOC conference during FCRC.
▪ 2011 Knuth Prize: Ravi Kannan for his work on algorithmic techniques that have fundamentally contributed to computational complexity, discrete mathematics, geometry, and operations research.
o The prize is awarded jointly with IEEE-CS TCMFCS and this year was awarded at the STOC conference during FCRC. Ravi Kannan presented his Knuth Prize lecture as an FCRC plenary lecture.
▪ 2010 Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award: Kurt Mehlhorn for contributions to algorithm engineering by creating the LEDA library for algorithmic problem solving". This award is an ACM award sponsored in part by SIGACT.
▪ STOC 2011 Best Paper Award: ``Subexponential lower bounds for randomized pivoting rules for solving linear programs'' by Oliver Friedmann, Thomas Dueholm Hansen, and Uri Zwick and ``Electrical Flows, Laplacian Systems, and Faster Approximation of Maximum Flow in Undirected Graphs'' by Paul Christiano, Jonathan A. Kelner, Aleksander Madry, Daniel A. Spielman, and Shang-Hua Teng.
▪ Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award (STOC 2011): ``Analyzing Network Coding Gossip Made Easy'' by Bernhard Haeupler
▪ SIGACT awarded approximately thirty student travel awards to allow these students to attend the 2011 STOC conference.
2. Significant papers on new areas published in proceedings
With help from PC Chairs Salil Vadhan (STOC), Dana Randall (SODA) and Pierre Fraigniaud (PODC). Prasad Raghavendra and Shuchi Chawla also helped with the SODA papers.
STOC 2011
The ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2011) is one of the flagship conferences for theoretical computer science, bringing together researchers from a variety of different subfields.
One of the Best Paper Awards at STOC went to the paper ``Subexponential lower bounds for randomized pivoting rules for solving linear programs'' by Oliver Friedmann, Thomas Dueholm Hansen, and Uri Zwick. This paper concerns simplex algorithms, which are some of the most widely used algorithms for solving linear programs in practice. A simplex algorithm is obtained by iterating a pivoting rule, which determines how one selects among the neighboring improvements to a basic feasible solution to the linear program. While most deterministic pivoting rules have long been known to require an exponential number of iterations in the worst case, it was open whether randomized pivoting rules require a superpolynomial number of iterations. This paper provides the first such bounds, showing that two of the most natural and well-studied randomized pivoting rules require a subexponential number of iterations. Interestingly, the lower bounds are obtained by utilizing connections between pivoting steps performed by simplex-based algorithms and improving switches performed by policy iteration algorithms for 1-player and 2-player games.
The other Best Paper Award at STOC went to the paper ``Electrical Flows, Laplacian Systems, and Faster Approximation of Maximum Flow in Undirected Graphs'' by Paul Christiano, Jonathan A. Kelner, Aleksander Madry, Daniel A. Spielman, and Shang-Hua Teng. This paper introduces a new approach to two of the most fundamental and long-studied computational problems --- maximum flows and minimum cuts --- by reducing them to a sequence of electrical flow problems, each of which can be approximately solved in nearly linear time. Using this approach, the paper provides the fastest known algorithms for computing approximately maximum s-t flows and approximately minimum s-t cuts in capacitated, undirected graphs, the first improvements in roughly a decade.
The Best Student Paper Award at STOC went to the paper ``Analyzing Network Coding Gossip Made Easy'' by Bernhard Haeupler. This paper is about random linear network coding (RLNC), which is a widely studied technique for multicasting with a high rate of information dissemination. Haeupler's paper introduces a new analysis technique that drastically simplifies, extends and strengthens previous results on RLNC. It shows that, in most settings, RLNC completes with high probability in time O(k + T) where k is the number of messages to be distributed and T is the time it takes to disseminate one message. This is information-theoretically optimal, and means that RLNC achieves ``perfect pipelining''. The key to the new analysis is a simple but very counterintuitive measure of what a node ``knows'' at a given point in the protocol.
SODA 2010
SODA is a major conference that focuses on algorithms and combinatorics.
Best Paper: An Almost Optimal Unrestricted Fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform
Nir Ailon, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Israel and Edo Liberty, Yahoo! Research, Israel
Several forms of data such as images, videos or text documents are often represented geometrically as high-dimensional vectors. Clearly, computational tasks on these high dimensional vectors can be carried out efficiently, if one can reduce the dimension of these high-dimensional representations while preserving the metric properties such as pairwise distances.
In a seminal work in early 1980s, Johnson and Lindenstrauss showed that random linear projections into a small dimensional space would suffice to preserve pairwise distances. This dimension reduction technique often referred to as simply ``JL transform" or ``random projections" has tremendous applications in algorithms. The complexity of this transformation has received much attention recently and computationally efficient versions of the JL transform have emerged starting with the work of Ailon and Chazelle in 2006. These fast JL mappings have found applications to both practical and theoretical algorithms for the approximate nearest neighbor search, regression, singular value decomposition, and other high-dimensional geometric problems.
This work exhibits the fastest, near-optimal algorithm for the JL-transform. To this end, the paper borrows technical machinery from the work on the compressed sensing problem by Rudelson and Vershaynin.
Best Student Paper (shared): An Optimal-Time Construction of Sparse Euclidean Spanners with Tiny Diameter
Shay Solomon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Given a set of points in a Euclidean space (real d-dimensional space), a spanner is a sparse graph on these points that encodes all the distance information of these points. More precisely, the Euclidean distance between any pair of points is approximately equal to the total Euclidean length of the shortest path between them in the graph. In a sense, Euclidean spanners are a sparse approximation to the complete graph with weights equal to the Euclidean distances between the points. Euclidean spanners have found applications in geometric approximation algorithms, network topology design geometric distance oracles and numerous other contexts.
In some applications, it is desirable to have spanners that also have a small diameter, apart from being sparse. This work gives efficient algorithms to construct Euclidean spanners with an optimal tradeoff between the diameter and sparsity, resolving a long-standing open question of the area. For one setting of parameters, the algorithm in this work given n points, constructs a Euclidean spanner with diameter four and O(n log*n) edges in time O(n logn).
Best Student Paper (shared):
Improved Deterministic Algorithms for Decremental Transitive Closure and Strongly Connected Components
Jakub Łącki, University of Warsaw, Poland
Dynamic transitive closure is one of the fundamental dynamic graph problems, where the goal is to maintain reachability information and strongly connected components of a directed graph when edges are being deleted. More precisely, a dynamic transitive closure data structure supports two operations -- a query to check if a vertex u is reachable from another vertex v, and a deletion operation for the edges (u,v) of a directed graph.
This fundamental problem in data structures received much attention for more than two decades, with the best previous result being a randomized data structure achieving an O(mn) expected total running time on a graph with m edges and n vertices. Using a novel representation of a strongly connected graph, this work presents a deterministic data structure that has total running time of O(mn), resolving a long-standing open problem. The new representation of a strongly connected graph, reduces the problem of decremental strong connectivity to maintaining connectivity in a set of directed acyclic graphs -- a much easier problem.
PODC 2011
PODC is a major conference that focuses on the theory of distributed computing.
The paper "The Space Complexity of Long-Lived and One-Shot Timestamp Implementations" by Maryam Helmi, Lisa Higham, Eduardo Pacheco and Philipp Woelfel won the best paper award.
This paper is concerned with the problem of implementing an unbounded timestamp object from multi-writer atomic registers, in an asynchronous distributed system of n processors with distinct identifiers, where timestamps are taken from an arbitrary universe. Ellen, Fatourou and Ruppert [Distributed Computing 2008] have shown that (n/2-O(1) registers are required for any obstruction-free implementation of long-lived time-stamp systems from atomic registers (meaning processors can repeatedly get timestamps). The paper improves this existing lower bound in two ways. First it establishes a lower bound of n/6-O(1) registers for the obstruction-free long-lived timestamp problem. Previous such linear lower bounds were only known for constrained versions of the timestamp problem. This bound is asymptotically tight for Ellen, Fatourou and Ruppert constructed a wait-free algorithm that uses n-1 registers. Second the paper shows that (n-O(1) registers are required for any obstruction-free implementation of one-shot timestamp systems (meaning each processor can get a timestamp at most once). The paper shows that this bound is also asymptotically tight by providing a wait-free one-shot timestamp system that uses fewer than 2(n registers, thus establishing a space complexity gap between one-shot and long-lived timestamp systems.
The paper "Distributed Deterministic Edge Coloring using Bounded Neighborhood Independence" by Leonid Barenboim and Michael Elkin won the best student paper award.
The paper studies the edge-coloring problem in the message-passing model of distributed computing. This is one of the most fundamental problems in this area. Currently, the best-known deterministic algorithms for (2(-1)-edge-coloring requires O(() + log^*n time, where Δ is the maximum degree of the input graph. Also, recent results for vertex-coloring imply that one can get an O(Δ)-edge-coloring in O(Δε log n) time, and an O(Δ1+ε)-edge-coloring in O(log Δ log n) time, for an arbitrarily small constant ε > 0. In this paper, the authors devise a significantly faster deterministic edge-coloring algorithm. Specifically, the algorithm computes an O(Δ)-edge-coloring in O(Δε)+log* n time, and an O((Δ1+ε)-edge-coloring in O(log Δ)+ log* n time. This result improves the state-of-the-art running time for deterministic edge-coloring with this number of colors in almost the entire range of maximum degree Δ. Moreover, it improves it exponentially in a wide range of Δ, specifically, for 2((log* n) ( Δ ( polylog(n). In addition, for small values of Δ (up to log1-Δ n, for some fixed Δ > 0) the deterministic algorithm outperforms all the existing randomized algorithms. On their way to these results, the authors study the vertex-coloring problem on graphs with bounded neighborhood independence. This is a large family of graphs, which strictly includes line graphs of r-hypergraphs (i.e., hypergraphs in which each hyperedge contains at least r vertices) for r = O(1), and graphs of bounded growth. They devise a very fast deterministic algorithm for vertex-coloring graphs with bounded neighborhood independence. This algorithm directly gives rise to the new edge-coloring algorithms, which apply to general graphs. The main technical contribution in the paper is a subroutine that computes an O(Δ/p)-defective p-vertex coloring of graphs with bounded neighborhood independence in O(p2)+log*n time, for a parameter p, 1 ( p ( Δ. In all previous efficient distributed routines for m-defective p-coloring, the product mp is super-linear in Δ. In the routine described by the authors, this product is linear in Δ, which enables them to speed up the coloring drastically.
Finally, Rotem Oshman was the winner of the best student presentation award for her presentation of the paper "Coordinated Consensus in Dynamic Networks" appeared in the proceedings of the conference.
3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
SIGACT sponsored or co-sponsored a number of important conferences including the Symposium on Theory of Computation (STOC), Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG), Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), and Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA). In 2012 SIGACT will sponsor the Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS) meeting.
SIGACT also supports several conferences in-cooperation including Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS), Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) and Logic in Computer Science (LICS).
4. Innovative programs which provide service to our technical community
The Committee for the Advancement of Theoretical Computer Science (CATCS) sponsored by SIGACT continues to be very active. The committee meets by conference call every month and has developed and executed action plans to increase the visibility of theoretical computer science and to increase the funding base for theory of computation at the NSF. The Committee helps advise the NSF CCF Director and other NSF officers on several matters including recruiting for positions within.
In 2008, CATCS with funding from the Computing Community Consortium held the Visions for Theoretical Computer Science Workshop which consolidates theoretical research agendas into compact visions that are accessible to people outside of our field. The final report is highlighted on the CRA CCC website () as well on the CATCS site (). CATCS is currently working on turning these nuggets into posters that will be hung on the walls in the NSF.
SIGACT continues to support student attendance at SODA and STOC by funding Student Best Paper Awards, travel, lunches, and reduced registration fees. This helps ensure that the maximum number of students can attend these conferences.
In 2011 for the first time STOC ran a successful poster session. A poster session and an open call for workshops are being planned for STOC 2012.
SIGACT took a major role in initial planning of the 2012 ACM Turing Centenary events and continues to play a leading role in that meeting.
SIGACT approved its first chapter SIGACT Shanghai.
5. Summary of key issues that the membership of the SIGACT will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years
In addition to posters, workshops and an increase in accepted papers, SIGACT will continue to find ways to get more people active in its flagship conference, STOC.
Funding and articulating the importance of theoretical computer science are perennial issues that are being addressed by the Committee for the Advancement of Theoretical Computer Science (CATCS). Two major issues for theoretical computer science at the NSF: Lack of program directors in the core theory areas and a very high acceptance rate for theory proposals.
How do we handle SIGACT plus and proceedings donation programs as we move to electronic and on-line only proceedings?
There is a backlash against ACM and SIGACT support at some of the conferences. With the availability of free on-line publication sites such as the Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, SIGACT needs to make a better case why a conference should become or remain SIGACT sponsored.
The Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, a $10 million per year funded center will be named this year. SIGACT should play a proper role in this institute.
The academic job market has improved somewhat but the community still needs to help with employment of many of its members. The multiple postdocs that will come from the Simons Institute will put only more pressure on people moving from postdocs to permanent positions.
SIGAda FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Ricky E. Sward, Chair
SIGAda Awards
Started in 1994, the ACM SIGAda Awards recognize individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the Ada community and to SIGAda. The Outstanding Ada Community Contribution Award is given for broad, lasting contributions to Ada technology and usage. The Distinguished Service Award is given for exceptional contributions to SIGAda activities and products.
This year the Outstanding Ada Community Contribution Award was awarded to Frank Singhoff.
Frank Singhoff – Frank is the originator and driving force behind the Cheddar Project, a free real-time scheduling tool written in Ada. Cheddar is designed for checking task temporal constraints of a real time application/system. Systems to be analyzed can be described with AADL or a with Cheddar specific language. Cheddar helps with quick prototyping of real time schedulers and is used by many universities. Cheddar is available as a plug-in for other open software and commercial tools. Frank is a Professor of Computer Science at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest, France.
There were no nominations for the Distinguished Service Award this year, so we did not present this award.
Significant Papers published in proceedings
This year’s conference included two outstanding keynote speeches. The keynote speakers presented on the following topics:
Chris Lane from Lockheed Martin – Software Integrity Assurance in Next Generation Air Traffic Control
William “Brad” Martin from the National Security Agency – Transforming Software and System Development and Analysis
This year’s conference included three exceptional panel sessions that were well received by the attendees:
Wouldn't It Be Nice to Have Software Labels? – Paul E. Black and Elizabeth Fong, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Software Vulnerabilities in Programming Languages and Applications – Stephen Michell, Maurya Software
Mitigating Risks to the Enterprise via Software Assurance – Joe Jarzombek, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
There were several outstanding papers in the conference this year with equally outstanding presentations. For example:
A Methodology for Avoiding Known Compiler Problems Using Static Analysis by Jean-Pierre Rosen from Adalog
Real-Time System Development in Ada using LEGO® Mindstorms® NXT by Peter Bradley, Juan A. de la Puente, and Juan Zamorano from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Parallelism Generics for Ada 2005 by Brad Moore from General Dynamics, Canada
Extending Ada to Support Multi-Core-based Monitoring and Fault Tolerance by You Li, Lu Yang, Lei Bu, Linzhang Wang, Jianhua Zhao, and Xuandong Lu from Nanjing University
Overall, the papers being submitted to the SIGAda conference continue to be of high quality.
Significant Programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
A formal liaison exists between SIGAda and WG9. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 WG9 is that body of international representatives responsible for the maintenance and evolution of the Ada International Standard. The National Bodies represented on WG9 are Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In March 2007 the ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) in Geneva, Switzerland announced the formal completion of the process to revise the Ada 95 language, with the publication of the Ada 2005 standard — officially named ISO/IEC 8652:1995/Amd 1:2007. This announcement culminates a collaborative international effort under ISO's Ada Working Group (WG9) to enhance the 1995 version of the Ada language.
At least one SIGAda Officer participates and represents the membership at the WG9 meetings held twice each year.
Innovative Programs which provide service to some part of our technical community
Since 1994 SIGAda has conducted an "Ada Awareness Initiative". Its centerpiece has been our SIGAda professional booth display unit in exhibition halls at important software engineering conferences. This lets folks know that Ada is very much alive and a sound part of any software engineering effort having real-time, high integrity, high-assurance, and highly distributed requirements. We brought the booth to the SIGCSE conference this year providing good visibility for SIGAda to the Computer Science educational community. We decided not to take the booth to the Software and Systems Technology Conference (SSTC) due to declining attendance at the conference.
Via this exhibiting, SIGAda sustains Ada visibility ("name recognition"), provides various Ada-advocacy materials and makes available Ada experts (our booth staff volunteers) who can intelligently answer questions, provide pointers and help, and debunk the misinformation about Ada that many attendees at these shows have. This program continues to be extremely successful and viewed as a highly important thrust by the SIGAda membership.
Summary of key issues to deal with in the next 2-3 years
One of the key issues for SIGAda is continuing to host a financially successful conference. Last year the conference reversed the decline in revenues, but was unable to produce a profit. The loss from the conference was less than $1000, and this is due to the hard work and outstanding management of the conference chair, Alok Srivastava. We will continue to encourage our SIGAda members to participate in and to attend the conference.
In 2010, in order to ensure the conference revenue is appropriate, the Chair and Treasurer examined and adjusted the fee structure and compensation policy for the SIGAda conference. We have established a clear policy that is fair and reasonable for attendees of the conference. The new policy and fee structure have made a positive difference in the revenue for the conference. We will continue these policies and carefully assess any compensation given to conference attendees.
We will continue to publish three issues of the Ada Letters journal and seek participation in the form of contributing articles and papers.
SIGAPP FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Sung Shin, Chair
The SIGAPP mission is to further the interests of the computing professionals engaged in the development of new computing applications and applications areas and the transfer of computing technology to new problem domains.
SIGAPP Officers
Chair - Sung Shin, South Dakota State University, USA
Vice Chair - Richard Chbeir, Bourgogne University, Dijon, France
Secretary – Eric Wong, University of Texas, USA
Treasurer - Lorie Liebrock, New Mexico Institute of Technology, USA
Web Master - Hisham Haddad, Kennesaw State University, USA
ACM Program Coordinator, Irene Frawley, ACM HQ
Status of SIGAPP
The main event that took place within SIGAPP for this year was the Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) in Taichung, Taiwan after taking place in Switzerland in 2010. This year's SAC was very successful. More details about SAC will follow in the next section. We also supported several additional conferences with in-cooperation status. We have 10% co-sponsorship for two conferences. The first one, 2011 International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication (ICUIMC) was held in Seoul, Korea in February, 2011, and the 2011 Research on Applied Computing (RACs) will be held in Miami in November 2011. ICUIMC 2011 conference was successful, and it has been beneficial for SIGAPP. We will continue supporting those conferences in the coming year.
Two issues of ACR (Applied Computing Review) were published in FY 2011. We’re introducing it semi-annually in an electronic version only. Once the format has stabilized, we’ll begin publishing quarterly electronically and in print. Ultimately, we want ACR to appear in the SCI (Science Citation Index). ACR contains invited papers from world-renowned researchers and selected papers presented by prominent researchers and professionals who attended the Symposium on Applied Computing 2011 in Taichung, Taiwan. The selected papers have been expanded, revised, and peer-reviewed again for publishing in ACR. The next issue will be published in late summer 2011. We hope that ACR will serve as a platform for many new and promising ideas in the many fields of applied computing. It is strongly related to nearly every area of computer science, and we feel an obligation to serve the community as best we can. The papers in ACR represent the current applied computing research trends. These authors truly contribute to the state of the art in applied computing.
The Student Travel Award Program continues to be successful in assisting SIGAPP student members in attending conferences sponsored by or in-cooperation with SIGAPP. 34 students were granted awards to attend SAC 2011, representing 16 countries. Allocated budget of these awards was increased compared to the last year. We also implemented a Developing Countries Travel Award for researchers from developing countries who would otherwise have difficulty attending the SAC conference. For 2011, this award was used exclusively for students from developing countries but in 2012 and beyond, we also hope to support faculty-level researchers from such countries.
SIGAPP continues to have a stable membership. SIGAPP's and SAC's strength and uniqueness among ACM SIGs continues to be the opportunity for scientific diversity and crosscutting multiple disciplines within the ACM community. The officers look forward to continue working with the ACM SGB to further develop the SIG by increasing membership and developing a new journal on applied computing.
Status of SAC
The 26th Annual edition of SAC has marked another successful event for the Symposium on Applied Computing. This international gathering attracted over 340 attendees from over 70 countries. It was hosted and held on the campus of Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan, March 2011. There was an open Call for Track Proposals and after prescreening the proposals, 40 Tracks were finally accepted for SAC 2011. The prescreening and selections were made based on the success of those Tracks in the previous SACs as well as targeting new and emerging areas. The Call for Papers for these Tracks attracted 790 final paper submissions from 35 different countries. The submitted papers underwent the blind review process and 237 papers were finally accepted as full papers for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings and presentation during the Symposium. The final acceptance rate for SAC 2011 is 30% for the overall track. In addition to the accepted full papers, 59 papers that received high enough review scores were accepted as short papers for the Poster Program. The Monday Tutorials program offered 6 tutorials and attracted over 50 attendees. The program included coffee breaks and a social luncheon that took place on campus.
SAC 2012 will be held in and will be hosted by the University of Trento, Riva del Garda, Italy from March 25-29, 2012. The web site has further details such as symposium committee, technical tracks, and track chairs.
SAC 2013 is being considered for Portugal. A decision by the SAC steering will be made soon. To date, no 2013 SAC local host proposals have been submitted from the U.S.
Summary
1. Awards that were given out
Student Travel Awards - 34 awards granted, totaling $29,219.07
2. Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings - new tracks in SAC 2011 were Applied Biometrics, and Asian Perspective of Global and Collaborative Computing.
3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts - SAC continues to have tracks that represent application areas which are not covered by other SIGs. SAC has always been open to new tracks in applied computing.
4. Innovative programs which provide service to some part of your technical community - expansion of Student Travel Award Program for SIGAPP student members, initiation of Developing Countries Travel Award Program for students and faculty.
5. A very brief summary for the key issues that the membership of that SIG will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years - continuation of awards and development of a refereed journal in Applied Computing
SIGARCH FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by Doug Burger, Chair
Overview
The primary mission of SIGARCH continues to be the forum where researchers and practitioners of computer architecture can exchange ideas. SIGARCH sponsors or cosponsors the premier conferences in the field as well as a number of workshops. It publishes a quarterly newsletter and the proceedings of several conferences. It is financially strong with a fund balance of over two million dollars. The SIGARCH bylaws are available online at .
Officers and Directors
During the past fiscal year Doug Burger served as SIGARCH Chair, David Wood served as Vice Chair, and Kevin Skadron served as Secretary/Treasurer. Margaret Martonosi, Krste Asanovic, Bill Dally, and Sarita Adve served on the Board of Directors, and Norm Jouppi also served as Past Chair. In addition to these elected positions, Doug DeGroot continues to serve as the Editor of the SIGARCH newsletter Computer Architecture News, and Nathan Binkert as the SIGARCH Information Director, providing SIGARCH information online. Rob Schreiber serves as SIGARCH's liaison on the SC conference steering committee.
In the spring, SIGARCH elections were held for the next term, effective July 1, 2011. The new officers are: David Wood as SIGARCH Chair, Sarita Adve as Vice Chair, Partha Ranganathan as Secretary/Treasurer, and Kai Li, Norm Jouppi, Per Stenstrom, and Scott Mahlke on the Board of Directors. Doug Burger will serve as Past Chair. Nate Binkert continues to serve as Information Director. Rob Schreiber continues to serve as SIGARCH's liaison on the SC conference steering committee.
The Eckert-Mauchly Award, cosponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, is the most prestigious award in computer architecture. SIGARCH endows its half of the award, which is presented annually at the Awards Banquet of ISCA. Gurindar S. Sohi of the University of Wisconsin received the award in 2011, for 'pioneering widely used micro-architectural techniques for instruction-level parallelism.’ In 2009, SIGARCH petitioned ACM to increase the ACM share of the award to $10,000, using an endowment taken from the SIGARCH fund balance, which ACM has approved. The increase will happen when IEEE approves a matching increase, which will increase the amount of the award to $20,000.
SIGARCH has endowed the Maurice Wilkes Award, an award established to recognize computer architects early in their careers, named after one of the pioneers of computer architecture who began making significant contributions early in his career. The award is selected by a vote of the Executive Committee and Board of SIGARCH, from a list of nominees supplied by a three person nominating committee. The 2010 award went to Kevin Skadron of the University of Virginia, for 'contributions to thermal-aware computer architecture modeling and design.'
SIGARCH also cosponsors, along with the IEEE-CS TCCA, the Influential ISCA Paper Award which is presented annually at the ISCA conference. This award recognizes the paper, presented at the ISCA conference 15 years previously, which has had the most impact on computer architecture. The seventh Influential ISCA Paper Award was presented to Dean Tullsen, Susan Eggers, Joel Emer, Hank Levy, Jack Lo, and Rebecca Stamm for their paper "Exploiting Choice: Instruction Fetch and Issue on an Implementable Simultaneous Multithreading Processor" which appeared in the proceedings of the 23rd ISCA (1996).
In 2009, SIGARCH and the ASPLOS co-sponsors (SIGPLAN and SIGOPS) approved the creation of an ASPLOS Best Paper Award, the first one of which was awarded in 2009. The Award is determined by a vote of the Program Committee, and announced at the conference. In 2011, the third ASPLOS Best Paper Award was jointly awarded to two papers. The first co-award went to Kaushik Veeraraghavan, Dongyoon Lee, Benjamin Wester, Jessica Ouyang, Peter Chen, Jason Flinn, and Satish Narayanasamy for their paper 'Doubleplay: Parallelizing Sequential Logging and Replay.' The second co-award went to Vitaly Chipounov, Volodymyr Kuznetsov, and George Candea for their paper 'S2E: A Platform for In Vivo Multi-Path Analysis of Software Systems.'
Starting in 2011, ASPLOS began awarding an 'Influential Paper Award,’ modeled after the award presented at ISCA. The ASPLOS Influential Paper Award is awarded to any paper published in ASPLOS conferences ten or more conferences prior to the conference in which the award is being made. The first ASPLOS Influential Paper Award was made to the paper 'The 801 Minicomputer,' by George Radin, which appeared in the first ASPLOS conference in 1982.
In 2007 the ACM Awards Committee approved the establishment of the SIGARCH Distinguished Service Award, for 'important service to the Computer Architecture community.' The fifth recipient was David Patterson of UC-Berkeley, who has served on SIGARCH’s executive board, led in computer architecture education, and recently served as President of the ACM Nominations each year are due February 15th, and can be sent to the SIGARCH Secretary/Treasurer at any time.
SIGARCH is a co-sponsor of the Ken Kennedy Award, founded in 2009. The ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award is awarded annually and recognizes substantial contributions to programmability and productivity in computing and substantial community service or mentoring contributions. The award includes a $5,000 honorarium and the award recipient will be announced at the SC Conference. The recipient will give a presentation, normally technical, at the SC conference at which it is announced, or at an ACM or IEEE conference of the winner's choosing during the year following the announcement. The 2010 recipient of the Ken Kennedy Award was David Kuck, for ?his pioneering contributions to compiler technology and parallel computing, the profound impact of his research on industry, and the widespread and long-lasting influence of his teaching and mentoring.?
Four of the above awards, the Eckert-Mauchly Award, the Maurice Wilkes Award, the Influential ISCA Paper Award, and the SIGARCH Distinguished Service Award were presented at ISCA 2011 in San Jose, CA.
Conferences
SIGARCH is a 50% cosponsor of ISCA, the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, which is the premier conference in the field of computer architecture. The 38th annual ISCA (ISCA 2011) was held in San Jose, CA, as a part of FCRC. Qing Yang and Ravi Iyer were the General Co-Chairs, and Antonio Gonzalez was the Program Chair. ISCA 2012 will be held in Portland, OR, with Shih-Lien Lu as General Chair and Josep Torrellas as Program Chair. Competing bids are still under consideration for the ISCA 2013 location.
The SC'XY Conference is jointly sponsored by SIGARCH and the IEEE Computer Society. Formerly known as the Supercomputing Conference, the conference has successfully evolved away from its focus on supercomputers and is now the High Performance Networking and Computing Conference. In addition to its technical success, SC'XY is large enough that it must be scheduled many years in advance. SC 2010 was held in New Orleans, LA. SC 2011 will be held in Seattle, WA.
SIGARCH is a cosponsor of the Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, commonly known as ASPLOS, along with SIGPLAN and SIGOPS. The conference had been held biannually since 1982, alternating its location between San Jose and Boston. Starting in 2008 the conference has been held annually. ASPLOS 2011 was held in Newport Beach, California with Rajiv Gupta serving as General Chair and Todd Mowry serving as Program Chair. ASPLOS 2012 will be held in London, UK with Tim Harris serving as General Chair and Michael Scott serving as Program Chair.
SIGARCH sponsors the International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS). ICS 2011 was held in Tucson, AZ, with David Lowenthal as General Chair and Sally McKee and Bronis R. de Supinski as Program Co-Chairs. ICS 2012 will be held in Venice, Italy. Kyle Gallivan and Utpal Banerjee will be General Co-Chairs and Gianfranco Bilardi and Manolis Katevenis will be Program Co-Chairs.
The nineteenth Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA 2011), jointly sponsored by SIGARCH and SIGACT, was held in San Jose, CA as a part of FCRC. The General Chair was Friedhelm Meyer auf der Heide, and the Program Chair was Rajmohan Rajaraman. SPAA 2012 will be held in Pittsburgh, with Guy Blelloch as General Chair and Maurice Herlihy as the Program Chair.
SIGARCH is one-half co-sponsor of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing. Grid 2010 was held in Brussels, Belgium, with Neil P Chue Hong as General Chair and Laurent Lefevre as Program Chair. Grid 2011 will be held in Lyon, France, with Nils gentschen Felde as General Chair and Shantenu Jha as Program Chair.
SIGARCH is one-half cosponsor of the International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing. HPDC 2011 was held in San Jose, CA as part of FCRC, with Arthur Maccabe as General Chair and Douglas Thain as Program Chair. HPDC 2012 will be held in Delft, The Netherlands, with Dick Epema as General Chair and Thilo Kielmann and Matei Ripeanu as Program Co-Chairs.
SIGARCH is one-third cosponsor of the Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compiler Techniques (PACT), along with the IEEE Computer Society and IFIP, and annually held in the fall. PACT 2010 was held in Vienna, Austria, with Valentina Salapura as General Chair and Michael Gschwind and Jens Knoop as Program Co-Chairs. PACT 2011 will be held in Galveston, Texas, with Laurence Rauchwerger as General Chair and Vivek Sarkar as Program Chair.
SIGARCH is one-fourth co-sponsor of the Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS). The sixth ANCS was held in La Jolla, CA, with Bill Lin as General Chair and Ravi Iyer and Jeffrey Mogul as Program Co-Chairs. ANCS 2011 will be held in Brooklyn, NY, with H. Jonathan Chao as General Chair and Jose Duato and Tilman Wolf as Program Co-Chairs.
In 2007 SIGARCH was a founding co-sponsor of the International Symposium on Networks-on-Chips (NOCS). NOCS 2011 was held in Pittsburgh, PA in May, with Radu Marculescu and Mike Kishinevsky as General Co-Chairs, and Ran Ginosar and Karam Chatha as Program Co-Chairs. NOCS 2012 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Jens Spars and Jan Madsen will be General Co-Chairs, and Diana Marculescu and Chita Das will be Program Co-Chairs.
SIGARCH also became a cosponsor of the International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC) in 2007. ICAC 2011 was held in Karlsruhe, Germany, with Hartmut Schmeck and Wolfgang Rosenstiel as General Co-Chairs, and Tarek Abdelzaher and Joe Hellerstein as Program Co-Chairs. ICAC 2012 will be in San Jose, CA, with Dejan Milojicic as General Chair and Vanish Talwar and Dongyan Xu and Program Co-Chairs.
In addition to the above conferences, SIGARCH is co-sponsoring, or in cooperation with, several other conferences. SIGARCH has a sponsorship position in SenSys, a conference on Sensor Systems. In addition, SIGARCH has in-cooperation status with TridentCom, DOCSS, Euro-Par, GridNets, HiPC, and Nano-Net.
Travel Grants
In the past, SIGARCH supported travel grants to students who attended ISCA or ASPLOS. The precise amount of the grants depends on the number of students who apply, but we have made an attempt to give at least a modest grant to every student coauthor that applied. For ISCA 2011, SIGARCH matched NSF funding of $15K with matching funding from IEEE TCCA ($7.5K) and corporate funding of $3K (from Google and FusionIO), and used these funds to support 163 applications for student travel grants. SIGARCH has now broadened travel grants to other SIGARCH-sponsored conferences, and has finalized the allocation to each conference, based on revenue increases to SIGARCH and the percentage sponsorship of the conference. The grants are restricted to student members of SIGARCH, following several votes of the SIGARCH membership. The allocation to each conference is set by dividing the travel grant budget by number of attendees, giving an extra 33% allocation to international conferences, and a small additional budget (~10%) to ISCA as the flagship conference.
In 2007 SIGARCH sponsored a companion travel grant program for ISCA, which includes child-care costs for SIGARCH-sponsored conferences. This program provides funds for travel grants to attend ISCA 2007 for a companion care-provider for a SIGARCH member who are either (1) a person with a physical disability necessitating a companion, or (2) a parent of an infant less than one year old who cannot travel without the infant and a care-provider for the infant. This program is similar to SIGPLAN’s child care/companion travel grant program. This program was presented to other SIGs at a SIG Governing Board (SGB) meeting, and may be adopted by other SIGs in the future as a best practice. In 2010-11, SIGARCH had one application for such travel grants.
SC Conference Grants
In 2010, the SC leadership requested $273,528 in funds for special projects related to the SC community. For SC'11, $437,111 has been budgeted for SC special projects.
Publications
CAN (Computer Architecture News), SIGARCH's newsletter, is published 5 times a year. Of those five, the ISCA Proceedings form a special issue, and the ASPLOS Proceedings is likewise distributed as a special issue. The regular issues of the newsletter consist of technical contributions, reports of panels, Internet nuggets (the most interesting or controversial articles from the comp.arch newsgroup), book reviews, and calls for papers. There are occasional single topic special issues based principally on workshops. Proceedings of SC, SPAA and ICS are available through the Member Plus program. In 2009, SIGARCH began offering a new electronic membership for regular members and students, at reduced cost with no proceedings mailed. Currently, 494 of SIGARCH’s members have registered under the electronic membership option.
Finances
SIGARCH enjoys a healthy fund balance that is currently larger than the $2.2M fund balance required by the ACM for sponsorship of SIGARCH conferences for FY’11. The projected SIGARCH fund balance for FY’11 is $3,120,204. SIGARCH loses money on each member, but makes money on average from conferences. (E-membership will help reduce the small losses we incur on memberships.) The SC conference often has a large surplus due to its exhibition component, but did not in 2010. Given prior large surpluses, SIGARCH and the SC Steering Committee have an agreement that some of the future profits from SC'XY will be in large part returned to the SC community, in the form of a series of project-oriented grants (to be matched by the other sponsor of SC'XY, the IEEE Computer Society). The grant amounts are capped by the average surplus over the first two of the previous three years.
Membership
SIGARCH membership was declining gradually since 1999, dropping from its peak of 1452 in 2005 to 1344 in 2009, but has started to recover, increasing to 1393 as of Mar. 2011. SIGARCH's membership retention rate was the highest among all of ACM's SIGs in 2007, at 80%, with all three of the membership categories (SIG-only members, student, and professional members) all gradually increasing last year. The new electronic-only membership, available at reduced cost, will likely help to grow membership. Last year, 494 of SIGARCH’s members had chosen electronic-only membership. ISCA, SIGARCH’s flagship conference, continues to be healthy and show attendance near the top of historical levels.
Innovative Programs
SIGARCH supports child care and companion support travel programs to conferences, although participation since approval of these programs has been low. Reimbursement for child care is capped at $1000 per conference. SIGARCH has also formalized funding levels for its travel grant program, and now provides a level of support to all conferences that SIGARCH sponsors at a 33% level or higher, which previously was only provided to the ISCA and ASPLOS conferences. At ISCA 2011, SIGARCH partnered with the National Science Foundation, IEEE, Google, and FusionIO to provide $45,500 total in student travel grants ($20,000 of which came from SIGARCH), providing 163 total awards to students. SIGARCH awarded a total of $45K in student travel across all conferences in 2010.
Summary
SIGARCH remains a financially healthy institution with an enthusiastic membership. The interest of its members can be gauged by the health of all of its major conferences in the past year. The challenges remain as they have in previous years: how to better serve our members, how to encourage other members of the architecture community to join, how to help steer the community as the nature of our field changes, and how to use our fund balance most effectively.
SIGART FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Yolanda Gil, Chair
The scope of SIGART consists of the study of intelligence and its realization in computer systems. This includes areas such as autonomous agents, intelligent user interfaces, knowledge discovery, human language technologies, cognitive modeling, knowledge representation, planning, robotics, problem solving, machine learning, and computer vision.
Activities during 2010/2011:
1. SIGART OFFICERS
SIGART elected new officers in 2010:
Yolanda Gil, USC/Information Sciences Institute (Chair)
Qiang Yang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Vice-Chair)
Gautam Biswas, Vanderbilt University (Secretary/Treasurer)
The elected officers formed an Advisory Board whose members are:
Tom Diettrich, Oregon State University
Jim Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Haym Hirsh, Rutgers University
Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research
Craig Knoblock, USC/Information Sciences Institute
David Waltz, Columbia University
In addition, SIGART has now several Appointed Officers:
Mehran Sahami, Stanford University (Educational Activities Liaison)
Peter Norvig, Google Research (Educational Activities Liaison)
Weike Pan, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Information Officer)
2. AWARDS
The ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award is an annual award for excellence in research in the area of autonomous agents.
The 2011 ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award recipient is Professor Joe Halpern of Cornell University. Professor Halpern is honored for his substantial and enormously influential contributions to the logical foundations of multi-agent systems, in particular, the computational foundations and applications of epistemic logic and reasoning under uncertainty. Professor Halpern gave an invited presentation at the 2011 AAMAS Conference titled "Beyond Nash Equilibrium: Solution Concepts for the 21st Century".
3. CONFERENCES
SIGART co-sponsored the following conferences:
* ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), February 3-16, 2011, Palo Alto, California.
* 5th International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), March 6-9, 2011, Lausanne, Switzerland.
* 6th International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP), June 25-29, 2011, Banff, Canada.
* IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), November 7-11, 2011, Lawrence, KS.
In addition, SIGART granted in-cooperation status to many international conferences.
SIGART renewed an agreement with the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS) to continue a special cooperation status regarding the AAMAS conference and the ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award indefinitely.
4. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
SIGART is participating in the IEEE/ACM Curriculum Initiative to review CS curricula. Mehran Sahami and Peter Norvig are SIGART Appointed representatives that are Educational Activities Liaisons and are participating in the IEEE/ACM joint initiative.
SIGART awarded a number of scholarships to students to attend the conferences co-sponsored by SIGART. The amounts of scholarships varied from $1,000 to $10,000 per conference, depending on the conference size. Funding students is a good way to ensure long term growth and vitality in the AI community and a good investment for the future.
SIGART co-sponsored with AAAI the annual SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium. The Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for Ph.D. students to discuss in depth their research interests and career objectives with the other participants and a group of established AI researchers that act as individual mentors. Presentations and discussions take place over two days of intense meetings prior to the AAAI conference.
5. OUTREACH ACTIVITIES
SIGART launched a new web site, with up-to-date information about the SIG and its activities. Weike Pan is the SIGART Information Officer and developed and maintains the site.
5. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
SIGART plans to continue to support communities related to AI in a broad sense. SIGART will continue expanding the areas covered by co-sponsored and in-cooperation conferences to ensure that communities that work in AI or find inspiration with AI topics maintain ties with AI. This will increase the visibility of SIGART and help the growth of new communities.
SIGBED FY’11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Marilyn Wolf, Chair
Awards
In 2006, ACM SIGBED established a student award in the name of late Dr. Frank Anger to promote cross-disciplinary research between embedded systems and software engineering. SIGBED solicited applications from qualified student members also in 2008. SIGBED did not give this award in 2010.
In 2008, SIGBED established a new SIGBED-EMSOFT Best Paper Award. The SIGBED EMSOFT Best Paper Award will be presented to the individual(s) judged by the award committee to have written the best paper appearing in the EMSOFT (Embedded Software) conference proceedings. The selection criteria are the scientific quality of the paper and the exposition of the
ideas. SIGBED did not give this award in 2010.
Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings
Embedded Systems Week heard three keynotes on significant challenges in embedded computing: Vida Ilderem, VP Intel Labs, “Embedded market: challenges and opportunities”; John Hennessy, President Stanford University, “The future of computing from phones to warehouses: it’s a new day”; Tom Henzinger, President IST Austria, “A marketplace for cloud resources.”
Innovative programs which provide service to some part of your technical community
SIGBED now has two major federated conferences: CPS Week in the spring [HSCC, ICCPS, IPSN, LCTES, RTAS] and ES Week [EMSOFT, CODES+ISSS, CASES] in the fall. We also use the SIGBED Web site to keep members informed of events in the community, both inside and outside ACM, such as ARTIST2 and HiPeac and ACM TECS and TOSN.
The SIGBED review, edited by Oleg Sokolsky of University of Pennsylvania, provides a forum for technical contributions by members as well as lists of upcoming events.
Issues
We continue to keep membership rates low to attract students in particular.
SIGBioinformatics FY’11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by Aidong Zhang, Chair
ACM SIGBIOINFORMATICS
ACM Special Interest Group in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Biomedical Informatics
The ACM Special Interest Group on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Biomedical Informatics (SIGBIOINFORMATICS) has been instituted in January 2011 with the aim of focusing on research on bioinformatics data management topics, roughly covered by the so-called biological and biomedical data, knowledge, and information management. The focus of SIGBIOINFORMATICS is to bridge computer science, mathematics, statistics with biology and biomedicine sharing research interests in the management of data related to life sciences. The mission of ACM SIGBioinformatics is to support advanced research, training, and outreach in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Biomedical Informatics by stimulating interactions among researchers, educators and practitioners from related multi-disciplinary fields. Since January 2011, SIG Bioinformatics has recruited 151 members.
SIGBIOINFORMATICS Website
The SIGBIOINFORMATICS website was created and is maintained by Dr. Mohammed Zaki of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (see ). The logo for SIG Bioinformatics:
SIGBIOINFORMATICS Conference (ACMBCB):
The 2010 ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ACM BCB 2010) (Niagara Fall, NY, Aug 2-4, 2010) was the first ACM conference in the areas of bioinformatics, computational biology, and biomedical informatics.
ACMBCB2010 Best Paper Award
Ameet Soni, Craig Bingman and Jude Shavlik, “Guiding Belief Propagation Using Domain Knowledge for Protein-Structure Determination”
ACMBCB2010 Best Student Paper Award
Bin Song, Tamer Kahveci, and Sanjay Ranka, "Enzymatic target identification with dynamic states"
ACMBCB2010 Best Poster Award
Justin A. Fincher, Gary Tyson and Jonathan H. Dennis, "A Computational Exploration of Gene Regulation by Nucleosome Position"
The 2011 ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Biomedicine (ACM BCB 2010) will be held in Chicago, August 1-3, 2011.
In Cooperation Conferences
SIGBioinformatics provided sponsorship for CMSB'11: 9th International Conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology (see ).
NSF Awards
SIGBIOINFORMATICS has been awarded two National Science Foundation grants to support ACMBCB conferences:
1. 'ACM-BCB: Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology' (period: 4/1/10 – 3/31/11, amount: $24,450, PI: Aidong Zhang, co-PIs: Armin R. Mikler, Chaoyang (Joe) Zhang, Dong Xu, Gultekin Ozsoyoglu)
2. 'III:Small: Women in Bioinformatics Initiative at ACM-BCB 2011' (period: 6/15/11-5/31/12, Amount: $22,500, PI: Wei Wang, co-PIs: Robert Grossman, Andrey Rzhetsky, Cathy Wu, Aidong Zhang)
SIGCAS FY’11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Flo Appel, Chair
1. Awards
The nomination process for the 2010 SIGCAS "Making a Difference" and "Outstanding Service" awards is in progress, and will be overseen by a member of the new Executive Committee.
2. Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings
3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
4. Innovative programs which provide service to some part of your technical community
Although SIGCAS has not historically sponsored its own conferences, we have been proactive in forging relationships with other organizations, and continue to find venues in which to present and publicize the good work of our membership:
SIGCAS has continued to collaborate with SIGCSE, and through our very popular Birds of a Feather (BOF) session, we have had a formal and visible presence at the SIGCSE Symposium for the past six years. In addition, this year we offered a pre-Symposium SIGCAS meeting in Dallas (March 2011) which drew approximately 25 participants and provided a forum in which to discuss social and ethical computing issues and pedagogies. This morning session was followed by an afternoon computer ethics workshop that was co-sponsored by SIGCAS and ACM’S COPE (Committee on Professional Ethics)
SIGCAS also played a central role in the organizing of our IEEE analog organization’s (Society for the Social Implications Technology - SSIT) ISTAS 2011 conference in May. Our September newsletter will feature a special section containing five articles from this conference. And, we continue to build collegial relations with the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT), and their CEPE conference. We are also presenting SIGCAS panels, workshops and tutorials at CCSC regional conferences (Consortium for Computer Science in Colleges).
Carol Spradling from Northwest Missouri University has concluded her excellent service as the SIGCAS representative to the ACM Education Council, and Flo Appel has transitioned into this position as her term as Chair concludes (see below), while Alan Rea from the University of Minnesota represents SIGCAS on the USACM. Don Gotterbarn (retired from Eastern Tennessee State University) is the ACM representative to IFIP’s TC9 Group on computers and society.
Computers and Society, our online newsletter, continues to support the Schubmehl-Prein Essay Competition for high school students, administered by long-time SIGCAS members Kevin Bowyer and C. Dianne Martin.
5. Brief summary of key issues that the SIG membership will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years.
A new SIGCAS Executive Committee is just beginning its first year of leadership: Andrew Adams, from Meiji University (Tokyo) is the newly elected Chairperson, and Netiva Caftori of Northeastern Illinois University and Simon Rogerson of deMontfort University (England) are also newly elected members of the Executive Committee. Flo Appel, Saint Xavier University, who has completed her second term as Chair, will continue on the Executive Committee in the capacity of Past Chair; and Diana Burley, George Washington University, and Mark Perry, University of Western Ontario, have concluded their service to SIGCAS as elected officers.
The challenges identified over the past years continue to exist. While we have made sustained and important inroads into collaboration at the leadership level with other organizations, we continue to struggle to mobilize our membership to become more actively involved in these liaisons.
The continued lack of a Computers & Society (C&S) editor-in-chief, still with nobody stepping forward to fill the position, places an undue burden on the leadership to edit and produce the newsletter. We have been successful, however, in recruiting and retaining a talented and effective editorial board, whose members work well together and are in the process of determining an appropriate format for and character of the newsletter. Our newsletter, online since 2002, must be stabilized from the perspective of both its editorship board and its publication. The migration to electronic format-only has had a great cost-saving benefit, but we have lost our ability to provide our members with a cohesive and tangible quarterly publication, and until last year, we have had difficulty with timely publication. We continue to discuss plans to leverage the online character of the newsletter.
Our website, which was renovated three years ago, requires ongoing work to become more interactive, and has proven to be a vast improvement over our previous web presence. It has definitely been more effective in its ability to mobilize our membership. We routinely receive responses to the “Volunteer Opportunities” page, and this is gradually resulting in a more active & engaged membership.
We are hopeful that our new leadership will be able to breathe new energy and excitement into the life of the SIG – our membership is loyal and continues to support SIGCAS when the need is greatest.
SIGCHI FY’11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by Gerrit C. van der Veer, President
1. Awards
1.1 SIGCHI made the following awards in 2010-2011:
• Lifetime Achievement in Research: Terry Winograd
• Lifetime Achievement in Practice: Larry Tesler,
• CHI Academy: Ravin Balakrishnan, Steven Feiner, Joseph Konstan, James Landay, Jenny Preece, Abi Sellen, Dennis Wixon
• Social Impact: Award: Alan Newell, Clayton Lewis
• Lifetime Service Award: Arnie Lund, Jim Miller
1.2 SIGCHI Conference awards:
• Best of CHI Awards for Papers:
Mid-air Pan-and-Zoom on Wall-sized Displays
Mathieu Nancel, Université Paris-Sud & CNRS; INRIA, France
Julie Wagner, Emmanuel Pietriga, INRIA; Université Paris-Sud & CNRS, France
Olivier Chapuis, Université Paris-Sud & CNRS; INRIA, France
Wendy Mackay, INRIA; Université Paris-Sud & CNRS, France
Why is My Internet Slow?: Making Network Speeds Visible
Marshini Chetty, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
David Haslem, Orange Sparkle Ball, USA
Andrew Baird, , USA
Ugochi Ofoha, Bethany Sumner, Rebecca Grinter, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Synchronous Interaction Among Hundreds: An Evaluation of a Conference in an Avatar-based Virtual Environment
Thomas Erickson, N. Sadat Shami, Wendy A. Kellogg,
David W. Levine, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA
HI 2011 Awards
Your Noise is My Command: Sensing Gestures Using the Body as an Antenna
Gabe Cohn, Microsoft Research, University of Washington, USA
Daniel Morris, Microsoft Research, USA
Shwetak N. Patel, Microsoft Research, University of Washington, USA
Desney S. Tan, Microsoft Research, USA
Enhancing Physicality in Touch Interaction with Programmable Friction
Vincent Levesque, Louise Oram, Karon MacLean, University of British Columbia, Canada
Andy Cockburn, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Nicholas D. Marchuk, Dan Johnson, J. Edward Colgate,
Michael A. Peshkin, Northwestern University, USA
Bricolage: Example-Based Retargeting for Web Design
Ranjitha Kumar, Jerry O. Talton, Salman Ahmad,
Scott R. Klemmer, Stanford University, USA
Teenagers and Their Virtual Possessions: Design Opportunities and Issues
William Odom, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Usable Gestures for Blind People: Understanding Preference and Performance
Shaun K. Kane, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Richard E. Ladner, University of Washington, USA
Automics: Souvenir Generating Photoware for Theme Parks
Abigail Durrant, University of Nottingham, UK
Duncan Rowland, University of Lincoln, UK
David S. Kirk, Steve Benford, Joel E. Fischer, Derek McAuley, University of Nottingham, UK
Effects of Community Size and Contact Rate in Synchronous Social Q&A
Ryen W. White, Matthew Richardson, Microsoft Research, USA
Yandong Liu, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Review Spotlight: A User Interface for Summarizing User-generated Reviews Using Adjective-Noun Word Pairs
Koji Yatani, Michael Novati, Andrew Trusty, Khai N. Truong, University of Toronto, Canada
In the Shadow of Misperception: Assistive Technology Use and Social Interactions
Kristen Shinohara, Jacob O. Wobbrock, University of Washington, USA
Ease of Juggling: Studying the Effects of Manual Multitasking
Antti Oulasvirta, Joanna Bergstrom-Lehtovirta, Aalto University and University of Helsinki, Finland
• Best of CHI Awards for Notes:
Eyes-Free Multitasking: The Effect of Cognitive Load on Mobile Spatial Audio Interfaces
Yolanda Vazquez-Alvarez, Stephen A. Brewster, University of Glasgow, UK
Interactive Generator: A Self-Powered Haptic Feedback Device
Akash Badshah, Phillips Exeter Academy, USA
Sidhant Gupta, Gabe Cohn, University of Washington, USA
Nicolas Villar, Steve Hodges, Microsoft Research, UK
Shwetak Patel, University of Washington, USA
• Best of CHI Award for Case Study:
Designing an E-Solution for Linking Informal Self-Help Groups in Africa - A Case Study
Mokeira Masita-Mwangi, Faith Ronoh-Boreh, Nyambura Kimani,
Nancy Mwakaba, Grace Kihumba, Imelda Mueni, Jussi Impio, Nokia Research Center Africa, Kenya
1.3. International Conference on Intercultural Collaboration (held in August 2010):
Shopping for Sharpies in Seattle: Mundane Infrastructures of Transnational Design,
Lilly Irani, Paul Dourish & Melissa Mazmanian
1.4. CSCW Best Paper/Note
It's About Time: Confronting Latency in the Development of Groupware Systems
Cheryl Savery (Queen's University), T.C. Nicholas Graham (Queen's University)
From Ethnographic Study to Mixed Reality: A Remote Collaborative Troubleshooting System
Jacki O'Neill (Xerox Research Centre Europe), Stefania Castellani (Xerox Research Centre Europe), Frederic Roulland (Xerox Research Centre Europe), Nicolas Hairon (Xerox Research Centre Europe), Cornell Juliano (Xerox), Liwei Dai (Xerox)
Look Ma, No Email! Blogs and LRC as Primary and Preferred Communication Tools in a Distributed Firm
Aditya Johri (Virginia Tech)
1.5. UIST
Best Paper Award
VizWiz: Nearly Real-Time Answers to Visual Questions
Jeffrey Bigham, University of Rochester, Chandrika Jayant, University of Washington, Hanjie Ji, University of Rochester, Greg Little, MIT CSAIL, Andrew Miller, University of Central Florida, Robert C. Miller, MIT CSAIL, Robin Miller, University of Rochester, Aubrey Tatarowicz, MIT CSAIL, Brandyn White, University of Maryland, Samuel White, University of Rochester, Tom Yeh, University of Maryland
Best Student Paper Award
Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside
Michael S. Bernstein, MIT CSAIL, Greg Little, MIT CSAIL, Robert C. Miller, MIT CSAIL, Bjoern Hartmann, UC Berkeley. Mark S. Ackerman, University of Michigan, David R. Karger, MIT CSAIL, David Crowell, MIT CSAIL, Katrina Panovich, MIT CSAIL
1.6. Ubicomp Best Papers
ElectriSense: Single-Point Sensing Using EMI for Electrical Event Detection and Classification in the Home
Sidhant Gupta (University of Washington), Matthew S. Reynolds (Duke University), Shwetak N. Patel (University of Washington)
2. Significant Papers on new areas that were published in proceedings
See 1.2 – 1.6.
3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
3.1. SIGCHI Sponsored Regional Workshops for Asia
Purposes
In order to better anticipate the possibility of SIGCHI events (including the CHI conference) in Asia, we need to have a clearer understanding of the actuality of HCI development in Asian countries. Capturing an understanding of HCI knowledge and practice that exists in Asia would be useful in formulating a strategy for using SIGCHI resources with clear targets to help Asian HCI communities mature and in building/strengthening ties with them.
Aiming at this, we have been organizing a SIGCHI sponsored Workshop series on HCI in Asia. We organized successfully the first workshop in Beijing, China (a three-day event) attempting to better know about the HCI situations in Asian countries in the following aspects:
• The current status of HCI development in academia, industry, education, organizations etc.
• The problems and challenges faced in HCI development in Asian communities.
• Where help from external bodies like SIGCHI can make a difference and how
• How SIGCHI can better involve local HCI communities in the global SIGCHI community and help them mature in Asia - specifically what are the areas SIGCHI needs to work on with priority and what are the feasible approaches and achievable goals?
The results of this workshop proved helpful for SIGCHI leadership to have a direct contact with the Asian HCI communities and their leaders that enabled better and close working relationships to be developed with ease later on.
Workshop Participants
This was not an open conference, but a targeted workshop. We invited representatives from Asian countries/regions (20) and from the SIGCHI committee (6), totaling 26, to attend the workshop. The following represents the distribution of the invited participants:
• 1 for each country/region, 2-3 for countries/regions with bigger HCI community, 5 for the host country China
• Representing local SIGCHI chapters or HCI organizations if possible
• Representing different disciplines: computer science, design, psychology, ergonomics etc.
|Country/region |Quota |
|China-Mainland |5 |
|Taiwan |1 |
|Hong Kong |1 |
|Japan |3 |
|Korea |3 |
|India |2 |
|Singapore |1 |
|Malaysia |1 |
|Indonesia |1 |
|Thailand |1 |
|Australia & NZ |2 |
|SIGCHI |6 |
Logistics and Venue
The workshop was held in Beijing, China, March 25-27th, 2011. This was shortly after the ACM SIGCHI Sponsored CSCW 2011 conference in Hangzhou, and attempted to incorporate lessons learned from that event. SIGCHI covered travel and meeting expenses for the participants for around $45K for this event.
Sponsorship
ACM SIGCHI is the primary sponsor. Additional support has been being solicited from local relevant organizations like CCF (Chinese Computer Federation), and from the local SIGCHI chapters like SIGCHI China etc.
Outcome
• A report on the state of the HCI field in the Asian region to be published in the ACM interactions magazine soon.
• Key areas identified to be worked on by SIGCHI towards staging future SIGCHI events in Asia and the initial action plans for such events.
• identify key challenges for HCI development in Asia like legitimacy, education, access to publications etc. and get them attended by the relevant parties within SIGCHI-EC
• working groups formed from the local HCI people to work on feasibilities and proposals on potential Asian SIGCHI organization and Asian CHI conference
• Learned about what might be effective ways for SIGCHI to help mature local communities and duplicate to other continents
• Started to identify issues and needs from other continents
• Decided to have a SIGCHI Asia workshop every year in principle, either somewhere in Asia or attached with CHI as a platform for deepen mutual learning, fostering cooperation, tackling Asia specific challenges, coordinating Asia specific activities and helping CMC with preparing for CHI Asia
• Decided to expand the speakers tours currently we sponsored for China to cover other Asian regions
• Planned to have some Asia focused sessions at CHI every year
• Planned to have more SIGCHI chapters in Asia set up
As a direct follow-up of the first workshop. The 2nd workshop was held in Vancouver in May, 2011 attached with CHI2011 with 25 attendees from around Asian countries. The 3rd one is planned to be held in Kunming, China in October.
We are now working a proposal for a workshop series for Latin-America with the same model we did for Asia.
3.2 CHI Communities
What are they?
Communities are collections of people that are associated with SIGCHI who share a common interest. Communities may be geographic or topical. A community is a collection of people who by banding together can speak with a common voice and organize their needed activities.
Infrastructure
SIGCHI has created an infrastructure for the formation of communities. Any 5 SIGCHI members can form a community with the approval of the SIGCHI EC. They can then solicit members from the community at large. A SIGCHI member can be a voting member of at most 5 communities so as to focus their interest. They can be an affiliate member of as many communities as they desire. The infrastructure automatically manages elections, announcements, web space and mailing lists for communities.
The procedures for managing the creation, approval and demise of communities have been encoded into the website so that there is a minimum of overhead for maintaining a large number of communities.
Governance
To a large degree communities are self-governing. They may define their own sets of officers whether elected or appointed. They may then express themselves in whatever way they desire.
Impact
Communities become the mechanism for the membership to adapt SIGCHI to their needs. Communities will be the primary mechanism for the formation and management of small conferences. This will create an open self perpetuating leadership mechanism that is missing for many of the small conferences. This will also allow constituencies to organize and collectively express their needs and concerns in a more coherent way. This will also create mechanisms for developing volunteer leadership for SIGCHI at large. It is also hoped that this will simplify and regularize the creation and organization of local SIGCHI chapters.
4. Innovative programs which provide service to some part of our technical community
4.1. Public Policy
2010-2011 was the first full year that we had an Adjunct Chair for Public Policy, Jonathan Lazar, to create and curate a discussion of public policy within the SIGCHI community. Here are the SIGCHI activities related to public policy that took place during the year:
• Development of a SIGCHI International Public Policy Committee with members from 8 different countries
• Appointed a new chair of the SIGCHI US Public Policy Committee (Janet Davis), and appointed three new members to that committee (John Pablo Hourcade, Lisa Nathan, and Janice Tsai)
• Planned and held a panel at the CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver about increasing legal requirements related to interface accessibility for people with disabilities, involving lawyers and disability advocates
• Planned and held a SIG on international standards for interface design at the CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver
• Planned and held a SIG on the new “Broader Impacts” requirements for National Science Foundation funding at the CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver
• Used the new chi-policy listserver to distribute information about public policy to the SIGCHI community
• Took part in the development of and co-signed onto a policy statement originating from USACM about electronic heath record usability
4.2. Education
We have also begun our initiative of outlining a SIGCHI vision on HCI Education issues. Following the appointment of a Vice Chair for Education, Jennifer Preece, we have undertaken a study of the current state of HCI education. The study began in April 2011, and will be completed in December 2011 with a final report due in January 2012. We identified and have engaged a research assistant. Two phases of the three-phase study have been completed. Interviews and surveys of educators, researchers, managers, practitioners and students of HCI have been conducted and analyzed. A preliminary report has been generated and the final stage of the project is under development. The final stage of the study will include: focused surveys and interviews; brainstorming around HCI education methods and needs; and proposals for requirements and specifications for online resources, including social media infrastructures for reaching out to our constituencies, to support the broader HCI education community.
5 Summary of key issue that the membership of SIGCHI will deal with in the next 2-3 years
We will continue to advance the internationalization of SIGCHI in the next few years with a continuing focus on Asia. We will also entertain specific proposals for workshops in other areas such as, but not limited to, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and South America.
We will continue to seek to enhance our relationships to other societies and organizations broadly concerned with human computer interaction.
In 2011, SIGCHI has 35 active local chapters on 5 continents, of which 32 are professional and 3 student chapters. SIGCHI Local Chapters are doing valuable work in gathering locally together students, academics, as well as practitioners in the field of HCI. This is why SIGCHI is actively searching for better means to support our chapters. Besides the existing ACM chapter benefits, during FY 2010-2011 SIGCHI EC decided to put forward the following benefits and opportunities for the SIGCHI Local Chapters:
• community infrastructure, web tools and resources
• CHI course notes distribution for chapter members
• Support for local chapters to better benefit from the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program.
SIGCOMM FY’11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Bruce Davie, Chair
SIGCOMM continues to be a vibrant organization serving the broad community of people interested in all aspects of computer networking. We continue to run a stable of successful, high-impact conferences, several of these being in co-operation with other SIGs. There are a number of highlights to report from the past year.
One of the major efforts of the SIG for several years has been to increase the involvement of members of the community from outside the U.S. and Europe. This year was quite a milestone in that regard, as SIGCOMM became the first SIG to hold its annual flagship conference in India. The conference, held in New Delhi, was very successful, with attendance numbers comparable to prior years but with much greater representation from the Indian subcontinent. Fundraising from local companies was very effective and enabled a large amount of travel support to be offered to students both from the region and from around the world. The local organizing committee went beyond the normal call of duty to ensure smooth logistics and a good experience for all attendees.
In the same vein, the SIG has increased its funding for regional conferences in the networking field as well as adding additional funds to the geodiversity travel grant program. The latter program enables young faculty from under-represented regions to attend our flagship conference; this year we have expanded it to also allow support for graduate students. We have also added COMSNETS, a major networking conference in India, to the set of regional conferences we support financially, while continuing to support the Latin American Networking Conference (LANC) and the Asian Internet Engineering Conference (AINTEC). We seek to foster the success of these conferences by means such as invited speaker support and student travel grants.
The SIGCOMM newsletter, Computer Communications Review, continues to thrive as a journal with high quality and timely articles under S. Keshav's editorial guidance. An online submission and review system has been established, allowing authors and reviewers to interact with each other anonymously before a paper acceptance decision is made. This has substantially improved authors' perception of the review process and simultaneously improved the paper quality. Acceptance rates for the newsletter are around 20%, on par with top-tier conferences. CCR turnaround time is rapid compared to most journals: for technical papers it is 8 weeks for review and 16 weeks for publication; for editorials it is 1-3 days for review and 6 weeks for publication. We continue to offer both online and print access to the newsletter. This year we have begun to make some changes to the online presence of CCR, and we are examining the possibility of offering online-only SIG memberships in 2012 to those members who don't require a print copy of the journal.
With respect to awards, SIGCOMM has recognized Vern Paxson with the SIGCOMM award for lifetime achievement; he will receive the award and present a keynote talk at the annual SIGCOMM conference in August 2011 in Toronto. SIGCOMM also has recognized "They Can Hear Your Heartbeats: Non-Invasive Security for Implanted Medical Devices" S. Gollakota, H. Hassanieh, B. Ransford, D. Katabi and K. Fu as the best paper in that conference. Two "Test of Time" awards will also be given at the conference for the best papers with long-lasting impact from 10-12 years ago. Those papers are both from SIGCOMM 2001: "Chord:A Scalable Peer-to-peer Lookup Service for Internet Applications", by I. Stoica, R. Morris, D. Karger, M. F. Kaashoek, and H. Balakrishnan, and "A Scalable Content-addressable Network", by S. Ratnasamy, P. Francis, M. Handley, R. Karp, and S. Shenker.
SIGCOMM has recognized Nick Feamster with its Rising Star award; he received his award and delivered a keynote address at the CoNEXT conference held in December 2010 in Philadelphia. We have also instituted a new doctoral dissertation award, to recognize the best Ph.D. thesis in the computer networking field in a given year. The award runs on a similar timetable to the ACM's best thesis award.
After several years of diligent service, Ramesh Govindan has stepped down as Awards Chair, and Bruce Maggs has been appointed in his place. Bruce will administer the numerous awards programs that the SIG offers.
During the year, three SIGCOMM members were recognized as ACM Fellows:
past SIGCOMM Chair Mark Crovella, Stefan Savage, and David Rosenblum.
The following SIGCOMM members were made Distinguished Members of ACM:
Martin Arlitt, Serge Fdida, Yu Charlie Hu, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Ramachandran Ramjee,
Joseph. D. Touch, Alec Wolman, and Jun Xu.
At the start of FY2011, Olivier Bonaventure had just taken on the role of Education Director for SIGCOMM. With a full year in the position, Olivier's work is bearing fruit. We have an education website
(education.) by which members of the community are able to share education-related resources. There will be a workshop on computer networking education at this year's annual conference. Olivier is also running a Shadow PC for the CoNEXT conference as a way to educate the current generation of graduate students in the best practices of technical paper reviewing and program committee operation.
SIGCOMM has now had a Technical Steering Committee in place for just over a year. The TSC has responsibility for selecting PC chairs, crafting policies related to the PC operation and technical program, and providing a repository of knowledge about the technical aspects of the conference. Administrative and fiscal responsibility for the conference continues to reside with the SIGCOMM EC. The TSC has advised the 2011 PC Chairs and just selected PC chairs for the 2012 conference. We will shortly have the first opportunity to appoint new members to the TSC and two members' terms expire.
In addition to supporting regional conferences, the SIG has capitalized on its strong financial position to increase general student travel support to both SIGCOMM and CoNEXT conferences. CoNEXT this year will take place in Tokyo, the first time it has been outside of Europe or the U.S.
The CoNEXT conference is growing into a high-quality, general networking conference of comparable quality to the SIGCOMM conference. With a smaller audience than SIGCOMM, it can be a little more interactive, and has had successful panel sessions and student workshops. At CoNEXT 2010 in Philadelphia, an industry panel session focused on ways to improve the level of interaction among industrial and academic participants in our community, with representatives from Cisco, Conviva, CMU, Google, Intel, Juniper, and MIT.
The issue of how networking research can have more impact on industry continues to attract attention. We have planned a second panel for the upcoming SIGCOMM conference and are examining the approaches taken by other SIGs (some of which have entire "industry days" at their conferences, for example).
We continue to be concerned about the extreme selectivity of the flagship conference (which has an acceptance rate around 10%). As long as submissions rates remain high and we keep the conference single track, it is hard to directly affect the acceptance rate. We are attempting to build CoNext up to a level that it is seen as a peer conference to the Sigcomm conference, with a particular focus on high quality program committees and PC Chairs, to offer another venue for publication. We also seek to ensure that the paper selection process at the flagship conference is as fair and open as possible, something we hope the TSC can facilitate. Finally, we are attempting to make journal publication a more realistic alternative to the flagship conference. We have committed to provide financial support to the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking to defray some of the page costs of longer papers, and our representatives on the ToN steering committee are also looking at ways to foster more community engagement (e.g. via online forums) with journal publications.
Finally, the SIGCOMM main conference continues to thrive. In keeping with ACM's mission of becoming a more truly global organization, we are holding our flagship conference outside North America two years out of three. After the successful 2010 edition in New Delhi, SIGCOMM 2011 returns to North America, with Toronto being the host city. In 2012 we will be holding the conference in Helsinki, Finland.
SIGCSE FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Renee McCauley, Chair
This report concludes my first year as SIGCSE Chair. I want to thank all of the members of the 2010-2013 SIGCSE Board: Daniel Joyce, Vice-Chair, Doug Baldwin, Treasurer, Susan Rodger, Secretary, Barbara Owens, Immediate past-chair, Tiffany Barnes, Mark Guzdial and Amber Settle, our publication editors: John Impagliazzo, Z Sweedyk, and Henry Walker, and my ACM contacts, especially Ginger Ignatoff, for their support this past year.
Awards:
Each year, SIGCSE gives two awards for outstanding contributions to the computer science education community. The SIGCSE Award for Lifetime Service to the Computer Science Education Community was presented to Gordon Davies, Department of Computing, Open University (retired). The SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education was presented to Matthias Felleisen, Trustee Professor at College of Computer Science, Northeastern University. Both awards were presented during the 2011 Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education.
In 2011, two of our conferences gave their first ever "best paper" awards.
The SIGCSE 2011 best paper award went to Kathi Fisler, Guillaume Marceau and Shriram Krishnamurthi for their paper entitled "Measuring the Effectiveness of Error Messages Designed for Novice Programmers."
ITICSE 2011 best paper award went to Randy Connolly for his paper "Beyond Good and Evil Impacts: Rethinking the Social Issues Components in Our Computing Curricula."
Conferences:
SIGCSE sponsored three conferences: the Technical Symposium, the ITiCSE conference and the research conference known as the ICER workshop.
The International Computing Education Research Workshop (ICER 2010) was held in Aarhus, Denmark at Aarhus University, August 9 & 10, and was chaired by Michael Caspersen. A Doctoral Consortium for Ph.D. students pursuing computer science education research was held on August 8. The workshop included 12 papers and one keynote address. It also included two workshops: a pre-conference workshop on assessment and a post-conference workshop on how a socio-cultural framework can enrich (research in) computer science education. The number of attendees was 38.
The Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2011) was held at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel in Dallas, Texas, March 9-12, and was chaired by Ellen Walker and Thomas Cortina. The conference drew a record crowd and included 3 keynote presentations, 107 papers, 22 panel or special sessions, 35 workshops, 48 posters, 36 birds-of-a-feather sessions, 7 videos, a student research competition, and a robot hoedown. The number of attendees was 1187.
The Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education conference (ITiCSE 2011) was held in Darmstadt, Germany at Technische Universität Darmstadt, and was chaired by Guido Rößling. The program included 3 working groups, two keynote presentations, and 65 papers, 52 posters and 16 tips, techniques, or courseware presentations. The number of attendees was 199.
In addition, SIGCSE cooperates with many groups and grants in-cooperation status to several conferences, giving us an even larger impact across the world.
Other accomplishments:
* The SIGCSE by-laws were changed to officially re-establish the immediate past-chair as a member of the Executive Board.
* Membership benefits were changed to provide members with a single CD each year that contains all conference proceedings, the SIGCSE Bulletin, and the ITiCSE conference working group reports.
* SIGCSE completed the 2011 fiscal year with a healthy surplus.
SIGCSE is active in many areas and innovative programs, including:
* endorsement of the Computing Principles project, which involves development of a new course to broaden participation in computing and computer science.
* partnership with other disciplinary societies in Project Kaleidoscope's (PKAL) Mobilizing STEM Education for a Sustainable Future.
* participation in curriculum revision efforts in the areas of Software Engineering and Computer Engineering
* support of various special projects, including the "Taulbee for the Rest of US" (TauRUS) project to survey U.S. institutions offering undergraduate degrees in Computer Science to collect information on degrees, students and faculty
* funding of speakers from SIGCSE conferences to present at several in-cooperation conferences through our speakers fund
Key issues that the membership of that SIG will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years:
* An important issue will be dealing with increased international expansion of ACM. SIGCSE already has an international presence with a significant international membership. We sponsor an annual conference held outside the U.S. (ITiCSE) and another workshop that rotates through being held in the U.S. Europe and Australasia. What we currently do not have is any international representation on the SIGCSE Board. We have an Australasian "chapter" (which seems like an odd name for such a large number of members and geographic space), and are discussing European, Indian, Chinese and South American expansion (more "chapters"?). Managing this growth and providing an equitable voice for these regions will be a key issue for SIGCSE.
* SIGCSE will continue to participate in ongoing ACM education projects such as curriculum revisions
* We will continue to collaborate with CSTA on K-12 issues.
SIGDA FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Patrick Madden, Chair
Awards Given Out:
SIGDA Distinguished Service Awards
Prof. Qinru Qiu, service to SIGDA through the SIGDA E-Newsletter Prof. Martin Wong, service to SIGDA through the Outstanding New Faculty Award Committee Dr. Peter Feldmann, service through the Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award committee Prof. Radu Marculescu, service through a number of programs, including the Outstanding New Faculty and Outstanding PhD Award Committees Prof. Qing Wu, for service through the SIGDA E-Newsletter and YSSP Program at DAC
ACM Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in EDA to Nishant Patil
SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award to Prof. Farinaz Koushanfar from Rice University
ACM/IEEE A. R. Newton Award to Jason Cong/UCLA and Eugene Ding/Xilinx
Pioneering Achievement Award to Scott Kirkpatrick
SIGDA Technical Leadership Award
Natarajan Viswanathan, IBM
Frank Liu, IBM
Raju Balasuramanian
Zhuo Li, IBM
All recipients were heavily involved in benchmarking efforts.
Significant Papers
Each of our major conferences and symposia have had best paper awards.
The major award for a related transaction is:
TODAES Best Paper Award to
Meikang Qiu and Edwin H.-M. Sha, for the paper "Cost minimization while satisfying hard/soft timing constraints for heterogeneous embedded systems"
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. Use of video taped demonstrations (for display on the web) was expanded; selection criteria became more strict.
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.
Student Research Competition: SIGDA participated in the ACM SRC again. Two winners at the conference level (which took place at DAC) were in the top three at the SRC finals.
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. 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. DASS is held in alternating years. This year’s speakers were:
Srinivas Katkoori (U South Florida)
Gi-Joon Nam (IBM)
Chris Myers (U. Utah)
Natasa Miskov-Zivanov (U. Pittsburgh)
Jennifer Dworak (SMU)
Mondira Pant (Intel)
Philip Brisk (UC Riverside)
Peter Feldmann (IBM)
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. Some TCs are still struggling, and have not been as productive as we might hope.
Brief Summary
SIGDA continues to be 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). For this past DAC, there was a modest surplus ($100k over allocation); given the size of DAC, we have higher expectations.
There has been significant concern over how DAC handles its finances and budgeting. Contracts for DAC management and exhibits services were considered this year; SIGDA has been dissatisfied with the current vendor, and the staff at ACM share our concerns. Considerable effort was put into obtaining good bids from alternate vendors, and the ACM staff should be commended for their work.
Alternate vendors produced outstanding bids, and had the full support of SIGDA. The DAC executive committee voted in favor of switching exhibits management to a new vendor. Switching vendors would have saved DAC between $100k and $300k per year, and would have brought in vendors who have provided excellent service to other ACM conferences.
Unfortunately, IEEE and EDAC, the other two sponsors of DAC, refused to support the use of the alternate vendors. This created an impasse; the DAC executive committee was asked to vote again, and shifted their support as a means to end the impasse. The SIGDA board feels that this was a costly mistake, and not in the best interests of SIGDA members, ACM members, and the DAC community as a whole.
SIGDA has shifted the web site to be based on Drupal; the transition has gone smoothly.
In the Fall of 2010, the SIGDA Treasurer, Prof. Tony Givargis, asked to step down from the board for personal reasons. He was replaced by Prof. Srinivas Katkoori, who had been active in a number of SIGDA events.
In July 2011 (after the end of the financial year), the SIGDA board and a number of volunteers met in Washington DC – this was a board meeting, coupled with a meeting with NSF directors. We believe we have communicated the concerns of design automation researchers, and have opened a dialog which will allow SIGDA members to work more effectively with NSF.
SIGDOC FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 – June 2011
Submitted by: Brad Mehlenbacher, Chair
_ACM 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.
_ACM SIGDOC Mission Statement
Until 2003, ACM 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. SIGDOC
• Promotes the professional development of its members
• Encourages interdisciplinary problem solving related to online and print documentation and communication technologies
• Provides avenues for publication and the exchange of professional information
• Supports research that focuses on the needs and goals of humans in technological contexts, and
• Supports the development and improvement of communication technologies, including applications, interfaces, and documentation.
_ACM SIGDOC Officers (effective July 1st, 2010)
• Brad Mehlenbacher, NC State University, USA Chair
Awards Chair
• Rob Pierce, IBM Rational Software, USA Vice-Chair
• Liza Potts, Old Dominion University, USA Secretary/Treasurer
Newsletter Editor
• Ashley Williams, Bridgeline Software, USA Information Director
• Michael Albers, East Carolina University, USA Graduate Competition Chair
2010 Poster Sessions Chair
• Junia Anacleto, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, 2010 Program Co-Chair Brazil
• Renata Fortes, Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas, 2010 General Co-Chair e de Computação, Brazil
• Carlos J. Costa, ISCTE, Portugal 2010 Program Chair
• David Novick, University of Texas at El Paso, USA Member-at-Large
• Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin, USA Member-at-Large
• Manuela Aparicio, Adetti/ ISCTE, Portugal Member-at-Large
• Scott Tilley, Florida Institute of Technology, USA Previous Chair
• Irene Frawley, ACM HQ, USA ACM Program Coordinator
_ACM SIGDOC Viability
In 2010, SIGDOC was found viable was found viable for two years to evaluate its decrease in membership and conference participation. The next viability review is in 2012.
_ACM SIGDOC 2010 Conference Summary
The ACM SIGDOC 2010 Design of Sustainable Communication: 28th International Conference on Design of Communication was partially supported by Sociedade Brasileira de Computação (), Departments of Computing and Nursing, Universidade Federal de São Carlos (), Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (), Universidade de São Paulo (), Universidade Federal de São Carlos (), and the São Paulo Research Foundation (). The conference was held at the BROA Gulf Resort in São Carlos/São-Paulo, Brazil, on September 26-29th (). The Conference Co-Chairs were Dr. Renata Fortes (Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação) and Junia Anacleto (Universidade Federal de São Carlos) and the Program Chair was Dr. Carlos Costa (ISCTE, Portugal). The program committee had 43 members (33 academic and 10 industry representatives). Twenty-six members were from the USA, 10 from Brazil, and single members represented Portugal, Germany, France, Canada, Mozambique, and the UK). The conference cost was approximately $7700.00.
The conference call for papers attracted a wide range of papers, experience reports, workshops, and posters on the design of communication and games, organizational contexts, social media, the future of documentation, accessibility, interface design, and learning (). The conference papers were published in the Proceedings of the 28th Conference on Design of Communication (ACM Press). As well, complementing the ACM SIGDOC 2010 conference was IWCSC 2010 (the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Communication for Sustainable Communities). IWCSC () was organized by Roberto Calderon (UBC), Vania Paula de Almeida Neris (UFSCar), and Junia Anacleto (UFSCar).
_ACM SIGDOC 2010 Conference Invited Speakers and Awards
We invited the following speakers to our ACM SIGDOC 2010 Conference this year: Margaret Burnett (Gender HCI: What About the Software?), Claudio Pinhanez (Designing the Interaction with Service Systems), and Rob Pierce (SIGDOC—Reviewing the History from a Company Perspective). Dr. Margaret Burnett is a Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University and a co-Founder of the EUSES Consortium, a collaboration among Oregon State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Cambridge, University of Nebraska, University of Washington, and IBM, to help End Users Shape Effective Software (EUSES). Dr. Claudio Pinhanez is a research scientist at IBM Brazil and got his PhD. from the MIT Media Laboratory in 1999, working on the design and construction of interactive environments. He has also been a visiting researcher at ATR-MIC laboratory (Kyoto, Japan) and Sony Computer Science Laboratory (Tokyo), and a featured artist at the NTT ICC museum in Tokyo. In 2003, Dr. Pinhanez was nominated the Most Promising Scientist with a Graduate Degree award by the Hispanic Engineers National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC). Rob Pierce is Vice-Chair of ACM SIGDOC and an Advisory Information Developer for IBM Corporation’s user assistance team lead for Rational Asset Manager. He has a B.A. in Computer Science from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Graduate Certificate in Software Technical Writing from Middlesex Community College, Bedford, Massachusetts.
In addition, every other year, the ACM SIGDOC Board honors an individual or individuals with the Rigo Award (named after Joseph Rigo, SIGDOC’s founder). The award celebrates an individual’s lifetime contribution to the field of communication design, and we were delighted to announce this year that the 2010 co-recipients of the award were Dr. Maria Cecilia Calani-Baranauskas and Dr. Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza. Dr. Baranauskas is Associate Professor at the Institute of Computing, IC, at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, and is known for her instrumental role in bringing human-computer interaction (HCI) to Brazil (including organizing the first national conference in HCI held there). Her research interests have focused on HCI and particularly on the relationship between semiotics, participatory design, and collaborative learning systems. Dr. de Souza is Professor of Computer Science at the Departmento de Informática, PUC-Rio, Brazil, and started the first graduate program in HCI in Brazil. She has published or co-published several books on semiotic engineering and HCI. As well as being pioneers in HCI, Dr. Bananauskas and Dr. de Souza have been instrumental in bringing an international presence to HCI and for working to strengthen research ties across borders.
_ACM SIGDOC Significant Papers
Martins, Oliveira, and da Graca C. Pimentel published “Designing the user experience in iTV-based interactive learning objects,” Kelly, Abbott, Harris, and DiMarco published “Toward an ontology of rhetorical figures,” and Flores, Miletto, Pimenta, Miranda, and Keller published “Musical interaction patterns: Communicating computer music knowledge in a multidisciplinary project.”
Numerous notable papers on socio-cultural influences connected to the management and use of social media were published in this year’s conference proceedings. These papers, in particular, highlighted the multidisciplinary nature of ACM SIGDOC’s objects of inquiry, methodologies, and media applications.
_ACM SIGDOC Publications
Since 2009, Liza Potts has served in the position of General Editor of ACM SIGDOC’s Quarterly Newsletter from Rob Pierce who served as editor for 9 years. Release of the newsletter is announced each quarter via the ACM SIGDOC members’ listserv and is available in general via the ACM SIGDOC website (). Archived versions of past newsletters are also available (). 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.
Also, ACM SIGDOC expanded its membership communications by creating a print brochure last year and has been distributing it at related conference events and to strategic university departments (for example, University of Washington and MIT). Finally, ACM SIGDOC is actively engaged in various social media spaces (for example, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Slideshare, Twitter, and Wikipedia).
_ACM SIGDOC Membership
ACM SIGDOC currently has 184 members and this number has been dropping for the last several years. The SIGDOC Website now explicitly details the benefits of joining SIGDOC () in addition to encouraging existing members to volunteer (). The SIGDOC Board continued to focus on strategies for addressing membership numbers. We agreed to aim at encouraging greater graduate student/campus involvement, to establish international collaborations and membership, and to reach out to the broader communities of writers, information engineers, technical communicators, and information technology professionals working with information.
As well, conference planning for the next several conferences is currently ahead of schedule, reflecting our commitment recruiting new volunteers and future board members.
_ACM SIGDOC Chapters
SIGDOC currently has two very active chapters: EuroSIGDOC: ACM SIGDOC European Chapter and () and SIGDOC at NC State University (). EuroSIGDOC hosted a Workshop on Open Source and Design of Communication (OSDOC2010) in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 8th, 2010 ().
_Key Issues for ACM SIGDOC in coming year include to
• Support our new SIG chapters (Europe and NC State University), and to develop policies for managing them effectively and for increasing SIG chapter activities.
• Complete an ACM SIGDOC Board wiki for sharing experiences and lessons learned in previous conferences into current and upcoming conferences.
• Serve the needs of our current members and to find ways to increase our membership by attracting new members, volunteers, and board officers.
SIGecom FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 – June 2011
Submitted by: David Pennock, Chair
SIGecom's three primary activities are its annual Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC), its electronic newsletter SIGecom Exchanges, and its new journal, ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC).
The Twelfth ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'11) was held June 5-9 2011 in San Jose, CA in conjunction with ACM FCRC. Over 182 people attended, second only to last year's record attendance, a great showing considering that official attendance is often down in FCRC years. The healthy attendance combined with substantial corporate support, including from eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, made this a financial as well as a technical success. The conference attracted 189 submissions from authors in academia and industry around the world.
After discussion and deliberation among the program committee, senior program committee, and program chairs, forty-nine papers were selected for presentation at the conference. Thirty-eight of these are published in these proceedings. The remaining eleven, at the authors' request, are abstracts with pointers to full working papers. This option accommodates the practices of fields outside of computer science in which conference publishing can preclude journal publishing. The 49 accepted papers formed a very strong technical program covering a range of topics from core theoretical foundations to practical innovations in advertising and finance.
Topics covered included areas of typical strength for the conference like economic computations, mechanism design, cost sharing, online advertising, and auctions. Other topics included kidney exchanges, content moderation, peer prediction, voting, privacy, peer-to-peer payments, network formation, matching, prediction markets, and financial derivatives.
Two papers shared the EC'11 Best Student Paper Award:
"Polynomial-time Computation of Exact Correlated Equilibrium in Compact Games", by Albert Xin Jiang and Kevin Leyton-Brown, and "A Truthful Randomized Mechanism for Combinatorial Public Projects via Convex Optimization", by Shaddin Dughmi.
A record five workshops were associated with EC'11: three new workshops and two workshops with long-term affiliations with EC. Five fascinating tutorials (also a record) rounded out the program. Over 100 people attended the workshops and tutorials.
Next year's Program co-Chairs, Kevin Leyton-Brown (University of British Columbia) and Panos Ipeirotis (New York University), will aim to continue the momentum, in conjunction with Boi Faltings (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) as General Chair. EC'12 will be held June 4-8 2012 in Valencia, Spain in conjunction with the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
Our newsletter, "SIGecom Exchanges", is published twice per year as a free online resource for members and others. The new Editor-in-Chief, Yiling Chen (Harvard), has hit the ground running, continuing the rejuvenation of the newsletter begun by the previous editor Vincent Conitzer (Duke), including soliciting survey articles written by invited leaders in the field, a re-design of the website with the help of Daniel Reeves (Beeminder) and Felix Fischer (Harvard), and a mathematical puzzle accompanying each issue edited by Daniel. The latter addition has proven very popular, with solutions often flowing in within hours of publication.
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.
This year, a proposal by Vincent Conitzer, Joan Feigenbaum, Preston McAfee (Yahoo!), and David Pennock (Yahoo!) for a new ACM journal on Economics and Computation was accepted by the ACM Publications Board.
Vincent and Preston are the first co-editors, and we have lined up an exceptional and global editorial board. Felix Fischer has created the initial web site for the journal and the Manuscript Central service is now up and running and accepting our first submissions. We are thrilled to finally have a journal outlet for research at the intersection of computer science and economics, the first of its kind and a venue with significant demand.
We are close to finalizing a formal EC Best Paper Award and we plan to draft 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’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
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 2011, with 6 positions on the committee being open for election. Three members of the board were reelected: U. O’Reilly, F. Rothlauf, L. Spector. Three new board members were elected: A. Auger, K. Stanley and M. Pelikan. The Executive Committee also voted on a new slate of officers. The previous officers were: Darrell Whitley (chair), John Koza (vice chair), Una-May O’Reilly (secretary), and Wolfgang Banzhaf (treasurer). The newly elected officers are Wolfgang Banzhaf (chair), Una-May O’Reilly (vice chair), Franz Rothlauf (treasurer) and Marc Schoenauer (secretary). Pier Luca Lanzi continues as editor of SIGEVO’s newsletter.
A business meeting of the Executive Committee was held in Dublin, Ireland at the GECCO conference on July 7, 2011.
The 2010 GECCO conference in Portland 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 2011 GECCO conference in Dublin received almost 700 submissions, with attendance of approximately 600 individuals. The acceptance rate was approximately 38 percent. The GECCO conference is attempting to alternate between holding the conference in the US and outside the US. Attendance is usually greater in odd numbered years when the conference is held outside the US. There are at least two reasons for this. Approximately half of our attendees are based in Europe. The second reason is that there were more competing conferences in even numbered years. The 2012 conference will be held in Philadelphia. We expect attendance to be approximately 400. Early planning is underway for 2013, when we plan to hold the conference in Europe again. The General Chair for 2012 will be Jason Moore (Dartmouth) and the editor-in-chief will be Terry Soule (University of Idaho).
Recent surveys of our community indicate that approximately 40 percent of our members are based in North America, 40 percent are based in Europe and 20 percent are based elsewhere. We have seen an increase in attendance from Latin America.
The Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA) meeting was held in January 2011 in Austria and was organized by Hans Georg Beyer and William Langdon.
We have been trying for four years to obtain an agreement between MIT Press and ACM to include our key journals in the ACM digital library. Last year, the journal Evolutionary Computation became part of the ACM digital library, including both back issues as well as the most recent issue of the journal. Discussions are under way concerning how to make Evolutionary Computation a joint publication of both MIT Press and ACM.
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 three times with ACM; the issue was raised again at the last SIG Governing Board meeting but it is an issue still unresolved.
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. Our goal is to be the highest quality conference in the field of evolutionary computation. We are the most selective conference in the field, and because of this, we attract the strongest papers of any conference in the field.
AWARDS:
We now have an “Impact Award” in place. It was approved earlier this year by ACM. 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.
This year the Impact Award was given to
Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimiser with Breeding and Subpopulations.
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, 2001.
M. Lovbjerg, T.K. Rasmussen and T. Krink
Several competitions were held at GECCO-2011. 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 a third prize were announced at the SIGEVO Annual Meeting on July 10, 2011
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 Communications of the ACM for possible publication.
The 2011 “Human Competitive” Gold Medal Award
GA-FreeCell: Evolving Solvers for the Game of FreeCell.
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, 2011.
A. Elyasaf, A. Hauptpman, M. Sipper
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Condensed Abstract
We evolve heuristics to guide staged deepening search for the hard game of FreeCell, obtaining top-notch solvers for this NP-Complete, human-challenging puzzle. We first devise several novel heuristic measures and then employ a coevolutionary genetic algorithm to find efficient combinations of these heuristics. Our results significantly surpass the best published solver to date by three distinct measures: 1) Number of search nodes is reduced by 87%; 2) time to solution is reduced by 93%; and 3) average solution length is reduced by 41%. Our top solver is the best published FreeCell player to date, solving 98% of the standard Microsoft 32K problem set, and also able to beat high-ranking human players.
Select Best Papers from the GECCO Conference
From the “Genetic Algorithms” Track
How Crossover Helps in Pseudo-Boolean Optimization;
T. Koetzing, D. Sudholt, and M. Theile
From the “Genetic Programming” Track
Rethinking Multilevel Selection in Genetic Programming;
S. Wu and W. Banzhaf
SIGGRAPH FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 – June 2011
Submitted by: G. Scott Owen, President
For each section of the report, the name of the person responsible for that activity is given. That person is the Chair of the responsible committee, for example for the Chapters report, Scott Lang is the Chair of the Chapters Committee.
ACM SIGGRAPH FY11 Budget Report (Jeff Jortner, Treasurer)
Opening Fund Balance: $2,337,885
Closing Fund Balance: $2,488,075
Income Areas
-------------------------
Dues: $230K
Publications (includes ACM Digital Library): $339K
SIGGRAPH Video Review Sales: $70K
Contributions: $5K
Conference Revenue: $7,546K
Committee Expenses
--------------------------
Executive Committee: $187K
Publications: $107.5K
Education: $13K
Information Services: $37K
Chapters: $32K
Arts: $1K
Communications: $44K
Small Conferences & External Relations: $2K
Conference Expenses: $7,236K
Awards Committee (Jim Foley, ACM SIGGRAPH Vice President)
Awards Presented at SIGGRAPH 2010
Computer Graphics Achievement Award – Jessica Hodgins, CMU
Significant New Research Award – Alexei “Alyosha” Erfos, CMU
Outstanding Service Award – Kellogg Booth, University of British Columbia
Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement – Yoichiro Kawaguchi, University of Tokyo
Awards Committee Chairs
Technical Awards John Hughes, appointed 2009 (first term)
Outstanding Service Award: Joe Marks, appointed 2008 (first term)
Distinguished Artist Award: Cynthia Beth Rubin, appointed 2008 (first term)
A new chair for the Distinguished Artist Award committee has been approved by the SIGGRAPH EC, to be effective July 2011: Bruce Wands, School of Visual Arts, New York.
SIGGRAPH Conference Advisory Group (Joe Marks)
SIGGRAPH 2010, the world's premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, welcomed 22,549 artists, research scientists, gaming experts and developers, filmmakers, students, and academics from 79 countries around the globe to Los Angeles. In addition, more than 160 industry organizations exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2010.
"We were thrilled to be back in LA this year in the vibrant downtown area, experiencing and enjoying the wonder of all the latest research and innovations," said Terrence Masson, SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair. "SIGGRAPH once again served as the place where art, film, science, research, and technology converged for an entire week. We look to build onto this momentum in 2011 when we host SIGGRAPH in Vancouver - a growing hotbed for the computer graphics and entertainment industry.”
In all, more than 900 speakers participated in the conference through a variety of talks, sessions, panels, papers, presentations, and screenings.
Highlights from SIGGRAPH 2010 included:
Keynote presentations from industry experts:
Don Marinelli, Executive Producer, Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center
Jim Morris, General Manager and Executive Vice President of Production, Pixar Animation Studios
The renowned SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival, highlighting juried and curated animation from around the globe. Winners in several categories included:
Best in Show Award Winner: “Loom”, Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, and Csaba Letay, Polynoid, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Jury Award Winner: “Poppy”, James Cunningham, Delf Productions, New Zealand
Best Student Project Prize Winner: “The Wonder Hospital”, Beomsik Shimbe Shim, California Institute of the Arts, USA
This year, a new program called SIGGRAPH Dailies! focused on the craft, artistry, and behind-the-scenes/never-told stories from the production community. The program featured work from films such as “Toy Story 3”, “Tangled”, “Percy Jackson & the Olympians”, “A Christmas Carol”, “The Princess and the Frog”, “Ratatouille”, “Up”, and more.
A continued focus on videogames highlighted real-time rendering content with Live Real-Time Demos of cutting-edge real-time rendering applications, including games such as Blur, God of War III, and LOVE. Game studios that presented at SIGGRAPH 2010 included: Activision Studio Central, Bungie, LucasArts, Naughty Dog, Square Enix R&D, Ubisoft Montreal, Valve, and more. SIGGRAPH was the perfect place for film and game professionals to connect, with content specifically designed to appeal to both industries.
The Disney Learning Challenge was an open competition sponsored by Disney Research with the goal of finding new and creative ways to use technology to make learning fun for children. From a group of 15 finalists, “Refraction: Teaching Fractions Through Gameplay” by Erik Andersen and Zoran Popović, won a majority of the $10,000 prize fund and tours of Disney R&D and Walt Disney Studio.
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 explore related fields of audio, robotics, visualization, and perception by presenters from all around the globe - from Bangladesh to Switzerland.
Art Paper presentations on topics explored the multi-sensory nature of human experience in a technologically enhanced environment. SIGGRAPH 2010 collaborated with Leonardo, the Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology to publish the SIGGRAPH 2010 Art Papers in a special issue.
SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (Yong Tsui Lee)
SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (Yong Tsui Lee)
Seoul, South Korea, 18 December 2010 – The third annual SIGGRAPH Asia captured
the imagination of the computer graphics and interactive techniques community this
week with a wide spectrum of digital innovations. Over 7,600 professionals and
enthusiasts from 45 countries attended the conference and exhibition in Seoul, the
capital city of South Korea, for four days of research, development and industry insights
that will push the boundaries of computer graphics and interactive techniques in years to
come.
“SIGGRAPH Asia has outdone itself once again. The high calibre of the works on display
clearly reflects the strengthening digital media scene in Asia. The array of inspiring ideas
presented over the past four days has also created a lot of excitement in the industry
and helped raise its profile locally and regionally,” said Hyeong-Seok Ko, Conference
Chair, SIGGRAPH Asia 2010.
A Window to Tomorrow’s Lifestyles
In its third edition this year, SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 continued to demonstrate its
relevance through the presentation of best results in peer-reviewed research. Some of
the fields covered in this conference included character and crowd animation; sampling
and filtering; geometric and volumetric reconstruction, modeling and rendering;
computational imaging and video. A comprehensive showcase of emerging technologies,
supporting today’s hottest trends in smart phones, social networking and 3D graphics,
complemented this line-up, with several sessions aimed at helping the community keep
up-to-date with tools and technologies that support tomorrow’s lifestyles.
To bolster the ubiquitous mobile technology, Introduction to Processing on Android
Devices taught designers, artists and students how to implement Java programming on
Android phones. Additionally, the Poster display A System for Activity Visualization of
Game Experience on a Smart Phone detailed a game-simulation system that can allow
game developers to connect with users’ activity schedules through their smart phones.
With the social media revolution edging mobility and social networking closer, the Poster
display Life Twitter: Connecting Everyday Commodities with Social Networking Services
envisioned a system that uses sensor bundles to automatically “twitter” users’ activities
to the social network. This means that in future, users of the social network can get their
status updated instantly, without having to separately describe it in a connected session.
New Perspectives on Familiar Favorites
Visitors to SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 also enjoyed production related sessions with a focus
on 2010’s blockbusters and other film and game releases. Award-winning production
teams, who have played a part in the makings of many popular productions, shared
insights and secrets into creating animations and visual effects which have awed
audiences over the past year.
One of the well-received sessions was Bulldozer Trash from ‘Toy Story 3’. In this Special
Session, attendees were introduced to the rubbish dump death scene in Toy Story 3,
focusing on the new and interactive tools that were used to create the iconic scene.
Proving its position as an industry-leading piece, Disney and Pixar Animation Studios’
Toy Story 3 was also selected by SIGGRAPH Asia’s program committee as a feature in
other programs, such as the Course ‘Toy Story 3’ Double Feature: Characters and
Lighting led by Brian Green, and the Technical Sketch entitled Simulation-Aided
Performance: Behind the Coils of Slinky Dog in ‘Toy Story 3’.
For science-fiction fans around the world, the Star Wars franchise, which entered the
twentieth century with three prequels, two games and a television animation series, is
the epitome of what computer graphics and special effects could achieve. At SIGGRAPH
Asia 2010, Lucasfilm speakers presented a variety of programs including a Special
Session Creating New Games from Lucasfilm Favorites, the Computer Animation
Festival Panel session ‘The Clone Wars’: Setting the Bar for TV Animation and the
screening of animation clip ‘Star Wars, The Clone Wars’: The Zillo Beast Strikes Back.
Finally, the Special Session Photomodel and Sequence Light Setup on ‘Iron Man 2’ laid
truth to the fact that many special effects enthusiasts are still hooked on the excellent
fight sequences in the movie chart-topper. Attendees were amazed by the revelation that
some of the “natural sets” were in fact created virtually by photo modeling and lighting
sequences.
3-Dimensional Entertainment
2010 was also the year when 3D movies and entertainment dominated box offices
across the globe. Mirroring this trend, the technology responsible for this revolution,
known as stereoscopic 3D, was extensively discussed at SIGGRAPH Asia 2010, with a
good number of sessions looking at the intrinsic details of developing 3D movies,
animations and games. Stereoscopy from XY to Z by NVIDIA and Walt Disney
Animation Studios discussed rendering techniques and artistic concepts, providing a
better understanding of stereoscopy and how to make it work more effectively for
viewers. Additionally, a hands-on introduction to 3D displays in the session Build Your
Own 3D Display had attendees fully immersed in building their own low-cost
stereoscopic displays.
Stereoscopic 3D was also discussed at the Technical Papers session Stereoscopic 3D
Copy and Paste, one of the many widely attended Technical Papers sessions at
SIGGRAPH Asia 2010. Additionally, the Technical Paper Content-Adaptive Parallax
Barrier for Automultiscopic 3D Display introduced a new approach that will allow
significant improvements in the resolution and brightness of autostereoscopic displays,
also known as ‘glasses-free 3D’.
Where Innovations and Digital Creations Thrive
Over 100 companies displayed the latest in computer graphics hardware, software and
services across the trade floor, reinforcing the profile of SIGGRAPH Asia as a
networking and collaboration platform for industry and academia. NVIDIA, the world
leader in visual computing technologies, promoted its recently launched Quadro
professional graphics solutions and 3D Vision Pro technology to the worldwide audience
at SIGGRAPH Asia 2010. These new solutions target graphics professionals from a
broad range of industries, including engineering, design and video production.
“SIGGRAPH Asia was a perfect venue to feature our latest Quadro line and the
industry's newest applications that are GPU accelerated,” said Daniel Shapiro, Director
of Marketing, Quadro Line of Professional Graphics Solutions, NVIDIA. “Attendees saw
first-hand how the incredible performance and productivity breakthroughs enabled by the
NVIDIA Fermi architecture are driving a new era of computational visualization.”
Autodesk saw an overwhelming response to its MudboxTM competition, where attendees
were each given 60 minutes to sculpt and texture a given character. Providing a display
of what the future of digital entertainment could look like, Autodesk had a packed
schedule of sessions by leading production studios which have successfully created
works using Autodesk products. The list includes DIGITAL IDEA, FXGear, Harmonix and
Rising Sun Pictures, covering popular film and games such as the Harry Potter Series,
The Lord of the Rings and Rock Band.
Complementing Korea’s Rising Digital Media Scene
As host to SIGGRAPH Asia 2010, Korea’s computer graphics community came out in
full force, as evidenced by the extensive presence of Korean companies and universities
taking part in the event. Eight films produced in Korea were selected for screening at the
Computer Animation Festival, including Memories of the Song by Jin Sung Choi of
Brian’s Film and Mom by Wooksang Chang of Chung-Ang University.
In addition to well-known content creators such as NCsoft Art Director Hyung-Tae Kim
and satirical caricaturist Professor Jae-Dong Park, Korea was also represented by top
research institutions such as Ewha Womans University, Jeju National University, Korea
Institute of Science and Technology and Seoul National University.
The Electronics and Communications Research Institute Korea (ETRI) also presented a
suite of early research works that have the potential to contribute to digital content
creation in the future. These include an interactive 3D digital screen, a real-time pre-
visualization device and a 3-dimensional clone creation method which combined motion
capture and modeling.
To reach out to an even bigger local audience, 10 courses were conducted
simultaneously in dual languages – English and Korean - while the Technical Papers
program included a special Korean language session, presenting four technical papers
from acclaimed institutions.
A Hot Pot of Culture, Creativity and Innovation
With its unique position at the crossroads of technology and traditions, SIGGRAPH Asia
has once again staged an event that combined digital innovations with the region’s rich
cultural influences. From animation pieces that merged the latest techniques with Asia’s
traditional heritage such as Children by Japan’s Trident College of Information
Technology and The Birthday Gift by China’s AIVFX Inc. to research that tackled
localization and globalization such as the Poster display A Japanese Text-Based Mobile
Augmented Reality Application and Course Cross-Cultural User-Interface Design,
SIGGRAPH Asia underlines how technology can bridge societies across the globe.
Scott Owen, President of ACM SIGGRAPH commented, “Over the course of three years,
SIGGRAPH Asia has grown to become the defining computer graphics and interactive
technology conference and trade show in the region, with attendee numbers increasing
year after year. At the same time, Asia’s digital media scene has grown by leaps and
bounds, offering visitors research and works that continue to bring the industry to new
heights. In time to come, I am confident that SIGGRAPH Asia will develop its own
distinctive edge, complementing Asia’s growing reputation as a hub for the world’s most
creative digital media talents.”
Chapters Committee Annual Report, 2010 – 2011 (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 a new Professional Chapter in Taipei (Taiwan). We also have received inquiries to start / re-start chapters in places such as San Francisco, Boston, and Toronto.
SIGGRAPH 2010 SCOOP Team
At SIGGRAPH 2010, we were able to produce and upload 25 podcasts while we were on-site in Los Angeles. All our segments were uploaded to the ACM SIGGRAPH YouTube channel. To date, these videos have over 27,000 views. 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 recorded the course that featured Ed Catmull and Richard Chuang, and produced a DVD (overnight) that was used by SVs to review the orientation session (which we shot for them on Saturday afternoon.)
For SIGGRAPH 2011, we are planning to expand our coverage to include more contributor profiles, CG pioneer interviews, and possibly videos to promote SIGGRAPH Asia 2011.
Collaboration with the Independent game Developers Association (IGDA)
After an introduction from the ACM President, Alain Chesnais, the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters Committee Chair began a conversation with the IGDA on ways to increase the amount of collaboration between our two organizations. Our first effort was to encourage the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters to host local GameJam events as part of IGDA’s Global GameJam activity that takes place over three days in January. Several chapters already had connections with their local IGDA Chapters so there was a good response to this call.
Our future plans include having IGDA representatives attend the SIGGRAPH 2011 Chapters Development Workshop in Vancouver and to educate our chapters on how best to set up and run their own Game Jams. We also hope to facilitate more co-sponsored events between these groups at the chapter level.
Associate Membership Program
Work has continued on this project and we now have almost 10 chapters signed up with the Associate Membership Program.
SIGGRAPH 2010 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 40 chapter leaders from all around the world. Sessions during the workshop covered areas such as Chapter Web Site Guidelines, the Associate Membership Program and Future Directions for the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters. In addition, we also ran our second Logistics Fair. Modeled after the SIGGRAPH Conference Logistics Fair, this session has proven very successful and as a result will be a part of future Chapter Development Workshops.
Over the course of the conference week, the Chapters hold several public meetings. One such meeting is Chapters Business Meeting. Another 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 and one for our Student Chapters.
The annual Chapters Party was held at the “Club 740” nightclub. (We also held our SIGGRAPH 2008 Party there.) Over 1,700 people attended this event. For the fourth year in a row, we also hosted and funded the annual Student Volunteer Alumni Reunion. Close to 80 people attended this activity.
Program Year 2010 – 2011
During the 2010 – 2011 year, our chapters were very active. Total chapter membership around the world is between 2,300 and 2,700 professional and student members. Total attendance at chapter events over the course of the year (from those chapters reporting) is almost 19, 000. Events range from lectures to screenings, multi-day conferences to art talks.
Some examples of topics covered over the last year include: “3D Stereo Essentials”, ”What’s New At JPL”, “Animationese: The International Language of Animation”, “The Camera of the Future”, “Working on Kinect”, “Introducción al Cine Estereoscópico 3D”, “From Spiderman to Avatar, Emily to Benjamin: Achieving Photreal Digital Actors”, “Trademark Law”, “TRON – Cult Favourite to Franchise”, and “Thai Global GameJam 2011”. These are just a few examples of the hundreds of presentations that are hosted by the chapters each year.
Special events hosted by our chapters include “MetroCAF 2010”, “Pixel 5 Vienna Conference”, and the “Minnesota Electronic Theater”.
Over 15 chapters presented the SIGGRAPH 2010 CAF DVDs. In addition, several chapters also presented the SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 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: New York Institute of Technology, IGDA, Institut Supérieur de design, ISART Digital, VES, the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, Singapore Tourism Board, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the Cinequest Film Festival, Vienna University of Technology, AIGA, Texas Film Commission, Universidad Javeriana, UBA (University of Buenos AIres), Art Institute of Michigan, City University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Portland Community College, US Patent and Trademark Office, Chulalongkorn University, Rangsit University, and several local IGDA chapters, just to name a few.
Communications & Membership Committee (Jaime Radwan)
Social Media
A main focus since becoming the Communications & Membership Chair has been the integration, standardization and use of social media to its full advantage. The goal has been to foster those social media efforts started in 2010 by the SIGGRAPH conference into outlets for the organization while expanding them into a rich, year-round experience for the organization and its conferences.
In order to keep the feeds active, the Communications and Membership committee must be constantly connected. Daily tasks have included, and are not limited to:
• Writing content – each post, tweet, news story is carefully composed to make sure a clear consistent message is being sent out to our audience and community. We are in constant contact with other committees including Chapters, SIGGRAPH 2011 and SIGGRAPH Asia 2011, to make sure that any and all content/news that needs to be broadcast out is done so in a timely, professional and appropriate manner. We are also working ahead, with a Google document that contains hundreds of posts, ready and waiting for the appropriate time to be posted. Content includes information related to membership, membership benefits, SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia (and their related content/deadlines), Chapter events, news stories, announcements, etc.
• Active posting – the social media teams has made it a point of posting at least three messages a day to keep the feeds active. We also monitor all wall postings and messages on both Facebook and Twitter, responding when necessary and interacting with our fan base by answering questions, encouraging participation and providing resolutions to any problems that may arise. This has become extremely important, and at times an overwhelming task, around submission deadlines for the conferences. We also scan Twitter multiple times a day for keywords like “SIGGRAPH” and respond to any messages mentioning us when needed.
1. SIGGRAPH Blog – we are currently in the process of setting up an official ACM SIGGRAPH blog. This will be hosted on and built to be apart of the website. The goal is to make the blog an informal documentation into the organization and all that happens during the year. Content will include ACM SIGGRAPH and its related conferences. Once the blog is up and running the Communications and Membership committee will be tasked with writing at least one blog post every two weeks, with more posts and reposts during our busiest times surrounding the conferences. We will also continue to do daily recaps for both conferences, hopefully live on-site updates, to provide that information stream our followers/community has asked for when they are not able to be present.
• Podcasting – we are and will be continuing our work with Scott Lang and the SCOOP podcasting team, particularly for SIGGRAPH 2011. The social media team helps to coordinate the efforts of the SCOOP team, assisting in scheduling interviews with the different program chairs/conference volunteers, developing questions and content for those interviews, as well as assisting with on-site activities. We are currently planning our on-site activities for SIGGRAPH 2011 while developing plans with Scott Lang to turn the SCOOP podcasts into a year-round collaboration, providing content on a monthly basis.
● Social Media Guidelines document – we are also working on creating a document addressing the do’s and don’ts of social media in relation to ACM SIGGRAPH and the SIGGRAPH conferences. By making a document like this available to the public on our website it will help ensure that we are not being misrepresented. It will also allow us to contact offenders and help us point out their violations and guide them to correcting them. This document would cover items such as (but will not be limited to):
○ Appropriate use of the ACM SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH logos for branding.
○ How to make it clear that the feed is an unofficial one.
○ How to site sources of content and what is required to be sited and referenced in posting.
○ Making the Communications and Membership committee aware of the new site.
○ Appropriate content and language.
○ How to best represent themselves and SIGGRAPH in a positive light.
This document is in its early phases and we hope to have it completed in conjunction with the launch of the updated website. We plan to have it available as a content page and downloadable PDF file.
● Current social media channels – as of Wednesday, July 20, 2011, our current followings on our different social media outlets are:
○ Facebook Fan Page (SIGGRAPH Conferences) : 6,179 Fans
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○ Facebook Group (ACM SIGGRAPH) : 2,306 Members
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○ Twitter (@siggraph) : 7,849 Followers
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○ LinkedIn Group (ACM SIGGRAPH) : 4,814 Members
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○ YouTube (ACM SIGGRAPH) : 48,312 Channel views / 1,557 Subscribers
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Website ()
Over the next year our primary focus will be redesigning and developing the website. We will be working with the Information Services Committee along with, most likely, hired contractors, to completely overhaul the site. This includes updating and streamlining the information available, showcase added membership benefits, integrate social media and update the back-end management software to run on Drupal 7. We were hoping to have an early version of the site to launch as a preview by SIGGRAPH 2011, however this has not been possible. After SIGGRAPH 2011, when the conference activities and social media efforts slow down, this will be our primary focus. The site will launch immediately prior to the s2012 conference.
In the mean time we have been investing time keeping the current site fresh and updated. We have been using the site to its potential by posting news stories related to not just the organization and its activities, but also for the conferences. With new stories going up several times a month, old news is pushed off the homepage so visitors see something new each time they come. We have also had our social media efforts showcased by integrating them onto the right side of the current homepage.
SIGGRAPH 2011
In addition to the social media efforts and activities that extend into the conference, I have also planned the ACM SIGGRAPH Village and collaborated on the International Center for SIGGRAPH 2011. Being in a new convention center this year has had its challenges, including selecting spaces for both venues. I was fortunate enough to visit the Vancouver Convention Center with the s2011 committee in February and worked with the space planners from Freeman and Smith Bucklin to select high-traffic areas for both. Since lobby space in the VCC is at a premium I decided to split the Village and International Center into two unique spaces this year. Maximizing both spaces has been a challenge, but I believe both have a very open and welcoming footprint that should help our attendee experience and incorporate the conference theme of "Home". Since the Village will have no hard walls this year I also had to work closely with the designers at Freeman to make sure that we could incorporate as much of the previous decorations/designs as possible to save on budget costs.
SOMA
SOMA will once again be capturing the content at SIGGRAPH 2011 for the Digital Library and SIGGRAPH Encore site (a membership benefit). An updated contract has been drafted and signed to help cover loop holes discovered in previous years and to more clearly spell out expectations from both SOMA and ACM SIGGRAPH.
Digital Arts Community (DAC) Committee (Jacki Morie)
General:
The ACM SIGGRAPH’s Digital Arts Committee’s social networking site has reached 600 members, as of the date of this report. Of these, 203 report as being official SIGGRAPH members too.
Last year’s Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting at SIGGRAPH attracted 66 attendees, who were presented with a full description and discussion about the mission of the DAC. The BOF meeting included a visit from the 2010 Studio Chair – Gene Cooper. The ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community Committee Core Board was presented and each person introduced themselves and their role. Jacquelyn Morie, Chair. Cynthia Beth Rubin, Li Qin Tan, Greg Garvey, Hye Yeon Nam, and Patricia Galvis-Assmus; Production Assistant Darold Davis, and DAC Expert Advisors: John Hyatt (Global Outreach), Copper Giloth (Digital Art History) and Sue Gollifer (Organizational Outreach). Cindy Rubin organized this meeting and already has the BOF for the 2011 Conference in Vancouver scheduled. It will be held in the International Center, further strengthening our connection to artists worldwide.
The Digital Arts Committee partnered with the Leonardo organization to host a party during the week of SIGGRAPH at the home of Jacki Morie, not far from the LA Convention Center. About 200 guests attended, and it was a great event to underscore the ongoing collaboration between SIGGRAPH Arts and Leonardo.
In March 2011 we announced our first ever online ACM SIGGRAPH Arts Exhibit, curated by international Media Artist and Curator Andrea Zapp, member of the DAC network and currently a Senior Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Art & Design, UK. The theme Andrea chose for this inaugural event is Analogue is the New Digital, aimed at debating information space as an essential artistic one by leading it back to its origins, to visual arts and the corporeal, proving how inseparably intertwined these areas and our identity within them have become at this time in which data and physical body have merged into one entity and the virtual space has become the other place of collective and personal existence and memory. Over 200 works were submitted for consideration by 51 artists. The curation is concluded and the show will be revealed online during the end of July.
The show itself will be prominently displayed on the main arts. site by mid-late May. We are currently designing a new page look for this site that will accommodate the show. It may look somewhat like this, though we have not settled on the final design yet:
Social Site (Ning):
The announcement for the online curated show gained us about 60 new members, so it has proven to be a great tool for increased membership.
The activity level on the Ning Social site remains high. There is a great deal of valuable information and communication on the site. For example, we link to Copper Giloth’s site that chronicles the first SIGGRAPH Art Show in 1982, and we allow members to post discussions, as well as opportunities and events.
Cindy Rubin has been extremely diligent in posting events and opportunities on the Ning site. She takes special care to include all ACM sponsored events (both CALL and ATTEND) - and DAC believes that this has increased interest in and awareness of these events.
There are currently over 2500 artists’ works that have been uploaded to the Ning site. Approximately 300 of these are videos; the rest are still images and installation works. I check the web stats weekly.
We have added a Ustream channel for planned interviews with artists from the Analogue Show, though none have yet been scheduled.
This year we added the ability to have site members create and join special topic groups on the Ning site. Thus far we have groups for: Computer Graphics History, Digital Painters, Bio Art, 3D Digital Art and Design and Graphic Design.
We created a DAC Facebook group, but we’re still trying to get the linkage from the NING site to Twitter working smoothly. On April 20th, I placed a FACEBOOK Ad about the Facebook SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community group to run until June 30th. I asked for a $.25 per click fee (as opposed to their $1.50 suggested price per click). We will see what this does to increase membership.
The Traveling Art Show:
A large effort to find current contact information for all TAS artists was made in the final months of 2010. Currently we have contact information for about 80% of the artists for who we still are holding work.
A few more artworks from the Traveling Art Show works have been returned to the artists from the storage in the Freeman Warehouse. In May, 2011, a trip was made to the Freeman warehouse in Anaheim, CA, and several art works were collected for return. All but the largest of these have been shipped back: 15 works by 7 artists. Another trip to Freeman will be done in the Fall, with a larger rental van so more works can be picked up.
We have also discussed various other ways to get the artworks back to the artists, including having them be picked up at SIGGRAPH 2012, but no final determination has been made on these suggestions yet. As part of the 2012 Conference we are also exploring an outreach to the Los Angeles Digital Arts Gallery to have a show of these works, perhaps in conjunction with the return of the works to the artists, but this is still in a discussion phase with the owner of the Gallery, Rex Bruce.
Outstanding Issues:
There is still some concern that board members are not able to do as much of the day-to-day work of maintaining the DAC Community as was hoped. At our last Skype-based meeting in November 2010, all board members were asked to check the Ning site weekly, at the very least. This has not been followed through. Also, by this time I had expected a clear leader to emerge from the group who could take over the reins. To date this has not happened. The low budget allocated to the DAC, which provides only for one meeting a year and no coverage of attendance at SIGGRAPH beyond the conference pass may be part of the issue. This issue needs further discussion.
We still need to coordinate more with the Conference Art Show chair. For example, Franklin Sirmins of the prestigious Los Angeles County Museum of Art has expressed an interest in doing something with us next year in LA (initiated by Cindy Rubin), as has the Los Angeles Digital Arts Gallery owner, Rex Bruce, but we need to coordinate to do this. The year round arts group can be extremely helpful to the Conference Art Show by providing continuity and a consistent face and pathway to the Conference Art Show. Hopefully this will evolve over this next year.
Education Committee (Marc Barr)
In response to decisions of the Executive Committee, the Education Committee has made changes to its makeup, direction and endeavors.
As reported previously, we have eliminated the SpaceTIme Student competitions. Although this has initially caused some confusion and negative responses, it will result in cost savings beginning this year and in the long run encourage students to enter their work into the regular conference venues.
Although this will result in a smaller amount of student work to be on display at the conference, the work that will be accepted into the CAF and Art Gallery will be of higher quality and will result in greater exposure for the entrants.
We have also begun to develop some ideas in the area of Professional Development. Scott Owen formed a Professional Development task force comprised of the following:
Marc Barr, (Chair)
Joe Marks, Disney
Peter Weishar, Dean of Media SCAD
Shish Aikat, Rhythm and Hues
Darin Grant, Dreamworks Animation
Yan Timanovsky, ACM HQ liaison with the ACM PD Committee
Steven Ibaraki, Member ACM PD Committee
Bill Poulson, Pixar
I have made attempts to communicate with these individuals to solicit their ideas and feedback and have had some good discussions with some of them, while having no responses from some others. I have also had some discussions with additional contacts of mine from Autodesk and other academics and have made plans to have a variety of meetings on this topic at S2011.
At SIGGRAPH 2011 members of the Education Committee are involved with a variety of sessions, these include:
Birds of a Feather
1. Studio Views of Demo Reels
Industry professionals from various computer animation and visual effects facilities explain what they (and their studios) look for when reviewing demo reels and portfolios of students and recent graduates.
Craig Slagel, formerly of Rhythm and Hues
Barbara Dawson, CG Scout
Rick Stingfellow, Electronic Arts
Anjelica Casillas, Rhythm & Hues
Emma McGonigle, MPC
2. What Industry Needs Graduates and New Hires to Know
Knowledge and skill requirements for graduates and new hires.
Ryan Kuba, Environment Supervisor at Nitrogen Studios
Jon Cowley, Prime Focus
Doug Oddy, MPC
Larry Bafia, Centre for Digital Media.
3. The New Media and the Industry in China
Representatives from Chinese industry and universities discuss how their digital media programs are developing to meet the needs of their exploding economy.
Introductory Remarks
Bai Xuezhu, Communication University of China
Richard Smith, Centre For Digital Media, Vancouver
Panel Discussion
Moderator
Patrick Pennefather, Centre For Digital Media, Vancouver
Panelists
You Xiang, Vice President of Crystal CG, Nanjing
Lu Xin, Communication University of China
Chang Ming, 37 Entertainment
4. The New Media and the Academy in China
Representatives from Chinese academic digital media programs discuss how their programs are developing to meet the needs of their exploding economy.
Panel Discussion
Moderator
Patrick Pennefather, Centre For Digital Media, Vancouver
Pan Zhigeng, Zhejiang University
Larry Bafia, Centre For Digital Media, Vancouver
Zhang Xiaofu, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing
Electroacoustic Music Association of China
Fu Zhiyong, Tsinghua University
Bai Xuezhu, Communication University of China
Yang Xiaosong, National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University
Closing Remarks
Marc J. Barr, Chair, ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee
5. Undergraduate Research Alliance
William Joel, Western Connecticut State University
6. Call for Contributions for the IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications' New Education Department
Gitta Domik, University of Paderborn, Germany
Scott Owen, Georgia State University
7. Educators Meet and Greet, Sponsored by Autodesk
Conference Unified Jury
In response to comments from attendees regarding the inclusion of content of interest to educators, Education Committee member Mike Bailey participated in the Unified Jury for S2011 and will also serve in the same capacity for S2012.
Pre Conference Workshops
On the Saturday prior to the Conference, Gitta Domik will be having two small workshops to update our resources in the areas of Visualization Curriculum and our Computer Graphics Knowledge Base.
Mentoring
The Canadian organization GRAND (Graphics Animation and New Media) has agreed to fund stipends to students participating in this years SIGGRAPH Pioneers Mentoring program, which I have been working on with David Kasik.
We have accepted twelve students from local Vancouver area schools. The group is ethnically and gender diverse. The Education Committee has agreed to support three of the student’s teachers to attend S2011 and with the assistance of Dr. Amy Gooch, Computer Science, University of Victoria, arrangements have been made with a local Victoria Company Cebas to offer some of the parents of the students an opportunity to attend as well.
In collaboration with ACM-W, the Education Committee is again going to serve as mentors to two undergraduate college students who are recipients of the ACM-W Scholarship. Mentors have already been arranged and introductions made.
Online Resources
The Education Website (education.)
The Education website continues to be a valuable resource, with around 2000 visitors per month, but it needs to be revitalized and upgraded. In addition to the regular updates and maintenance on the current site, Wobbe Koning is setting up a new site. Due to unfortunate configuration errors it has been found undoable to add some of the envisioned functionality to the current Plone 2 setup, or to update the installation to more capable Plone 3 system. The community commenting and rating of content have therefore still not been added.
In cooperation with the rest of the SIGGRAPH systems managers’ team, the new site has been designed, using Drupal CMS (). This will replace the current site and we hope it will be able to provide the functionality needed to make the site community based and enable an enhanced submission and publishing system for educational resources in cgSource. The next steps involve porting all relevant content over to the new site and setting up the added functionality, which can happen in tandem. A date for going live with the new site has not been set yet, and a new volunteer website assistant is now working with Wobbe. The draft proposal describing the work involved for the new site is attached to this report.
cgSource
Aliza Sorotzkin, Global Training and Education Manager at Side Effects Software has joined the cgSource committee, replacing Frederico Figueiredo who resigned from the committee late last year. We have continued to correspond with authors who have submitted to the conference, and who have expressed interest in having including their materials in cgSource.
Last year we contacted over 50 authors for materials. We recently received a new list for 2011 and are in the process of contacting the authors and getting their materials on cgSource. There are over 60 authors that were accepted into the conference that opted in to having their materials included in cgSource.
We also have over 800 submissions additional conference submissions that were rejected whose authors have opted in. Since it takes a considerable amount of time to parse through and manually contact each author, it is vital for automatic submission capabilities to be available in cgSource as the committee does not have the resources to process these manually. Authors will need to be able to upload their materials themselves as well as sign off on the creative commons license in the process.
Materials are organized into 2 categories in the cgSource page (education.resources/cgsource); "Instructional Material" and "Career Related Material".
We have recently managed to recruit SCAD graduate student, Philip Likens, who has volunteered to help with Web support. He will be working with Wobbe Koning on the new site setup and porting over to the new Drupal system, as well as assist in adding new features such as commenting and ratings and archiving older materials.
Once the new system is up, we hope to be able to make cgSource a much more attractive resource as educators will be able to provide feedback authors as well as rate resources.
The Education Index
The Education Index, which is coordinated by Tereza Flaxman, is a comprehensive online database of educational programs in computer graphics and related fields. It has been serving the international academic community, students and the general public for five years. It currently lists 578 academic programs, with emphasis in animation, gaming and visual arts.
During this past year 3,544 people from several countries have searched the database.
Visits by Country:
|1. |United States |1,540 |
|2. |India |180 |
|3. |China |167 |
|4. |Norway |147 |
|5. |United Kingdom |106 |
|6. |Canada |96 |
|7. |Germany |96 |
|8. |Japan |90 |
|9. |Russia |69 |
|10. |Brazil |66 |
Those who searched our database are classified as:
80 % new visitors
20 % returning visitors
The Education Index was listed on the SIGGRAPH website last year. This has contributed significantly to increase the visits.
The Education Index traffic sources in the past year are:
|Sources |Visits |% visits |
| (referral) |2,889 |81.52% |
|(direct) ((none)) |445 |12.56% |
|google (organic) |86 |2.43% |
| (referral) |48 |1.35% |
Last November, Mikhail Shalai joined the Education Index team as a programmer volunteer. He has been working on the back end, improving the search system and communication between the Education Index team and the school programs representatives.
Future plans are to continue promoting the Education Index, keep improving the database search and interface, and facilitating the school representatives to update their program information.
Subcommittee Reports
ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee
International Activities Report (2010-2011)
by Rejane Spitz (Brazil)
Global Outreach Coordinator
rejane@puc-rio.br
Introduction
One of the major objectives of the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee is to help establish a worldwide network of computer graphics educators. Our international ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee members have active roles in the planning and organization of education-related Computer Graphics events in several countries, which has shown to be an excellent opportunity for us to exchange information and promote our ACM SIGGRAPH educational activities worldwide.
Our current International Representatives are:
Gitta Domik (Germany) – European Representative
Rejane Spitz (Brazil) - South American Representative
Zhigeng Pan and Weihua Gao (China) – Asian Representatives
In this report we present several international educational activities, events and conferences in Computer Graphics and related areas in which our Committee members and International Representatives have been and/or are actively involved in 2010-2011, aiming at showing the scope and diversity of our international network.
Report from Europe
by Gitta Domik (Germany)
Here are the European Education Activities:
The Eurographics Education Papers were held on April 13th, 2011, at Eurographics 2011 in Wales, UK. Co-chairs Steve Maddock and Joaquim Jorge put together an excellent program:
“The Art and Science of Digital Production Arts”, by Tim A. Davis and Donald H. House
“PhD Education Through Apprenticeship” by Daniel Patel, M. Eduard Gröller and Stefan Bruckner
“The Five Design-Sheet (FdS) approach for Sketching Information Visualization Designs”, Jonathan C. Roberts
“High-Level Application Development for non-Computer Science majors using Image Processing”, by Shesh Amit
“In at the Deep End: An Activity-Led Introduction to Creative Computing with Interactive Computer Graphics”, by Eike Falk Anderson, Christopher E. Peters, Fotis Liarokapis and John Halloran
“Interdisciplinary game projects: opening the Graphics (back) door with the soft skills key”, by Rafael Bidarra
Panel “The education of Visual Analytics and Visual Computing”, chaired by Jonathan C. Roberts. Panelists included: Eben Muse, Jiawan Zhang, Kai Xu.
Panel “How should we teach CG?” chaired by Jean-Jacques Bourdin. Panelists include: Eike Falk Anderson, Timothy A. Davis
In 2012 we will be awaiting Education Papers at Eurographics 2012 from May13th to 18th, 2012, in Cagliari, Italy, with co-chairs Giovanni Gallo and Beatriz Sousa Santos. Deadline will be 9 December 2011, announced at
Report from South America
by Rejane Spitz (Brazil)
In parallel with my SIGGRAPH activities, I have been conducting several other volunteer activities throughout this year, as a member of the Executive, Advisory, Scientific and/or Organizing Committees at several Conferences in South America. Those volunteer activities help me promote ACM SIGGRAPH educational activities and events through different communities, by building a major international network linking the areas of Art, Design, Architecture, Computer Graphics and Science.
In 2010-2011 I have been involved in establishing links and promoting our ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee initiatives at the following conferences, held (or to be held) in South America:
1- MOBILEFEST Rio 2010 and MOBILEFEST Sao Paulo 2010
MOBILEFEST (International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity) is a festival held annually in Brazil, which encompasses several activities: international seminar, workshops, international exhibition and recognition awarding for the best mobile works and applications.
1.1. MOBILEFEST Rio 2010:
In 2010, for the first time, MOBILEFEST was held in Rio de Janeiro, as a result of a partnership established with the Department of Art & Design at PUC-Rio, where I teach.
I worked as a collaborator in the organization of the event, and had the opportunity to promote SIGGRAPH events and activities, to talk about my activities as a SIGGRAPH Education Committee volunteer, and to encourage speakers and attendees to join and attend SIGGRAPH conferences and its related events.
MOBILEFEST Rio 2010 site ()
MOBILEFEST Rio 2010 Final Session, in which I had the opportunity to encourage speakers and participants to join, get involved and submit their works to SIGGRAPH conferences.
MOBILEFEST Rio 2010 Seminar, held at PUC-Rio, May 2010
For additional information: .br
1.2. MOBILEFEST Sao Paulo 2010:
In 2010, I have also been involved in the organization of MOBILEFEST São Paulo, which was held from 21- 24 September, 2010 at MIS (Museum of Image and Sound), at São Paulo. I have also participated in the Workshops and Seminar, and was also a member of the Curatorial Committee.
2- MOBILEFEST Rio 2011
In 2011, MOBILEFEST (International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity) will be held only in Rio de Janeiro, once again in partnership with the Department of Art & Design at PUC-Rio. We are already working on the organization of the event, as well as participating as a member of the Curatorial Committee. It will be another excellent opportunity to promote ACM SIGGRAPH educational activities and events.
I am planning to distribute a SIGGRAPH 2012 CFP (call for participation) as well as SIGGRAPH 2012 posters and pins, as part of the materials each attendee/speaker will receive.
3. SIGRADI 2011 (Santa Fe, Argentina) - November 16- 18, 2011
The XV SIGraDi conference will take place November 16th through 18th 2011 in Santa Fe, Argentina. It is organized by the School of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning (Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo) of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral through its Center of Informatics and Design, CID. This year’s Conference theme is “Augmented Culture”. The Conference’s keynote speakers will be Lev Manovich, Dale Herigstad, Ivan Ivanoff and Marcos Novak.
I am planning to distribute a SIGGRAPH 2012 CFP (call for participation), as well as SIGGRAPH 2012 posters and pins, as part of the materials each attendee/speaker will receive.
4- SIGGRAPH 2010 Panel Sessions “20XX. EDU: Grand challenges in Education”
Panel Sessions on the future of Education were held at SIGGRAPH 2010, in Los Angeles, as a result of a joint effort between ACM SIGGRAPH and the international association LEONARDO/ISAST (The Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology). ACM SIGGRAPH Education Director, Prof. Marc J. Barr, LEONARDO/ISAST Executive Director, Dr. Roger Malina, and the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee’s Global Outreach Coordinator, Prof. Rejane Spitz, with the support of Terence Masson (SIGGRAPH 2010 Chair) and James Mohler (SIGGRAPH 2010 Education Chair) worked together to organize those Panel Sessions.
During the Panel Sessions, a diverse group of outstanding researchers and artists, professionals in the academy and industry, educators and government agencies - including David T. Goldberg (HASTAC / University of California), Rebecca Allen (NOKIA Hollywood), Pamela Jennings (National Science Foundation), Sarah Cunningham (National Endowment for the Arts), Glenn Entis (VanEdge Capital), Donna Cox (NSCA), James Foley (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Andy van Dam (Brown University), moderated by Marc J. Barr (ACM SIGGRAPH Education Director) and Roger Malina (LEONARDO) - discussed the future of Education in its broadest sense, encompassing both formal and informal learning. The sessions were followed by a lunch meeting for Panel speakers and organizers.
Report from Asia
by Zhigeng Pan (China)
1- Organizing the promotion of SIGGRAPH 2011 in Hangzhou:
During the international conference of 3DIMPVT'2011 [May 16-19, 2011] (in conjunction with the workshop DMDCM'2011), we invited Scott Owen to give a special talk on "ACM SIGGRAPH/SIGGRAPH Asia". The talk was arranged as a Banquet Speech, and about 150 attendees joined the Banquet. The Call for Participation (CFP) was put in the conference bag of 3DIMPVT'2011, so that each attendee received a copy of it.
2 - Organizing the promotion of SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 in Chengdu:
During the international conference of CASA'2011 (in conjunction with the national conference on Educational Game and Virtual Reality'2011), we invited Zhiqiang Liu to give a special talk on "SIGGRAPH Asia 2011". The talk was arranged as part of the Opening Ceremony, and about 200 attendees joined the ceremony. The Call for Participation (CFP) was put in the conference bag of CASA'2011, so that each attendee received a copy of it.
3- Establishing contact with professionals in the field of computer graphics, animation, virtual reality, game et al. in China, aiming at encouraging them to join SIGGRAPH events, and specifically encouraging them to send submissions to the track “Technical Sketches and Posters” (as I am the program chair of Technical Sketches and Posters for SIGGRAPH Asia 2011).
4- ASIAGRAPH’2010, Oct. Shanghai.
ASIAGRAPH is an event held in Asia, which includes technical presentations, CG exhibition, and posters. In the 2010 event in Shanghai, about 60 attendees from Japan, Korea and China joined the conference. ASIAGRAPH 2011 will be held in Tokyo (Japan), in October.
Report from Undergraduate Research Alliance
William Joel, West Connecticut State University
During the past year, activities of the Alliance have focused on individual members pursuing their respective efforts in undergraduate research. This summer, in Vancouver, existing members, as well as perspective new members, will share their experiences from the past year during our annual BOF session. New connections will be made, as well as initial plans for future, inter-institutional work. Work will continue on the development of online resources for those institutions considering, or currently pursuing, undergraduate research in computer graphics and related areas.
Information Services Committee (Jenny Dana)
The Information Services Committee (ISC) provides information services support to the ACM SIGGRAPH community. Our responsibilities include managing/maintaining the 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 pro-actively, 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.
Website content is provided and maintained by the client committees Conference, Arts, Communications, Chapters, Education, Publications, S3 either as a sub-section of the site or on an independent site. Management and decisions about content for organization site () are the responsibility of the Communications committee especially for sections that don't have a clear owner. As is the responsibility to 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, ISC often assists or handles these type of requests as well.
The ISC is made up of a core team of two part time paid consultants - Ken Bauer - system administrator, Viveka Weiley - web design consultant. Ken is sometimes 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, Leo Hourvitz - application/utility expert, John Michael Pierobon - events calendar and sysmgrs. 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 (2-4) of these 20 people work on any ISC tasks/projects, so this can be somewhat misleading in terms of available resources. It is possible and desirable to expand this volunteer pool especially in the area of a contracted CMS consultant. 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 S2010. Annual sysmgrs meetings arranged for SIGGRAPH 2011
• Submitted FY 2012 Budget for ISC
• Submitted ISC annual, mid-year and strategy reports to the EC
• ISC representatives met with chapter leaders during S2010 and staffed a Chapters workshop logistics fair station. This will be continued for S2011 and would be desirable to include SA2011 (currently cut from budget).
• Presentation of ISC services to the S2011 committee (Feb. information push meeting) - ISC representative should be integrated part of SIGGRAPH and SA conference committees due to the level of services required. It is also important for communication flow and reduces last minute scrambles on technical projects. No ISC representative attended SA2010 in Seoul due to budget constraints though this is important for having face-time with the contractors that use our resources.
• Drupal install/maintenance used for conference websites and new , committee websites setup. Major upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 and underlying support software.
• WordPress MU (Multi-user) expanded to more chapters and additional customization. New ACM SIGGRAPH theme to match Drupal 7 one.
• Organization tasks included
1. Drupal 7 discussions and experiments (Forum, ACM authentication, Social Integration, Plone data extraction) for new website - new Drupal website theme, Drupal 7 front-page for ()
2. Server upgrade migration planning and informational push
3. ACM Authentication for Encore - result can be seen at
4. Worked with SOMA to provide better ACM SIGGRAPH member user experience on Encore
5. 2010 Awards management of video processing/distribution pipeline (, )
6. Updated links, redirects, images on for S2011, SA2011, Encore 2010
7. Website improvements/updates - Events calendar, affiliated symposia, general simplification and hiding/identifying abandoned content, more frequent/coordinated news items/content updates, FAQ updates, Key volunteer info updates, webmaster inquiries answered/forwarded, addressing low-hanging fruit suggestions/critiques from the member survey - highlighting membership benefits, more prominent "join online" buttons, updated volunteering page.
8. Resolved YouTube segment size allowing efficiency improvements for Scoop and better user experience (no more segment chopping)
9. Support/advice for new Education Index development and Education site migration to Drupal
10. software/website task force - swag (SIGGRAPH Website Advisory Group) setup
11. Mint and Analytics stats access/maintenance
12. ACM Listservs admin updates
13. Chapter support especially for PSCC, Austin, Cascade, Washington DC, Silicon Valley, Paris, Bangkok, Bogota, Singapore, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
14. Communications setup/training/support for new chair, setup/host SIGGRAHia blog.
15. Publications mysql database recovery from backups
16. S3 Drupal 7 instance setup. Assisted with upgrade to corporate GoToMeeting/Webinar account managed by ACM.
17. SIS RFP input
18. Encore 2011 contract draft
19. SVR via SOMA proposal, tech-demo evaluation, discussions
20. ISC chair met with ACM staff about ongoing needs (new server, authentication/OpenId, data center, membership data, media server, associate membership improvements)
21. Website meeting at S2010 (previous communications chair and others), and follow-up website discussions (new communications chair, ISC liaison, project manager). Website meeting (1/2 day) with new Communications Chair to discuss current status and future plan
22. Strategic plan input
23. Streaming media evaluations of Vimeo (), Vzaar ()
24.
• Helpdesk requests from Talley/Koelnmesse for conferences lists, aliases, redirects, schedulers, submission deadlines for SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia. Support to GlobalSignin for SA2010 website setup. Video hosting overview for games outreach chair. SV jury system hosting.
• SIGGRAPH Social Network Stats
● 4,787 LinkedIn - up from 3,211
● 2,306 Facebook - successfully consolidated into two primary (ACM SIGGRAPH group and SIGGRAPH Conferences fan-page, excluding affiliate pages) - up from 1,752
● 7,837 Twitter (joint organization/conferences primary feed) - up from 3,200
● YouTube (channel views: 48, 245, upload views: 527,033, ~250 videos) - Scoop, Conferences, International Resources Podcasts - primary content creators
● Google+ entity profile application submitted
Webmaster Report (Viveka Weiley) - capped to 30 hours per month due to budget
Plone:
Content and system maintenance for Plone site, occasional crisis management but mostly setting up accounts & updating content and info architecture, incremental redesigns and workflow improvements. Highlight has been adding the SIGGRAPH Social sidebar with links to our social media presences, embedded youtube and twitter.
Media Server:
Set up media. as a long-term media repository, to help free us from CMS-dependence
Improved media.promo materials, implemented them across sites.
Wordpress:
Design, theme, launch and maintain Wordpress blog platform.
Highlights have been new theme and helping Chapters.
Drupal:
Design, theme and test new Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 sites and plugins.
Various other admin tasks:
Setting up Analytics accounts and views, responding to Webmaster email, that kind of thing is always going as a kind of background hum.
System Administrator Report (Ken Bauer) - approx. 30 hours per month
Back end, software and system maintenance:
#1 Drupal setup and support
- Separate Drupal 6 install for SIGGRAPH Asia 2011
- Drupal 6 multisite still supporting SIGGRAPH 2011, SIGGRAPH 2010, and Asia 2010
- Multisite Drupal 7 setup for testing grounds - new , playpen, S3
- Separate Drupal 7 instances for S2012, Education
I would make this about 40% of my time.
#2 System maintenance and support of mailing lists, shell users, system updates and mail alias requests.
This takes about 50% of my time.
#3 Plone maintenance and general apache configuration for new sites.
This takes about 10% of my time
#4 Migration of everything off of the existing servers to the 2 new managed/hosted servers will occupy majority of system resources from June-August 2011. Though the breakdowns above still apply.
I would say that overall across a year my breakdown tends to be about:
40% SIGGRAPH conference
25% SIGGRAPH Asia
35% ACM SIGGRAPH
Obviously this bursts during critical dates keeping an eye on the systems during deadlines or burst requests close to conferences.
Drupal:
Drupal 7 is the technology that the new organization website will utilize. Towards this goal Drupal 7 development instance installed, and theme, content migration, capabilities (core, forums, blog support, user workgroups/permissions) experiments are being conducted in parallel while the website planning process moves forward. The primary concentration was decided to be on the front-facing community website as indicated by the strategic plan. The process will involve a phased development/role-out of migrating key useful existing content and adding a minimal set of additional features to get a "new" Drupal site in place and minimize dependence on existing Plone instance. This soft-update will be followed by a design, implementation and launch of the "new website".
Some preliminary discussions/investigations occurred around an intranet (volunteers, committees, contractors) to replace the "private" parts of the Plone site. One approach using GoogleApps in conjunction with a site built using OpenAtrium or Drupal 7 with OrganicGroups seems promising for meeting our needs. The GoogleApps piece can be phased in with the EC, and some standing committees as the trial groups and expanding out for the S2012 conference committee. Additional time/attention needed to evaluate and configure for a trial to start.
Papers Advisory Group (PAG) (Rob Cook)
Project Background and Description
Recommends papers chairs for SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia
Works with conference chairs to recruit the papers chair
Provides advice to EC and CAG / SACAG on papers-related matters
Outcomes
Recruited Hanspeter Pfister as the S12 papers chair.
Recruited Peter-Pike Sloan as the SA12 papers chair.
Recruited Marc Alexa as the S13 papers chair.
Provided advice for papers chairs and others on several matters throughout the year.
Publications Committee (Stephen Spencer)
An update on sponsored events: one sponsored event this year - aside from our annual conference proceedings - will opt for a printed proceedings, rather than electronic. All other sponsored events, to my knowledge, have opted for a CD-, DVD-, or USB-based deliverable, in addition to the ACM Digital Library.
We continue to research options for online delivery of SIGGRAPH Video Review content.
The three-year contract with MIT Press for the publication of the special issue of the 'Leonardo' journal, documenting Art Gallery content from our annual conference - has run its course, and we are working on a proposal to EC to make this an organization publication, rather than a publication largely financed by the conference.
Changes from above - from ACM - have provided the majority of publications-related changes in the last twelve months.
ACM successfully moved to an electronic copyright management system, replacing paper copyright and permission forms with an online forms-based system. This has had both positive and negative impact on proceedings production (at least from my point of view): not having to deal with all that paper is a positive, but having to go online to access the submitted data, and leaving the "chasing" of forms in ACM's hands is a change in the process. Not necessarily a negative, more of a change in how things work.
ACM has made a significant change to its copyright policy, at least for our community, adding the category of "artistic images." Authors now have the option of asserting that specific images and figures in their papers have "...independent artistic value..." [1] - images "...created for some purpose other than to illustrate a point in this paper and which you wish to exploit in other contexts." [2] This creates a third class of embedded content in papers: those for which copyright is transferred to ACM (the default), those created by some third party, and those which fall into the category of "artistic" images.
(This is in addition to ACM's existing option of opting to grant ACM permission to distribute one's content, rather than transfer copyright of the work as a whole. [3])
This change is not yet fully understood by our community; it is our responsibility to help explain the change, and this is one of our tasks for the next year.
[1] ACM Copyright Policy,
[2] ACM Copyright Form, 2011.
[3] ACM Copyright Policy,
Student Services (Lou Harrison)
The ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services Committee (S3) serves as a resource and information hub for ACM SIGGRAPH Student Members, and other students
who volunteer their time for ACM SIGGRAPH activities, such as the conferences' Student Volunteer programs. Since formation in 2007, S3 has been
working to organize a core of key volunteers and resources who will provide year-round information and services to the students we serve. This year,
Lou Harrison continued as chair of the committee. The following is his current committee:
● Student Services Manager (Jason Jerald)
● Mentoring Lead (Sarrah Vesselov)
● Technical Lead (Nico Gonzales)
● Integrations Lead (Christian Wittorf)
● Industry Coordinator (Gracie Arenas Strittmatter)
in addition to himself as chair and Jim Kilmer as our founder, advisor and unofficial member.
Since last year's annual report, S3 has been involved in a number of activities. First, we have supported the SIGGRAPH SV Program in a number of ways. We are developing an SVSC Handbook, which will be the plan to follow to run the SV program year after year. Instead of reinventing the program each year, the SV Chair can follow the plan and incrementally work toward improvement and streamlining the processes. Jason Jerald has spearheaded that effort and has an almost complete handbook that Mikki Rose will try out as SV chair 2012. Mikki and Jason have also begun documenting the “critical path” items that have only been known by a select few (or one). They just recorded a video of “SIS shift import training provided by Jim Kilmer” in the hopes that Maya will be able to manage this herself (heretofore this has only been done by Jim, ever!)
We've gone through another shift change, as Mikki Rose became the SV Chair for SIGGRAPH 2012. Gracie Arenas Strittmatter (a member of the fabulous 2010 SVSC) has replaced Mikki and Christian Wittorf (another S10 SVSC alum) has replaced Alexis with a refocus toward Social media. We have a new brand and logo. See it at: . We also have an experimental Drupal site () and have been playing with Drupal themes.
At S10, we were incredibly busy, we had our annual F2F meeting, of course, but also did portfolio review for lots of students, and we assigned 1-1 mentors to several TLs. We helped with the SV program, and met with lots of other folks, other student centered organizations, industry contacts and academic contacts as well. Jim Kilmer and I met with some CAG representatives and worked out how S3 will be involved with choosing future SV chairs, and, in fact, we have a workflow in place now, with some help from Maya Karp and Mikki Rose, Tom Rieke and Viveka Wiley. People can apply and applications are routed to me (as S3 chair) as well as Talley. We modified the standard application a little bit. I hope to talk to the interested parties at SIGGRAPH to make a recommendation to the N+2 conference chair.
We have thrown all our eggs in the Drupal basket for good or bad. We have a need to set up a mentoring center online and Drupal has the tools we need to make that happen. Also, it’s the tool that ISC can provide us, so we won’t have to go elsewhere (if you recall, we had a marginally successful system with the CGS in past years). The current SV committee has their forums set up by Jeremy Kenisky, an SVSC member. We hope to be able to migrate to something at soon. We still are challenged by authentication tools, but I understand that there is hope on the horizon with a new integration to Drupal being developed by ISC. S3 also has a Facebook page (), which we use as a funnel to send student members to whatever social tools we like.
We have done several webinars throughout the year, each to capacity (we are capped to 100 people). We have also recorded them to eventually build an archive. We have been using GoToWebinar, which we purchased a license for that ran through last FY. Toward the end of that license, we worked closely with ISC and ACM to transition to a corporate plan that ACM is now paying for (saving S3 almost $1000 a year), and it, and GoToMeeting, will be available to all SIGGRAPH Committees. There are some logistics to work out and some scheduling challenges (to make sure webinars and meetings don’t overlap), but it’ll be a huge cost savings if we can work those details out. In November and December 2010 we did our first-ever round of web-based student reel, resume, and portfolio reviews (S3R3), with approximately 50 students and 10 mentors. In April 2010 we did our second round of web-based reviews with 34 students and around 20 mentors. We are also experimenting with a website for the reviewer workflow. Reviewers come from all around the world and are a group comprised of former Student Volunteers, professional contacts through S3 committee members, and other supporters of S3.
Small Conferences Committee (Brian Wyvill)
SCC Committee
The SCC committee is as follows:
Brian Wyvill (Chair), Jeff Jortner (Treasurer), Caroline Larboulette (web page source), Joaquim Jorge, Erin Butler, Heinrich Muller (Eurographics)
Outgoing members
Diego Gutierrez (ended 2011), Wolfgang Heidrich (ended 2011), Marie-Paule Cani (EC liaison)
New Members
John Hart, Jim Foley
Small conferences continue to thrive under ACM SIGGRAPH sponsorship and in-cooperation status. The SCC has processed the conferences listed below and also the chair has dealt with a number of issues arising in conjunction with the SIGGRAPH treasurer and ACM staff.
As mentioned in the previous report the following members have retired and we wish to record our thanks for their service over the last three years: Wolfgang Heidrich , Diego Gutierrez.
In addition we would also like to thank, Marie-Paule Cani, who is coming to the end of her term as an EC member. We welcome new members: John Hart and Jim Foley.
Issues and Work Done
The presence of Eurographics workshop and symposia board chair, Heinrich Muller, on the SCC has smoothed the previous problems of co-sponsored conferences. Having the SIGGRAPH treasurer (Jeff Jortner) on the SCC has been a great help with reviewing budgets. Issues arising from small conferences co-located with the main SIGGRAPH conference have largely been resolved and there is a web page and forms developed for 2011. The following conferences are co-located in Vancouver:
High Performance Graphics
Symposium on Computer Animation
Computational Aesthetics
Sketch Based Interactive Modelling
Non-Photo-realistic Animation and Rendering
The last three small conferences are co-sponsored by Eurographics and are run as one financial unit. I have had considerable correspondence with a large number of conference organizers and joined several conference steering-committees (SBIM, NPAR, CAe, CGI, SMI).
We have processed a large number of in-cooperation and sponsorship requests. A full list is given below. There were a number of problems raised by the SIGGRAPH treasurer concerning the WEB3D budget. Jeff is in consultation with WEB 3D and ACM to monitor the progress of this conference and to make sure that a big financial burden is not inflicted on SIGGRAPH. Most of the problems arising from small conferences are of a minor nature.
A few requests for use of previous year’s funds have been approved and come within the guidelines already reported.
Web.
Web pages. We have a lot of information collected and a final draft be prepared by SCC member, Caroline Larboulette with some financial support from SIGGRAPH. We hope to have this ready to present at the EC meeting at SIGGRAPH 2011.
Conferences Handled
14 (note 2010 conferences not included as previously reported)
SIGHIT FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010-June 2011
Submitted by: Gang Luo, Chair
SIGHIT is a new SIG. It is concerned with the application of computer science principles, information science principles, information technology, and communication technology to address issues in healthcare and the delivery of healthcare services as well as the related social and ethical issues. SIGHIT emphasizes the computing and information science-related aspects of health informatics and provides a forum for the creation, sharing, and management of knowledge and techniques as a strategic resource for improving the field of health informatics and its impact on people's lives.
1. Awards that were given out
IHI 2010 Best Regular Paper Award
Designing a Personal Health Application for Older Adults to Manage Medications
Danish Khan, Katie Siek, Jane Meyers, Leah Haverhals, Steven Cali, Stephen Ross
IHI 2010 Best Short Paper Award
EPharmacyNet: An Approach to improve the Pharmaceutical Care Delivery in Developing Countries. Study Case: BENIN
Thierry Oscar Edoh and Gunnar Teege
SIGHIT has submitted a proposal for a new IHI Best Paper Award and a new IHI Best Student Paper Award, to be started from IHI 2012.
2. Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings
In IHI 2010 proceedings, the following outstanding papers were selected for a special issue in Journal of Medical Systems:
I) The IHI 2010 Best Regular Paper: “Designing a Personal Health Application for Older Adults to Manage Medications: A Comprehensive Case Study” by Danish Khan, Katie Siek, Jane Meyers, Leah Haverhals, Steven Cali, and Stephen Ross
II) The IHI 2010 Best Short Paper: “Using Information Technology for an Improved Pharmaceutical Care Delivery in Developing Countries. Study Case: Benin” by Thierry Oscar Edoh and Gunnar Teege
III) Human-Centered Design of Health Informatics Systems: “Extracting Insights from Electronic Health Records: Case Studies, a Visual Analytics Process Model, and Design Recommendations” by Taowei Wang, Catherine Plaisant and Ben Shneiderman
IV) Information Management in Health Informatics: “Toward Effective Vaccine Deployment: A Systematic Study” by Jiming Liu and Shang Xia
V) Computational Support for Patient-Centered and Evidence-Based Care: “A Remote Patient Monitoring System for Congestive Heart Failure” by Myung-Kyung Suh, Lorraine S. Evangelista, Chien-An Chen, Kyungsik Han, Jinha Kang, Michael Kai Tu, Victor Chen, Ani Nahapetian and Majid Sarrafzadeh
VI) Data Management, Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality: “DigiSwitch: A Device to Allow Older Adults to Monitor and Direct the Collection and Transmission of Health Information Collected at Home” by Kelly Caine, Celine Zimmerman, William Hazlewood, Zachary Schall-Zimmerman, Alexander Sulgrove, L. Jean Camp, Katherine Connelly, Lesa Lorenzen-Huber and Kalpana Shankar
VII) Consumer and Clinician Health Information: “Characterizing Mammography Reports for Health Analytics” by Carlos Rojas, Robert Patton and Barbara Beckerman
VIII) Health Informatics Applications & Studies: “Federated Querying Architecture with Clinical & Translational Health IT Application” by Oren Livne, N. Dustin Schultz and Scott Narus
IX) Consumer Health and Wellness Applications: “Barriers to Physical Activity: A Study of Self-revelation in an Online Community” by Tammy Toscos, Sunny Consolvo and David W. McDonald
3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
SIGHIT sponsors the ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium (IHI). The first conference, IHI 2010, attracted about 220 attendees, about 250 submissions from more than 30 countries, and financial support from six institutions/companies.
IHI 2012 will introduce three paper tracks: analytics, systems, and human factors, as well as tutorials, doctoral consortium, and non-referred extended abstracts. Tutorials will be available to IHI’12 attendees for free. So far, IHI 2012 has attracted about 300 submissions from about 40 countries, and financial support from four institutions/companies.
The first issue of the SIGHIT newsletter, SIGHIT Record, appeared on March 2011 with 40 pages of content (). The newsletter is available to SIGHIT members as their membership benefit.
4. Innovative programs which provide service to some part of your technical community
SIGHIT has built its web site at .
SIGHIT has introduced a theses repository for health informatics PhD and Master's theses at .
SIGHIT has started its official email list, SIGHIT-DISCUSSION, for distributing conference, journal, book, grant, software, and job information related to health informatics. SIGHIT-DISCUSSION is not limited to SIGHIT members only. Anybody with interest can subscribe to it.
5 A very brief summary for the key issues that the membership of that SIG will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years.
We will try our best to make SIGHIT and IHI more internationalized. Compared to IHI 2010, IHI 2012 already has many more international people in the program committee and conference organization. We will try our best to make this trend continue in the next few years so that more people in more geographic/research areas can get to know SIGHIT and IHI.
SIGIR FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010-June 2011
Submitted by: James Allan, Chair
1 Overview
The year just completed has again been a successful one for SIGIR. The SIG remains in a healthy position financially, with professional memberships at approximately 850, and direct sponsorships of several well-attended annual conferences. The current EC has completed its first year successfully, supported by an active group of officers and volunteers. The research focus of SIGIR continues to be of key and increasing significance to the world at large.
1.1 Finances
The Executive Committee attempts to run a "break even" budget in which SIGIR neither gains nor loses much money. However, we are glad to report that SIGIR has an estimated surplus of $197K in FY 2010/ 11. This is largely a result of a very successful 2010 SIGIR conference, with a projected net of $117K. Among the conferences we co-sponsored, CIKM'10 has a projected net of $7K, and WSDM'11 has a projected net of $2.5K. We also co-sponsored JCDL'10 which lost $7K. Expenses across these conferences included $91K paid to ACM for support services. Other income included $104K from 309K downloads from the ACM Digital Library, and membership income around $35K.
The SIG's reserves remain greater than one times the annual conference expenditure. After the ACM conference overheads, the largest single budget expense for the SIG in 2011 was $90K paid for student travel support to attend the SIGIR conference in Beijing, plus a further $15K in externally sponsored travel awards for students living or studying in developing countries, Chinese students, and women pursuing their Ph.D. The EC is comfortable with these expenses as the future of the SIG and our field as a whole is dependent on our future researchers, whom we now support as students.
The SIGIR Executive Committee has decided not to raise dues for the coming year.
1.2 Volunteers
In addition to the elected officers, SIGIR is served by a large community of volunteers, including some with named roles:
Asia Regional Representative to the EC: Tetsuya Sakai
Forum Editors: Raman Chandrasekar & Diane Kelly
SIG-IRList Editor: Mark Smucker
Information Director: Djoerd Hiemstra
JCDL Liaison: Edie Rasmussen
CIKM Liaison: Charlie Clarke
WSDM Liaison: Ricardo Baeza-Yates
SIGIR thanks them all for their work on behalf of the IR community during the last year.
1.3 Conferences
SIGIR sponsors, co-sponsors, and cooperates with other technical groups on several conferences and / or workshops during the year. The main conference is the annual SIGIR conference, which is located on a 3-year rotation in: (1) The Americas (2009 Boston, 2012 Portland OR, 2015...); (2) Europe, Africa, or the Middle East (2010 Geneva, 2013 Dublin, 2016...); and (3) Asia or Australia (2011 Beijing, 2014 Gold Cost Australia, 2017...).
1.3.1 SIGIR
The thirty-third Annual ACM SIGIR International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR'11, was held in Beijing, China, on July 24-28, 2011.
Future conferences: SIGIR 2012 will be held in Portland, Oregon, USA, August 12-16; SIGIR 2013 will be held in Dublin, Ireland; and SIGIR 2014 will be held in Gold Coast, Australia.
Preliminary expressions of interest were presented at the 2011 conference for SIGIR 2015, which is a year for the Americas to host SIGIR. Presentations were made by Vancouver, Canada, the Midwest of the USA, and by Chile. The groups will now be asked to prepare formal bid documentation to be reviewed by the Executive Committee, following the ACM protocol.
1.3.2 Other Conferences
SIGIR also co-sponsors three other ACM conferences, CIKM, JCDL, and WSDM. Each of these upcoming conferences was reported on at the SIGIR '11 Conference,
1.3.3 In Cooperation
In addition to the four conferences that SIGIR sponsors or co-sponsors, we "cooperate" with several other IR-related conferences but have no financial stake in them. These conferences complement the technical focus of our own conferences. As a cooperating society, SIGIR members obtain reduced registration fees and other member benefits at these conferences. This past year, SIGIR had "in cooperation" agreements with: Information Retrieval Facility Symposium 2011 (Vienna, Austria); Information Retrieval Facility Conference 2011 (Vienna, Austria); International workshop on Information Heterogeneity and Fusion in Recommender Systems (Spain); Fourth ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (Barcelona, Spain); Information Interaction in Context Symposium (New Brunswick, New Jersey), and the International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval (Xi'an, China).
1.4 Publications
The SIGIR Web site is maintained by SIGIR's Information Officer, Djoerd Hiemstra. It provides timely information about SIGIR-sponsored conferences, "in cooperation" conferences, and SIGIR activities, as well as Business Meeting slides, the annual report, and other information about how SIGIR operates and SIGIR's history. In addition to providing information about the organization, the SIGIR web site also hosts the SIGIR Forum and SIG-IRList sites.
The SIGIR Forum is co-edited by Diane Kelly and Raman Chandrasekar. The Forum is published three times a year. The Special issue is the SIGIR Proceedings; the December and June issues cover IR conferences, workshops and symposia, as well as in-depth essays based on the Salton Award Lecture and other keynote addresses, as well as short papers on current research trends. The Forum appears both online () and in paper.
The SIG-IRList is a SIGIR-sponsored electronic newsletter (), edited by Mark Smucker, of the University of Waterloo. The SIG-IRList provides a regular newsletter of IR information and nicely compliments the archival publication SIGIR Forum. The SIG-IRList contains job announcements, notices of publications, conferences, workshops, calls for participation, and project announcements. It is a much valued and appreciated service of SIGIR for its members.
1.5 Membership and Membership Programs
SIGIR offers members the following benefits: SIGIR Forum (paper & online); reduced conference registration fees to sponsored and "in cooperation" conferences; access to the ACM Digital Library; as well as optional Proceedings Packages, and the SIG-IRList electronic newsletter. The SIGIR Proceedings Package includes copies of the CIKM and JCDL conference proceedings.
The SIGIR EC discussed the question of hard copy conference proceedings at the Annual Meeting's general discussion in July 2010. The outcome of the discussion was that for SIGIR 2011 (in July) the paper proceedings were made optional at additional cost. All attendees received either CD or flash drive copies of the conference proceedings. Preliminary results of a poll of the IR community suggests that the membership is happy with this change.
2 Awards given by SIGIR this fiscal year
In addition to Best Paper Award(s), SIGIR provides the triennial Gerard Salton Award (last presented in 2009), and funds JCDL's Vannevar Bush Award jointly with SIGWEB. SIGIR continues working to put forth deserving nominees for the general ACM Awards. All SIGIR awards are documented on the SIGIR web site.
2.1 Gerard Salton Award
This award is presented every three years to an individual who has made "... significant, sustained and continuing contributions to research in information retrieval". It honors Professor Gerry Salton, who is considered by most to be the person most responsible for the establishment, survival, and recognition of the field of IR. The Salton Award Committee is comprised of the available prior winners of the Salton Award, in consultation with the SIGIR Chair.
2.2 Vannevar Bush Best Paper Award
Along with SIGWEB, SIGIR jointly funds the Vannevar Bush award honoring the best paper at the Joint Conference for Digital Libraries. This award was presented in June 2011 to Robert Sanderson, Benjamin Albritton, Rafael Schwemmer and Herbert Van De Sompel for their paper "SharedCanvas: A Collaborative Model for Medieval Manuscript Layout Dissemination."
2.3 SIGIR Best Paper Awards
The SIGIR 2010 conference best paper award in July 2010 went to Ryen W. White and Jeff Huang for their paper entitled "Assessing the Scenic Route: Measuring the Value of Search Trails in Web Logs."
The parallel Best Student Paper award went to Ioannis Arapakis, Konstantinos Athanasakos, and Joemon M. Jose for "A Comparison of General vs. Personalized Affective Models for the Prediction of Topical Relevance."
2.4 ACM Fellows
SIGIR continues to be frustrated at its failure to have more of its members honored as ACM Fellows, despite regularly making EC-endorsed "on behalf of the SIG" nominations of outstanding senior members. There is a general belief among the SIG members that being elevated to Fellow status is such a tightly guarded process that there is no point seeking it, regardless of their level of contribution to the SIG, to ACM, or to the wider computing community; and regardless of their seniority within the profession. The SIGIR EC has begun an effort to re-energize the community in this effort, but it is too early to know whether that will be successful.
3 Significant publications
The annual SIGIR conference (2011) continues to be the leading conference in the field of Information Retrieval. It received a total of 543 submissions and accepted 108, or 19.9%. The conference's program committee made an effort to increase the acceptance rate with the feeling that too far below 20% is unnecessarily selective.
An additional 90 posters, 15 software demonstrations, 8 tutorials, and 8 workshops were presented. Keynote talks were delivered by Qi Lu of Microsoft ("Future of the Web and Search") and ChengXiang Zhai of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ("Beyond Search: Statistical Topic Models for Text Analysis").
Papers at the conference covered topics in classification, clustering, collaborative filtering, communities, content analysis, effectiveness, efficiency, image search, indexing, latent semantic analysis, learning to rank, linguistic analysis, multilingual IR, multimedia IR, personalization, query analysis, query suggestions, recommender systems, retrieval models, social media, summarization, test collections, users, vertical and entity search, Web IR, and Web queries.
* The Best Paper award was given to Mikhail Ageev, Qi Guo, Dmitry Lagun, and Eugene Agichtein for "Find It If You Can: A Game for Modeling Different Types of Web Search Success Using Interaction Data".
* The Best Student Paper award was presented to Shuang-Hong Yang, Bo Long, Alexander J. Smola, Hongyuan Zha, Zhaohui Zheng for "Collaborative Competitive Filtering: Learning Recommender using Context of User Choice".
An additional 5 outstanding papers were awarded honorable mentions. Recent and past research awards are listed at .
The conference was held July 24-28, 2011, in Beijing, China, and attracted over 820 attendees (a new record). The conference received external sponsorship from Baidu, Chinese Information Processing Society, eBay, EMC, Google, HP Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, Now Publishers, Springer, Tencent, Université de Montréal, Yahoo!, and Yandex.
4 Programs which provide service to some part of the SIGIR community
Because of heavy industrial activity in the Information Retrieval community, the SIGIR conference has run an "industry track" at the conference. The track started as a separate event in 2007 and was integrated into the main conference starting in 2009. The track has been very popular, highlighting key industrial issues and challenges as well as attracting industrial researchers to the main technical conference.
SIGIR has been collecting archive publications from the early days of the Information Retrieval field. Most of the information is unavailable anywhere on-line, so this archive provides new access to the historical information. A description of the gathered information is available at .
5 Key issues facing SIGIR in the next 2-3 years
The SIGIR EC began a poll of the IR community (SIGIR members and others) just as this fiscal year ended. The poll addresses several issues that the EC feels may need to be addressed in the next handful of years:
1. There is concern among the community that conference fees for some conferences are growing too large, particularly for student registrants. The EC is soliciting opinions on the issue and well as reaction to possible changes to conferences that might reduce fees.
2. Like many SIGs, SIGIR has a substantial cash reserve. To date, the primary use of that reserve fund has been to support student travel. The EC is soliciting its membership for other uses that have broad support.
3. Because the major IR conferences (all sponsored by SIGIR) are all international conferences and rotate throughout the world, there are occasionally substantial periods when no IR conference is in the Americas. The EC aims to find out whether there is interest in creating a new "regional" conference and, if so, how it might be structured.
4. SIGIR currently supports only "outstanding paper" research awards at the conferences. The SIG is considering following in the footsteps of several other SIGs and creating additional words -- e.g., a "test of time" award. The EC is requesting feedback on types of awards and formats.
5. A substantial amount of research in IR is done at commercial organizations using proprietary data. Because that data is inaccessible to others -- particularly to academics -- some members of the community have expressed a desire to create new policies regarding such data and its use in publications. The EC is soliciting reactions to various possibilities.
The poll of the membership will run until mid-August. A summary of the results will be published in the Fall newsletter.
6 Summary
SIGIR had another productive and successful year, with important intellectual and social contributions. Our conferences have been successful in all senses (with strong technical content and good international participation), and our financial situation is quite healthy. Perhaps most importantly, we continue to have very strong participation in ACM SIGIR by the international IR community, especially in a willingness to serve as volunteers for conference and SIG-related activities.
SIGITE FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 – June 2011
Submitted by: Mark Stockman, Chair
2010-2011 was another successful year for ACM-SIGITE. The SIG continued its tradition of fulfilling conferences and entered into several initiatives to serve its membership.
SIGITE 2010 Conference on IT Education
Central Michigan University hosted the 2010 annual conference in Midland, MI. The conference again generated revenue for the SIG and saw the number of attendees reach similar levels of past conferences, though paper submissions were down. Procedures put in place in 2010 by the SIGITE Executive Committee regarding reviews raised the overall quality of papers to what we had seen in years past. With this increased quality, SIGITE also resumed its Best Paper Award for the conference, presenting it to Randy Connolly for his work, 'Small service is true service while it lasts: integrating web services into IT education.'
The addition of travel grants to students attracted graduate student attendance and submission of research to the conference. Nine students had their papers accepted and were given financial support to travel to Midland to present their work. Their inclusion provided some great fresh ideas for the conference attendees. The Executive Committee has decided to continue this practice of providing travel grants for up to ten students who have their papers accepted for publication in the conference proceedings.
The final day of the conference consisted of some great discussion among the membership on the direction of the society and how to make SIGITE a more attractive venue for publication of IT research.
IT Research Conference
This discussion has led to a new initiative that the SIGITE Executive Committee has decided to implement, the addition of a new conference specifically dealing with traditional research (and so named) as opposed to the pedagogical research we have seen submitted most often in the past. The thought is that the name of the annual SIGITE conference (Conference on IT Education) dissuades those academics doing more traditional research from submitting their work. This new conference/symposium will be co-located with the annual SIGITE conference starting next year in Calgary. Long-time SIGITE member and volunteer Jeff Brewer from Purdue University has agreed to spearhead this initial offering. Jeff and his team of other SIGITE volunteers will have something ready to announce to those attending the SIGITE 2011 conference at West Point, NY in October of this year.
Two Year IT Curriculum
Next, a group of dedicated SIGITE members have spent the past few years crafting a draft of a model curriculum for two-year programs. A significant percentage of the SIGITE membership come from such two year IT programs, so the SIG has put effort into meeting the needs of this group. This first draft has been completed and is being prepared to present to the SIGITE membership for comment. A next step will be to present this document to the ACM Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges (CCECC) as the start to the discussion on an official ACM two year IT curriculum.
Communication/Social Media Initiatives
In an effort to better communicate with its members and reach out to prospective new members, SIGITE marched forward on an initiative this year to revamp its website and jump into the world of social media. After several failed/mediocre attempts at creating a website in-house or using students, the Executive Committee decided SIGITE would be best served by hiring an outside Web Developer for this project. In February of 2011, the new SIGITE website was unveiled (). It satisfied the Executive Committee’s requirements of a pleasing, maneuverable site that was easy to maintain. The maintenance of the site is quite easy using the Wordpress content management system.
Integrated in the website are the SIG’s entry into social media; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a blog. These have had varying degrees of success but the blog in particular has been a great venue to quickly communicate with members about happenings in the computing education realm and the upcoming conference.
SRII Partnership
In early 2011, Mark Stockman (Chair) was approached by the president of an emerging professional society, Service Research and Innovation Institute (SRII), to discuss linkages between our organizations. Discussions showed there were several areas in which the two societies could work together for mutual benefit. SRII is a group, primarily made up of high ranking IT industry professionals, dedicated to the investigation of integrating IT solutions into the service industries. A few areas they are interested in is IT curriculum and research, both of which overlap with the SIGITE community. The discussion of these issues continued with Mark Stockman being invited to participate on a panel at the SRII conference addressing IT Curriculums and Research. SIGITE looks forward to pursuing this relationship linking its primarily academic membership to the industry leaning SRII community towards the advancement of IT curriculum and research.
SIGITE 2011 Conference on IT Education
Finally, work is well underway in the planning of the SIGITE 2011 conference to be held in West Point, NY hosted by the US Military Academy. Thanks to new efforts to publicize the call for participation and the new website, paper submissions are up 80% this year after last years disappointing submission level. To build continuity and assure all jobs are being performed for the conference, the SIGITE Executive Committee has implemented a policy whereby each Conference Chair will be asked in preceding conferences to serve as the Sponsorship Chair and Program Chair. This has started in the SIGITE 2011 conference; the 2012 Conference Chair Randy Connolly is currently serving as Program Chair and Dave Armitage is currently serving as Sponsorship Chair.
SIGKDD FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010-June 2011
Submitted by: Usama M. Fayyad, SIGKDD Chair
1. Annual Awards
ACM SIGKDD 2010 Innovation Award to Prof. Christos Faloutsos - Jun 22, 2010.Citation: for contributions to graph and multimedia mining, fractals, self-similarity and power laws; indexing for multimedia and bioinformatics data, and data base performance evaluation.
ACM SIGKDD 2010 Service Award to Prof. Osmar R. Zaiane - Jun 22, 2010. Citation: for his significant service and contributions to the global KDD community, especially as the Editor-in-Chief of SIGKDD Explorations, the flagship newsletter of SIGKDD (Associate Editor from 2004 to 2007).
1.2 SIGKDD Distinguished Dissertation Award
The 2010 SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation award has attracted a high number of excellent applicants. The winner was
Dr. Mohammad Al Hasan was awarded the 2010 SIGKDD Distinguished Dissertation Award for his thesis work titled: Mining Interesting Subgraphs by Output Space Sampling >>
(advisor: Mohammed Zaki, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
Dr. Mohammad Al Hasan's dissertation presents an innovative and general approach to frequent pattern mining with a potential to dramatically improve the performance of currently available tools. His dissertation was selected from among a number of very strong candidates and receiving this award serves as a clear recognition of its contributions to the KDD community.
Runner-up:
Dr. Jilles Vreeken >> for Making Pattern Mining Useful >>
(advisor: Arno Siebes, Utrecht University).
Certificates of Recognition:
Dr. Qiaozhu Mei for “Contextual Text Mining”.
(advisor: Cheng Xiang Zhai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Dr. Pauli Miettinen for “Matrix Decomposition Methods for Data Mining: Computational Complexity and Algorithms”.
(advisor: Heikki Mannila, University of Helsinki)
All annual awards were presented at KDD-2010 Conference in Washington, D.C. as part of the opening ceremony to the conference.
The 2011 Dissertation Awards will be announced in July 2011 and will be awarded at the SIKDD-2011 conference in San Diego, CA on August 21, 2011.
2. Significant Publications
The KDD 2010 annual conference maintained SIGKDD position as the leading conference on data mining and knowledge discovery, with a record 679 submissions and 121 accepted papers in total (17.8% acceptance rate) overall. As has been in the past, the conference consisted of two major tracks:
1. The Research Track: attracting 578 research submissions with 101 papers accepted for presentation (17.4% acceptance rate) based on the review of a Program Committee consisting of 45 senior program committee members over 240 regular PC members.
2. The Industrial/Government Applications Track: with 101 submissions and 20 accepted papers for presentation and publication.
Among the topics presented at KDD-2010 were Social networks, Recommender systems, Clustering, Temporal & Streams Mining, Anomaly detection, Graph mining, Text mining, Search and advertising, Security and Privacy, Enterprise & Finance applications, Telecom applications, and Information Extraction & Text Mining. This in addition to traditional data mining classification, clustering, research and applications papers.
Of note this year was the high level of attendance at the I/G Applications track with all sessions filled or over-subscribed. This has led us to confirm our plans for 2011 in creating a new format to be called the “Industry Applications Experience” track which will consist primarily of invited speakers and heavily edited presentations by the program committee – we believe some of the best applications in our field are deployed by teams who do not have the time or permissions to write full papers that are evaluated based on classical research criteria.
2.1 KDD-2010 Conference Dates and Attendance
KDD 2010 was held in Washington, D.C. stating Sunday July 25th to Wed July 28th, 2010. Saturday July 27th was provided as an extra day for extended workshops. Conference Workshops took place on July 24-25, and Tutorial on July 25th. The opening session with awards ceremony was held on July 25th evening as part of the plenary opening session of the formal conference.
2010 SIGKDD Best Research Paper Award
The award recognizes papers presented at the annual SIGKDD conference that advance the fundamental understanding of the field of knowledge discovery in data and data mining. For more information please refer to the SIGKDD Best Research Paper Award page. Awards were sponsored by HP.
Best Research Paper: innovative contribution
Connecting the Dots Between News Articles
Dafna Shahaf and Carlos Guestrin
Best Research Paper: technical contribution
Large Linear Classification When Data Cannot Fit In Memory
Hsiang-Fu Yu, Cho-Jui Hsieh, Kai-Wei Chang, and Chih-Jen Lin
Recognized Finalists
Discriminative Topic Modeling based on Manifold Learning
Seungil Huh, and Stephen E. Fienberg
Online Multiscale Dynamic Topic Models
Tomoharu Iwata, Takeshi Yamada, Yasushi Sakurai, and Naonori Ueda
Inferring Networks of Diffusion and Influence
Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez, Jure Leskovec, and Andreas Krause
A Scalable Two-Stage Approach for a Class of Dimensionality Reduction Techniques
Liang Sun, Betul Ceran, and Jieping Ye
Learning Incoherent Sparse and Low-Rank Patterns from Multiple Tasks
Jianhui Chen, Ji Liu, and Jieping Ye
KDD-2010 Conference continued to have strong participation of the industrial researchers, as evidenced by the record 101 papers submitted to the industrial track (only 20 accepted). This year we enhanced the criteria for acceptance and raised the bar on what we considered a real application that is deployed and used in the field. This resulted in diminished acceptances but a much higher quality of content.
2010 SIGKDD Best Industry/Government Track Paper Award
The award recognizes papers presented at the annual SIGKDD conference that advance the fundamental understanding of the field of knowledge discovery in data and data mining. This year's Best Industry/Government Track Paper Award is sponsored by Open Data Group. For more information please refer to the SIGKDD Best Industry/Government Track Paper page.
Best Industry/Government Track Paper
Optimizing Debt Collections Using Constrained Reinforcement Learning
Naoki Abe, Prem Melville, Cezar Pendus, Chandan K Reddy, David L Jensen, Vince P Thomas, James J Bennett, Gary F Anderson, Brent R Cooley, Melissa Kowalczyk, Mark Domick, Timothy Gardinier
Honorable Mention of Best Industry/Government Track Paper
Overlapping Experiment Infrastructure: More, Better, Faster Experimentation
Diane Tang, Ashish Agarwal, Deirdre O'Brien, Mike Meye
2.2 Conference attendance and Budget Management
The KDD-2010 conference continued a strong tradition of high attendance and continued healthy financial management and performance. The conference attracted a total of 877 registrants. This is an all-time high, with the exception of KDD-2000 held just prior to the bursting of the Internet Bubble. We continue to thrive and draw interest through years of crisis and low travel budgets.
Revenue Summary:
• Final registrations: 877 Registrants
• Revenue from Registrants: $500,795
• Revenue from Sponsorship: $83,800
Revenue from Exhibitors: $12,500 (5 exhibitors apart from Sponsors)
2.3 Workshops and Tutorials
In addition, KDD 2010 hosted 14 Workshops (as opposed to 11 in 2009) and 12 Tutorials (as opposed to 7 in 2009). Workhops were held Sat-Sun August
|W1 |Mining and Learning with Graphs Workshop 2010 (MLG-2010) |Sat-Sun |
|W2 |Large-scale Data Mining: Theory and Applications (LDMTA-2010) |Sun-AllD |
|W3 |Useful Patterns (UP) |Sun-AllD |
|W4 |Social Media Analytics (SOMA 2010) |Sun-AllD |
|W5 |KDD Cup 2010: Improving Cognitive Models with Educational Data Mining (KDD Cup 2010) |Sun-Morn |
|W6 |9th International Workshop on Data Mining in Bioinformatics (BIOKDD10) |Sun-Morn |
|W7 |Tenth International Workshop on Multimedia Data Mining(MDMKDD 2010) |Sun-Morn |
|W8 |The Fourth International Workshop on Data Mining and Audience Intelligence for Online Advertising (ADKDD'10) |Sun-Morn |
|W9 |Human Computation Workshop (HCOMP 2010) |Sun-Morn |
|W10 |CM SIGKDD Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI-KDD) |Sun-AftN |
|W11 |The 4th International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data (SensorKDD) |Sun-AftN |
|W12 |The 4th SNA-KDD Workshop on Social Network Mining and Analysis (SNAKDD 2010) |Sun-AftN |
|W13 |Novel Data Stream Pattern Mining Techniques (StreamKDD) |Sun-AftN |
|W14 |Discovering, Summarizing and Using Multiple Clusterings (MultiClust) |Sun-AftN |
The tutorials were held during the day Sunday July 25th, 2010 and consisted of the following tutorials:
.
| |Tutorial Title |Schedule |
|T1 |Large-scale Data Mining: MapReduce and Beyond |Sun-Morn |
|T2 |New Developments in the Theory of Clustering |Sun-Morn |
|T3 |Temporal Pattern Mining |Sun-Morn |
|T4 |Learning through Exploration |Sun-Morn |
|T5 |Geometric Tools for Graph Mining of Large Social and Information Networks |Sun-Morn |
|T8 |Mining Web Search and Browse Logs |Sun-Morn |
|T6 |Privacy-aware Data Mining in Information Networks |Sun-AftN |
|T7 |Introduction to Graphical Models for Data Mining |Sun-AftN |
|T9 |Mining Heterogeneous Information Networks |Sun-AftN |
|T10 |Outlier Detection Techniques |Sun-AftN |
|T11 |Recommender Problems for Web Applications |Sun-AftN |
|T12 |Indexing and Mining Time Sequences |Sun-AftN |
2.3 SIGKDD Video Releases: the KDD-2010 conference program videos
We released the full video program of KDD-2010, all recorded material is published in video format on:
2.4 SIGKDD Explorations
We announced a new Editorial team for SIGKDD Explorations at KDD-2010. The new Editor-n-Chief as of July 2010 will be: Bart Goethals of University of Antwerp and the Associate Editors will be: Charu Aggarwal of IBM TJ Watson Research Center and Srinivasan Parthasarathy of The Ohio State University.
SIGKDD Explorations published two issues in the last fiscal year:
July 2010, Volume 12, issue 1 and was edited by prior E-i-C: Osmar Zaiane of University of Alberta.
December 2010, Volume 12, Issue 2: this issue included a special issue focusing on: Special Issue: Unexpected Results in Data Mining. This issue had two guest editors: Christophe Giraud-Carrier of Brigham Young University and Margaret H. Dunham of Southern Methodist University.
3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (TKDD) launched in 2007, , with Jiawei Han as editor in Chief, has continued as one of the two major journals in our field. TKDD published 5 issues in 2010 and 1 issues in 2011 so far.
The original major journal in our field, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, currently with Geoff Webb as Editor-in-Chief continues to be a top-cited journal internationally. This journal was launched in 1996 with Usama Fayyad as founding Editor-in-Chief.
4. A very brief summary for key issues that the SIGKDD membership will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years.
Some of the key issues for SIGKDD and SIGKDD members:
• Maintaining effective SIGKDD operation after transfer to new SIGKDD leadership.
• Difficulty in getting industry participation in KDD conference which we are addressing with the new Industry Applications Experience track launched in KDD-2011
• Growing rift in the relevance of problems that academia can work on due to the difficulty of getting access to large real-world data, with some of the most important data and research problems locked inside Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other web “giants”. We are currently working on a solution to provide big compute platform for academic research
• Getting new membership and especially student members
• Negative perception of “data mining” in the US (and sometimes reality) that data mining is a technology which invades privacy (e.g. Recent NH and VT laws prohibiting “prescription data mining”)
• Addressing issues of data privacy and the role of data mining positive or negative in that arena
• Competitive pressure from a new generation of APPLIED conferences that are drawing attention and causing some attention pressure. KDD-2010 is responding by creating an additional applied invited track on predictive analytics as well as new formats for fireside chat on important topic and special applied panels.
• Creating more forums for participation on-line as well as a professionally produced magazine for the field if the economics justify it.
• Creating a new generation, web 2.0 web presence for SIGKDD and KDD conferences. We started this effort in 2011 and hope to announce results at KDD-2011.
5. Financial Snapshot
SIGKDD continues to have a healthy financial balance sheet and surplus cash balance. Operations of the SIGKDD generated over USD $196,000 in surplus, further enhancing our cash balance and re-enforcing our financial feasibility as a SIG.
We plan to increase investment activities in the next fiscal year to institute some value added programs that increase the value of SIGKDD to members as well as enhance the field as a whole. We are also considering hiring dedicated staff to address issues that need more systematic attention, such as web site maintenance and PR and promotions, as well as marketing activities related to the field.
SIGMETRICS FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Carey Williamson, Chair
ACM SIGMETRICS had another strong and active year, culminating in the SIGMETRICS 2011 conference at ACM FCRC 2011 in San Jose. In addition to a strong technical program at the conference, we presented our annual SIG awards, and held our Executive Committee meeting to discuss the state of the SIG as we hand over to a new slate of SIG officers this summer.
Awards
------
Dr. Onno J. Boxma was selected as the recipient of the 2011 ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award.
Dr. Boxma holds the chair of Stochastic Operations Research in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science in Eindhoven University of Technology.
His main research interests are in queueing theory and its applications to the performance analysis of computer-communication and production systems. He has published about 180 refereed papers on these subjects, and he is co-author/co-editor of five books on queueing theory and performance evaluation.
Dr. Boxma received his award at the ACM SIGMETRICS 2011 conference in San Jose, as part of ACM FCRC 2011. The citation for his award was: "For outstanding contributions to queueing theory and exceptional leadership in the performance evaluation community".
The 2011 ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Researcher Award was presented to Dr. Adam Wierman.
Dr. Wierman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. His research interests focus on resource allocation and scheduling decisions in computer systems and services. His PhD work received the CMU School of Computer Science Distinguished Dissertation Award and an honorable mention for the INFORMS Doctoral Dissertation Award. He has multiple paper awards to his credit, including the 2003 ACM SIGMETRICS Best Student Paper Award, the 2010 IFIP Performance Best Paper Award, and the 2011 IEEE INFOCOM Best Paper Award. He has also received multiple teaching awards at CMU and at CalTech.
Dr. Wierman received his Rising Star award at the ACM SIGMETRICS 2011 conference in San Jose. The citation for his award was: "For fundamental insights into scheduling and fairness in modern computing systems".
Our SIG presented its next "Test of Time" award at the ACM SIGMETRICS 2011 conference as well. This award honours SIGMETRICS work published 10-12 years ago that still has significant impact today.
There was a tie this year for the award. The co-winners were:
"A Case for End System Multicast" by Yang-hua Chu, Sanjay Rao, and Hui Zhang (ACM SIGMETRICS 2000). This paper demonstrated that multicast functionality could be provided at end systems using an overlay network, with only modest performance penalties.
"Stable Internet Routing without Global Coordination", by Lixin Gao and Jennifer Rexford (ACM SIGMETRICS 2000). This paper provided a formal analysis of BGP routing policies, and showed how to ensure convergence to stable Internet routes without requiring routers to divulge their BGP configurations.
Conference Activities
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The annual ACM SIGMETRICS conference is the premier forum for performance evaluation research, which spans a wide range of application domains in computer and communication systems.
The 2011 conference took place in San Jose as part of ACM FCRC 2011. Arif Merchant (Google) was the General Chair, with Kim Keeton (HP Labs) and Dan Rubenstein (Columbia University) as Program Chairs.
Because it was an FCRC year, organizing the conference was slightly easier than usual, since dates, hotel contracts, registration, and catering arrangements were handled by ACM HQ. However, there is still a lot of communication/coordination required with ACM, and several items are beyond the control of the General Chair (e.g., dates, scheduling, room assignment, catering prices).
The registered attendance for our event this year was 120, which was lower than expected, but still above the budgeted break-even point of 100. A particular highlight this year was on the sponsorship front, with the General Chair raising a total of $38K from sponsors, which really helped with the bottom line for the conference. We expect to finish with a small surplus of $5-8K from this year's event.
The general feedback on the conference was very positive. The main conference was 2.5 days, from Thursday to Saturday. Two workshops were offered prior to the conference, namely MAMA
(MAthematical performance Modeling and Analysis), and Green Metrics. Tutorials were also offered prior to the conference, but the attendance for these was disappointing.
The technical program was very strong, as usual. The 57-member PC had 21 first-timers who brought new faces, topic areas, and energy to the process. HotCRP was used for paper submission and review.
There was a two-phase review process, with all papers getting 3 reviews initially, and then the most relevant papers getting an extra review prior to the PC meeting, which was held at Columbia
University in late January. Ultimately, there were 26 papers accepted from 177 actual submissions (15%), and 20 posters as well. The program had a good mix of theory, systems, and networking topic areas.
Two papers received awards at the conference:
Best Paper
"Topology Discovery of Sparse Random Graphs with Few Participants"
Animashree Anandkumar (University of California at Irvine), Avinatan Hassidim (Google), Jonathan Kelner (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Kenneth C. Sevcik Outstanding Student Paper Award
"Network Architecture for Joint Failure Recovery and Traffic Engineering"
Martin Suchara (Princeton University), Dahai Xu (AT&T Labs-Research), Robert Doverspike (AT&T Labs-Research), David Johnson (AT&T Labs-Research), Jennifer Rexford (Princeton University)
The SIGMETRICS/Performance 2012 conference will take place at Imperial College in London, UK on June 4-8, 2012. The General Chair is Peter Harrison (Imperial College), and the Program Chairs are Martin Arlitt (HP Labs) and Guiliano Casale (Imperial College). Early indications are that we will have a well-attended and well-organized conference, including a cruise on the Thames.
The dates, location, and organizers for SIGMETRICS 2013 are yet to be determined, by the new SIG Executive.
New Initiatives
---------------
An ongoing initiative for our SIG is a proposed new journal, tentatively called ACM Transactions on Performance Evaluation (ToPE). We are currently updating our proposal based on feedback received from the ACM Publications Board, and have constituted a tentative editorial board and two Co-EiCs (Editor in Chief) for the journal. We hope to have the journal approved for launch later this year, perhaps in time for the SIG's 40th birthday in November 2011.
Issues and Challenges
---------------------
An ongoing challenge for our SIG is the slowly declining membership, which has been a trend for many SIGs since the introduction of the ACM Digital Library. We hope that the new journal, our awards program, and our increased visibility from co-sponsored and "in cooperation" events will help to promote the value of SIGMETRICS membership, and allow us to grow our membership base in the years ahead.
Leadership development is also a potential concern, as there seems to be a "changing of the guard" in the age demographic of SIGMETRICS. Finding high-quality people for technical roles such as PC Chair is not a problem, but we are exhausting our list of more experienced leaders for General Chair and SIG leadership roles. The recent trend of pressing Executive members into service as General Chairs for our conference is not really sustainable. More effort is needed to identify and nurture our future SIG leaders.
SIGMICRO FY'11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Erik Altman, Chair
The following are highlights of SIGMICRO's activities during fiscal year 2011.
SIGMICRO has worked to ensure the success of our flagship MICRO conference. MICRO celebrated its 43rd anniversary last year in Atlanta on and near the lovely Georgia Tech campus, and with an excellent technical program, outing, and high attendance. SIGMICRO has also helped start and support several other major conferences since 2001: CASES, CGO, and Computing Frontiers. All are doing well as reported below. As also reported below, we have a strong program to encourage attendance at our conferences by students and those facing financial hardship, with numerous travel grants provided to help defray cost of attendance, in addition to heavily discounted student registration rates.
Our ambitious history project has completed its first phase under the leadership of Yan Solihin, who with the help of historian Paul Edwards of the University of Michigan compiled excellent interviews with Bob Colwell and Edward Davidson. These interviews – both transcripts and oral recordings – are available on the SIGMICRO Newsletter site: . SIGMICRO was active in organizing and in trying to fund the "Bob Rau" award to recognize excellence in microarchitecture and closely related fields. However, it was ultimately decided that the award did not meet the criteria for an ACM-wide award (especially uniqueness and size of monetary award). Thus the Rau Award will be sponsored only by IEEE.
On a happier note, SIGMICRO for the first time, awarded plaques to the two 2011 inductees to the Micro Hall of Fame (), Dave Albonesi and Mahmut Kandemir, with Dave Albonesi leading an effort to provide plaques to previous 31 members already in the Micro Hall of Fame (for authoring 8 or more papers in the Micro conference).
SIGMICRO CONFERENCE Activities
MICRO-43: December 4 – 8, 2010
SIGMICRO's flagship conference was successful with turnout of 313 people. In addition the conference had 248 submissions – 39 more than the already high 209 submissions received in 2009 and more than double the number received in 1997. Submissions came from more than 15 countries with China and Spain following the US in number of submissions. Of the 248 submissions, 45 were accepted, a relatively large absolute count for Micro, but only an 18% accept rate. There were also 8 workshops and 3 tutorials. Micro provided $10,000 for student travel grants.
In addition to the outstanding submission count, Micro enjoyed excellent technical talks, keynotes, workshops, and tutorials, and very effective organization by co-chairs Tom Conte and Sudha Yalmanchili. As testament to this excellence, SIGMICRO polled attendees using , with large majorities in all categories ranking the conference as "Excellent" or "Good".
Alas, the conference began on a sad note with a commemoration by Kemal Ebcioglu of Maurice Wilkes, pioneer in the field who died on November 29, 2010, only days before Micro began.
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Outing: Atlanta Aquarium, with its huge tank, many football fields in area and including large sharks and whales.
General Co-Chairs: Sudhakar Yalmanchili and Tom Conte (Georgia Tech)
Program Chair: Sanjay Patel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Keynotes: Krisztian Flautner, VP of Research and Development, ARM Gary Lauterbach, CTO and Co-Founder, SeaMicro
3 Tutorials:
• ILDJIT: A Compilation Framework for Program Analysis, Optimization and Microarchitectural Design, Organizers: Simone Campanoni, Vijay Janapa Reddi, Glenn Holloway, Gu-Yeon Wei, and David Brooks (Harvard)
• PCM: Phase Change Memories: A Systems Perspective, Organizers: Moinuddin Qureshi (IBM Research), Sudhanva Gurumurthi (Univ. of Virginia), and Bipin Rajendran (IBM Research)
• GPU-PAT: Performance Analysis and Tuning for GPUs, Organizers: Hyesoon Kim and Richard Vuduc (Georgia Tech)
8 Workshops:
• NoCArc: Workshop on Network on Chip Architectures
• FPHM: the 3rd Workshop on Functionality of Hardware Performance Monitors
• UCAS: the 6th Workshop on Unique Chips and Systems
• MASVDC: Workshop on Microarchitectural Support for Virtualization, Data Center Computing and Clouds
• CARL: the 1st Workshop on the Intersections of Computer Architecture and Reconfigurable Logic
• WINDS: Workshop on the Interaction between Nanophotonic Devices and Systems
• WRA: Workshop on Resilient Architectures
• WTAI: Invited Workshop on Technology-Architecture Interaction: Emerging Technologies and their Impact on Computer Architecture
Best Student Paper Award:
Cancelled: After spirited discussion at SIGMICRO Business meeting, inspired by previous survey results and current student opinion.
Student travel: $10,000 donated by SIGMICRO.
CGO 2010: April 2 – 6, 2011
Also Co-Sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN.
CGO [Code Generation and Optimization] for the first time in its 8 years ventured outside North America, with the conference set in Chamonix, France, in the heart of the Alps. Submissions increased 50% from 2010 to a record 105 papers, of which 28 were accepted (26.7%), actually one fewer papers than 2010. In addition, CGO 2011 featured two keynotes, a welcome reception / student poster session, and numerous workshops and tutorials. Indeed, there were 7 workshops and 8 tutorials, compared to 4 workshops and only 4 tutorials the previous year.
Location: Centre des Congrès - Le Majestic, Chamonix, France
General Chairs: Olivier Temam, INRIA
Program Chairs: Carol Eidt (Microsoft),
Michael O’Boyle (University of Edinburgh)
Keynotes: Erik Altman (IBM Research)
Xavier Leroy (INRIA)
8 Tutorials:
• [ArBB] Array Building Blocks: A Dynamic Compiler for Data-parallel Heterogeneous Systems
• [DyRIO] Building Dynamic Instrumentation Tools with DynamoRIO
• [GCC] Essential Abstractions in GCC
• [Parallel] GPU Programming Models, Optimizations and Tuning
• [Pin!] Detailed Pin!
• [PIPS] PIPS: An Interprocedural Extensible Source-to-Source Compiler Infrastructure for Code/Application Transformations and Instrumentations
• [AlphaZ] AlphaZ and the Polyhedral Equational Model
• [LoopVect] Program Optimization through Loop Vectorization
7 Workshops:
• WIR-1: Workshop on Intermediate Representations
• ACCA-1: Analyse to Compile, Compile to Analyse
• IMPACT-1: First International workshop on Polyhedral Compilation Techniques
• SMART-5: Workshop on Statistical and Machine learning approaches to ARchitecture and compilaTion
• GROW-3: Workshop on GCC Research Opportunities
• WISH-3: Workshop on Infrastructures for Software/Hardware co-design
• ODES-9: Workshop on Optimizations for DSP and Embedded Systems
Best Paper Award:
“Flow-Sensitive Pointer Analysis for Millions of Lines of Code,” by Ben Hardekopf and Calvin Lin
Best Student Presentation Award:
“Highly Scalable Distributed Dataflow Analysis,” by Joseph L. Greathouse
Best Poster Award:
“VMAD: a Virtual Machine for Advanced Dynamic Analysis of Programs,” by Alexandra Jimborean
CASES 2010: October 24 – 29, 2010
Also in cooperation with ACM SIGBED
CASES [Compilers, Architecture, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems] joined two other embedded systems conferences in 2006 to create a larger "ESWeek" grouping and promote cross-fertilization of efforts in the embedded area. The combination of conferences was a success, and ESWeek was has been repeated ever since, with the 2010 version in Scottsdale, Arizona. In all, 58 submissions were received, of which 26 were accepted. There were also 8 workshops, an increase of one over 2009.
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
One of 3 Conferences in Embedded Systems Week:
• CASES
• CODES+ISSS (Co-sponsored by ACM SIGDA and SIGBED)
• EMSOFT (Sponsored by ACM SIGBED)
General Co-Chairs: Donatella Sciuto and Samarjit Chakraborty
Program Chairs: Vinod Kathail and Reid Tatge
Program Vice-Chair: Rajeev Barua
Keynotes:
Vida Ilderem
Vice President, Intel Labs, Director, Integrated Platform Research Lab
John Hennessy
President, Stanford University
Thomas A. Henzinger,
IST Austria
Computing Frontiers 2010: May 3 – 5, 2011
After a year hiatus in Bertinoro, Italy, Computing Frontiers returned to its most frequent location, the island of Ischia, Italy, and continued to attract high quality papers on futuristic ideas on the frontier of computing, with a program consisting of 22 full papers and 20 posters. Reflecting the high quality of Computing Frontiers, selected papers have been invited for an extended special issue of the Springer International Journal of Parallel Programming.
Location:
Ischia, Italy
General Chair:
Calin Cascaval, Qualcomm
Program Co-Chairs:
Victor Prasanna, University of Southern California
Pedro Trancoso, University of Cyprus
Keynotes:
Rodolphe Héliot, CEA-LETI, France
Katherine Yelick, University of California at Berkeley
Best Paper Awards:
• “Multi- and Many-Core Data Mining with Adaptive Sparse Grids,” by A. Heinecke and D. Pflüger
• “Efficient Stack Distance Computation for Priority Replacement Policies,” by G. Bilardi, K. Ekanadham, and P. Pattnaik
FUTURE PLANS
We are working to improve the value of SIGMICRO to its members:
• Begun in 2008, SIGMICRO has been expanding the Micro Hall of Fame: . The Micro Hall recognizes those authors with 8 or more papers since the conference inception in 1967. For the first time in 2010, SIGMICRO presented plaques at the conference to recipients. The Hall of Fame currently has 33 members, with two new members inducted in 2010: David Albonesi and Mahmut Kandemir. As noted in the introduction, David Albonesi is leading an effort to provide plaques to the previous 31 recipients. Unfortunately, we currently lack good records for Micro-1 through Micro-4, and hope this omission is soon remedied.
• We have completed the first round of the SIGMICRO Oral History Project under the auspices of the larger ACM oral history project. Yan Solihin of North Carolina State led the effort, working with historian Paul Edwards of the University of Michigan. Prof Edwards compiled excellent interviews with Bob Colwell and Edward Davidson. These interviews – both transcripts and oral recordings – are available on the SIGMICRO Newsletter site: . They contain a vast array of information from the personal (Bob Colwell growing up as one of six children of a milkman and Ed Davidson’s fighting uncle to Intel’s concern in the 1990s about the imminent demise of the x86 architecture in the face of the RISC onslaught and Ed Davidson’s thoughts about advising graduate students.) Soon we hope to make the transcripts available in the ACM Digital Library as well, but wanted SIGMICRO to showcase them first.
• As the Hall of Fame and Oral History project sites may suggest, the SIGMICRO Newsletter continues under the editorship of Russ Joseph, who has also been newly elected to the SIGMICRO Executive Committee.
• We have considered other ways to add value, some of which may be taken up by the new leadership team (below):
o Providing simplified mechanism for ACM and SIGMICRO membership when registering for our flagship MICRO Conference.
o Encouraging qualified members of SIGMICRO to become Senior and Distinguished ACM Members.
o Providing a discount on SIGMICRO membership for members of other SIGs. Joint membership helps encourage cross-pollination of ideas and areas, which often leads to productive results.
o Minimizing conflicts between conferences dates.
o Encouraging and developing SIGMICRO members to become ACM Distinguished Lecturers.
o Reviving the effort to publish a few top SIGMICRO papers in CACM.
LEADERSHIP
The leadership of SIGMICRO remained stable in FY2011.
Chair:
Erik Altman (IBM)
Vice-Chair:
Lizy John (University of Texas, Austin)
Secretary-Treasurer:
Milos Prvulovic (Georgia Technological University)
Members-at-Large:
Jim Dehnert (Google)
David Kaeli (Northeastern University)
Sally McKee (Cornell University)
However, SIGMICRO welcomes the new blood, new ideas, and very capable leadership of a new set of leaders for FY2012:
Chair:
Pradip Bose (IBM)
Vice-Chair:
David Brooks (Harvard)
Secretary-Treasurer:
Vijayalakshmi Srinivasan (IBM)
Members-at-Large:
Michael Gschwind (IBM)
Russ Joseph (Northwestern University)
SIGMIS FY’11Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Janice C. Sipior, Chair
Mission and Overview
SIGMIS is the Special Interest Group on Management Information Systems of the ACM. Members of SIGMIS are interested in information systems and technologies for management and the management of these systems and technologies. SIGMIS was founded in 1961 as the Special Interest Group on Business Data Processing and later was known as the Special Interest Group on Business Information Technology. SIGMIS publishes The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems (Data Base, for short) and holds the annual SIGMIS CPR conference dedicated to computer personnel research. SIGMIS also participates in the annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) and the annual International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) TC8 committee, as well as other conferences. SIGMIS promotes student achievement and partners with other organizations to provide services to members and to the profession.
Summary of Recent Accomplishments
During FY’11, some of the major events and accomplishments of SIGMIS include:
• Held the SIGMIS CPR Conference May 19-21, 2011 in San Antonio, Texas USA
o Awarded the “Magid Igbaria Outstanding Conference Paper of the Year Award”
o Held the SIGMIS Computer Personnel Doctoral Consortium
o Provided travel grants to Doctoral Consortium participants
• In-cooperation with the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2010) December 12-15, 2010 in St. Louis, Missouri USA
o Sponsored the Doctoral Dissertation Paper Award
o Held the tenth annual reception for SIGMIS members at ICIS2010
• Continued to represent ACM as a member of a select group to develop model curriculum for education in IS, both at the undergraduate and graduate level
• Continued to fund a representative to the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
1. Awards
Beginning with ICIS 1995, SIGMIS became the sponsor of the ICIS MIS Doctoral Dissertation Award. In 2010, the award was given to Peter J. Reynolds for his dissertation entitled, “The Alignment of Business and IT strategy in Multi-Business Organizations,” completed at the Australian School of Business, School of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. His advisor was Philip Yetton.
The recipients of the “Magid Igbaria Outstanding Conference Paper of the Year Award” at the 2011 SIGMIS CPR Conference are Sven Laumer of the Universität Bamberg, Christian Maier of the Universität Bamberg, Andreas Eckhardt of Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, and Tim Weitzel of the Universität Bamberg for their paper entitled “The Trend is Our Friend: German IT Personnel's Perception of Job-related Factors Before, During, and After the Economic Downturn.”
2. Papers
SIGMIS held the SIGMIS CPR Conference May 19-21, 2011 in San Antonio, Texas USA. The conference program is available from the SIGMIS CPR conference website at:
or directly at:
SIGMIS CPR 2011_050411.pdf.
Additionally, SIGMIS publishes The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems (Data Base, for short), a quarterly peer-reviewed publication devoted to communicating advances in research and best practice in MIS. Beginning in January 2007, the editorship transitioned to Tom Stafford of the University of Memphis, who added Global Co-Editor Patrick Y.K. Chau, University of Hong Kong. Colleen Schwarz of Louisiana State University is the Managing Editor. For the current and previous issues of Data Base, please visit the SIGMIS website or go directly to .
3. Programs
To promote professional interaction among SIGMIS members, the tenth annual reception at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2009) was held on Saturday, December 11, 2010 in St. Louis, Missouri USA, just prior to the conference December 12-15, 2010.
Since 2006, SIGMIS held the Computer Personnel Doctoral Consortium. This year’s CPR Doctoral Consortium was held on Thursday, May 19, 2011 at the SIGMIS CPR Conference May 19-21, 2011 in San Antonio, Texas USA. Beginning with this year’s CPR 2011 conference, SIGMIS is providing travel grants to Doctoral Consortium participants.
4. Service to MIS Community
In conjunction with representatives of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), SIGMIS has been involved in the development of model curriculum for education in information systems both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The latest version of the curriculum, IS 2010 Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems, has been finalized. IS 2010 is now available as a Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS) article at . The ACM news release is available at: .
Additionally, the ACM and the IEEE Computing Society are founders of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). IFIP acts on behalf of member societies in carrying out international cooperation to advance the information processing profession. SIGMIS continues to fund the attendance of ACM's representative for one of the annual meetings of IFIP to promote involvement among the membership of SIGMIS and IFIP.
5. Key Issues
Plans for forthcoming annual CPR Conferences are underway. We discussed potential hosts at the SIGMIS Business Meeting at CPR 2011. The 2012 conference will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. The Conference Chair is Monica Adya, Marquette University and the 2013 conference will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio. The conference chair is Eileen Trauth, The Pennsylvania State University. We are now in the process of following up on suggestions for hosts for subsequent CPR conferences, including Germany and Buffalo/Niagara Falls, New York. To increase conference participation, we discussed broadening the scope of CPR from “Computer Personnel Research” to “Computing & People Research.”
SIGMM FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 – June 2011
Submitted by: Klara Nahrstedt, SIGMM Chair
1. Awards
Over the last year 2010-2011, we have given out two SIGMM-wide awards, the SIGMM Technical Achievement Award 2010, and the SIGMM Best PhD Thesis Award 2010.
SIGMM Technical Achievement Award 2010: At the ACM Multimedia 2010, held in Florence Italy, we have presented our 3rd SIGMM Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications (shortly Technical Achievement Award) to Professor Ramesh Jain from University of California at Irvine for his technical achievements in the area of multimedia processing, retrieval and applications. The awardee for the SIGMM Technical Achievement Award 2010 was selected by the SIGMM awards committee Dr. Hong-Jiang Zhang (chair of the committee) from Microsoft Research, China, Prof. Rainer Lienhart (SIGMM officer) from University of Augsburg, Germany and Prof. Nicolas Georganas from University of Ottawa.
Note: After 2010, both Dr. Zhang and Prof. Georganas stepped down from the awards committee and for the 2011-2013 period, two new members were asked to serve as the members of the awards committee, Dr. Lawrence Rowe from FXPal, and Prof. Tat-Seng Chua from National University Singapore who graciously agreed to serve on this awards committee.
Prof. Ramesh Jain gave an interesting presentation “Life = Experiences (Events) + Vision” on Wednesday Morning October 27, 2010 and his presentation can be found at .
SIGMM Best PhD Thesis Award 2010: At ACM Multimedia 2010, Florence Italy, we have presented our first SIGMM PhD Thesis Award 2010 to Dr. Effrosyni Kokiopoulou, now a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich. She did her PhD at the Signal Processing Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland, under the supervision of Prof. Pascal Frossard. Dr. Kokiopoulou received the SIGMM Best PhD Thesis Award for her outstanding PhD thesis “Geometry-Aware Analysis of High-Dimensional Visual Information Sets” and she gave an interesting presentation on Thursday Morning, October 28, 2010. Her presentation can be found at .
The SIGMM Best PhD Thesis Awards committee consisted of Prof. Svetha Venkatesh (chair) from Curtin University of Technology, Australia, Prof. Dick Bulterman from CWI, Netherlands, and Prof. Abed El Saddik from University of Ottawa. All three awards committee members will serve also in the following year 2011-2012 (their final year since we have a three year appointment for this award’s committee).
Besides SIGMM-wide awards, our flagship journal, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications (TOMCCAP) acknowledges the work of the associate editors and gives out the best TOMCCAP associate editor award to an editor who provides most excellent services to authors and the community. In 2010, Prof. Shervin Shirmohammadi from University of Ottawa was named the best associate editor of ACM TOMCCAP, second time in a row since he received this award also in 2009. The new editor-in-chief, Prof. Ralf Steinmetz from Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, presented the award at the banquet of the ACM Multimedia 2010 conference in Florence, Italy.
The editor-in-chief(EiC) of TOMCCAP, Ralf Steinmetz, and the ACM SIGMM chair, Klara Nahrstedt, are currently in process of establishing the ACM TOMCCAP Nicolas Georganas named award for best paper published in the journal to honor the memory and outstanding work of Prof. Nicolas Georganas, the founder and first EiC of TOMCCAP, who passed away in July 2010.
At our SIGMM-sponsored conferences, we have given out various conference-specific awards as follows:
a. ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM Multimedia) 2010: This is the SIGMM flagship conference, and it was held in Florence, Italy October 25-29, 2010.
a. Best Paper Award: We had four papers that competed for the Best Paper award. This award was given out to Richang Hong, Meng Wang, Mengdi Xu, Shuicheng Yan, Tat-Seng Chua, “Dynamic Captioning: Video Accessibility Enhancement for Hearing Impairment” , a team from School of Computing, National University of Singapore. The presentations of all for papers can be found at .
b. Best Student Paper Award: We have awarded Best student paper award: Nikhil Rasiwasia, Jose Costa Pereira, Emanuele Coviello, Gabe Doyle, Gert Lanckriet, Roger Levy, Nuno Vasconcelos, A New Approach To Cross-Modal Multimedia Retrieval
c. Best Demo Award: Yang Cao, Hai Wang, Changhu Wang, Zhiwei Li, Liqing Zhang, Lei Zhang, MindFinder: Interactive Sketch-based Image Search on Millions of Images and Sabine Susstrunk, Clent Fredembach, Daniel Tamburrino, Automatic Skin Enhancement with Visible and Near-Infrared Image Fusion
d. Open Source Software Competition 2010: We are very proud to announce the winners of the ACM Open Source Software Competition 2010:
i. Andrea Vedaldi, Brian Fulkerson, VLFeat – An open and portable library of computer vision algorithms – VLFeat
ii. Rob Hess, An Open-Source SIFT Library – Open-Source SIFT
iii. Florian Eyben, Martin Woellmer, Bjoern Schuller, openSMILE – The Munich Versatile and Fast Open-Source Audio Feature Extractor – openSMILE
e. Multimedia Grand Challenge 2010: We had a very interesting and inspiring competition for the multimedia grand challenge. The winners of this grand challenge were
i. Jana Machajdik, Allan Hanbury, Julian Stöttinger: Understanding Affect in Images.
ii. Wei Song, Dian Tjondronegoro, Ivan Himawan: ROI-based Content Adaptation for Mobile Device Usage of Video Conferencing.
iii. Julien Law-To, Gregory Grefenstette, Jean-Luc Gauvain, Guillaume Gravier, Lori Lamel, Julien Despres: Introducing topic segmentation and segmented-based browsing tools into a content based video retrieval system.
b. 2011 ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR 2011): This is the first time this conference was held under this name in April 17-20, 2011 in Trento, Italy. This conference emerged from ACM CIVR and ACM MIR conferences, both SIGMM sponsored events. The organizers of these two venues came together and merged the two venues into one excellent and highly visible SIGMM-sponsored venue. This conference awarded best paper and best demonstration awards at their social event.
2. Significant papers
There were several papers on new areas published in SIGMM-sponsored proceedings:
a. ACM Multimedia 2010 ():
a. We had papers/presentations in the brave new topics session that showed topics such as (1) a strong connection between contextual information such as locations, time-stamps, movement and multimedia; (2) technologies for enriching social situational awareness in remote interactions; (3) social media, (4) video genetics and others.
b. We had short and long research papers in interactive art, including cultural heritage papers. These papers were connected with a very interesting multimedia art exhibition in Galleria Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, Italy.
c. We had four major tracks (interfaces, applications, content and systems) and in each track there were interesting sessions/papers.
i. In content track, major advances have been notices in bringing contextual information into multimedia for classification purposes, annotations, searching, coding, etc.
ii. In systems track coding on smart phones, 3D streaming and introduction to control new media such as scent, and other topics have been discussed.
iii. In human-centered track, interesting papers included video accessibility interfaces for hearing impaired users, multimedia interfaces in cars, viewing of photo systems, using immersion for browsing and visualizing surveillance video and others.
iv. In applications track visual aesthetics played a role for photo-quality assessment, multimedia applications for travel routes planning, using multimedia to inform people about their carbon footprint and others.
b. ACM NOSSDAV 2010 (): This workshop/working conference is under SIGMM sponsorship and it was held June 2-4, 2010 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
a. Significant papers continued to come out in the areas of 3D Immersive Interactive Systems, Understanding and Improving User Experiences by the multimedia systems and networking designers, i.e., finding efficient quality assessment methods. Another interesting trend we see in multimedia systems and networks is to understand traffic patterns of social networks, e.g., video/photo sharing, and utilize the understanding in better resource management.
c. ACM Multimedia Systems 2011 ():
a. This year, the organizers invited two categories of papers, the traditional multimedia systems/networking papers, and data set papers. In the category of traditional multimedia systems papers, mobile multimedia and large scale storage and transport for multimedia dominated. The dataset track presented various traces such as network traces of virtual worlds, real-time traffic to residential users, mobile visual search datasets, world of warcraft avatar history dataset and corpus of data for actor level emotion magnitude detection. This was a very nice extension to the program.
d. ACM ICMR 2011 ():
a. The topics in papers that dominated the discussion were in automatic tagging, geo-tagging in video, interaction aspects and social media retrieval.
e. ACM MM&Sec 2010 ():
a. In this SIGMM-sponsored workshop, held in Rome, Italy, September 9-10, the researchers discussed aspects of biometrics in travel documents, forensics approaches, watermarking and biometric smart card devices, and privacy-preserving approaches.
3. Significant programs
Throughout the SIGMM-sponsored conferences we had several significant programs that provided a springboard for future technical efforts:
a. ACM Multimedia 2010:
a. Highlight of this conference was again the Multimedia Grand Challenge program organized for the second time as a part of the conference program. Multimedia Grand Challenge is a set of problems and issues from a number of industry leaders geared to engage the multimedia research community in solving relevant, interesting and challenging questions about the industry’s 2-5 year horizon for multimedia. Researchers were encouraged to submit working systems in response to the challenge. A large number of submissions were received for this first edition of the competition. We will be continuing with this challenge in ACM Multimedia 2011.
b. The two keynote talks by Mubarak Shah from University of Central Florida “Visual Crowd Surveillance is Like Hydrodynamics” and Duncan Watts from Yahoo! Research “Using the Web to do Social Science” were very well received.
c. The multimedia art exhibition in the Medici Palace was outstanding and very well attended.
b. ACM MMSys 2011:
a. There were two important keynote talks talking about next generation challenges for future multimedia systems and network: (a) Alain Fiocco from Cisco and (b) Mark Watson from Netflix that drove a lot of the discussion at the conference and beyond.
b. A new feature was the dataset track which was very well received by the attendees.
c. Since this event was held in Cisco company, the attendees saw the telepresence system demonstration as well as the IPTV laboratory in Cisco.
c. ACM ICMR 2011:
a. The conference introduced “Practitioner Day” bringing in industry researchers and discussing problems faced by the practitioners.
4. Innovative programs
Several SIGMM-sponsored conferences had innovative programs which provided service to technical community:
a. ACM Multimedia 2010:
a. Open Source Competition brings major service to technical community since software is then released to the community with corresponding agreements in place.
b. SIGMM and Simula sponsored “Women Research Lunch” event which was a lunch for female multimedia researchers to encourage networking of female students with senior female researchers. This lunch also served to give feedback to SIGMM officers what can be done to increase participation of female researchers in multimedia area. We plan a more organized event at ACM Multimedia 2011 for female researchers.
c. Discussion room was set aside and it was an experiment for making ACM Multimedia 2010 conference even more interactive and stimulate free interactivity beyond the traditional Speaker-Attendees scheme.
b. ACM MMSys 2011:
a. There was a special session on modern media transport “Dynamic Adaptive Steaming over HTTP (DASH)”. This session presented novel contributions and breaking results on all aspects of DASH and Modern Media Transport.
b. Cisco-held conference allowed the MMSys organizers to offer remote participation in the conference via WebEx which was very much used by the community and increased the visibility of the conference.
c. ACM ICMR 2011:
a. The organizers invited attendees to an interesting special session for innovative and frontier topic in the field of multimedia retrieval: “Automatic Tagging and Geo-Tagging in Video Collections and Communities”,
b. Multiple user/industrial sessions happened during the “Practitioner Day” which included industrial talks such as “Attribute-based Object Retrievals” from IBM Research Center, “Combining Analysis with Innovative User Interfaces” from FXPal, “Multimedia Mining for Real-World Applications” from CEA LIST, “Recent Research Activities in KDDI R&D Labs”, and “Videntifier Forensic – Automatic Video Identification for Police Authorities” from Videntifier company.
5. Brief summary for the key issues that the memberships of SIGMM will have to deal with in the next 2 years
The key issues are:
a. Prepare special events to celebrate 20th anniversary of ACM Multimedia conference in 2012 in Nara, Japan.
a. Discussions with the organizing committee of ACM Multimedia 2012 are ongoing.
b. Come up with a sustainable funding model for the multimedia art community within the SIGMM community and their participation at our premier ACM Multimedia conference.
c. Expand SIGMM presence in various social networks.
a. At ACM Multimedia 2010, we had used Twitter to collect opinions, Facebook, the SIGMM website, and other social networks (see website) to increase presence of the conference and other SIGMM events, but more needs to be done.
d. Increase industry participation in SIGMM activities to strengthen ties and increase impact between industry and academia.
a. ACM ICMR 2011 did a very good job with the “Practitioner Day”.
b. ACM MMSys 2011 brought two keynote speakers from Cisco and NetFlix that provided very strong industrial relevance to the multimedia systems research
e. Automate process for talks content, web, other SIGMM material preservation at SIGMM venues.
a. ACM Multimedia 2010 did a very nice job preserving the various talks of the conference and putting them on the ACM Multimedia 2010 website.
b. ACM MMSys 2011 did a very good job collecting all slides of presenters and shared the slides on the conference website.
f. Increase SIGMM participation of female researchers.
a. We have started this task with a lunch at ACM Multimedia 2010.
g. Build up the next generation of SIGMM volunteers to serve as SIGMM officers, chairs, leaders of various SIGMM sponsored activities and venues.
a. We have a very active group of volunteers that drive very diverse activities of ACM SIGMM, but we need to bring new members in.
h. Consider additional SIGMM-wide award(s) to recognize wider multimedia community achievements such as service, education, mid-level research achievements, etc. This will be a discussion point at the next SIGMM business meeting, held at ACM Multimedia 2011, Scottsdale, Arizona.
6. Other Highlights in SIGMM activities
a. Prof. Mohan Kankanhalli, the SIGMM Director of Conferences, put together a review committee to review the efficiency and organization of our premier ACM Multimedia conference. The chair of the committee was Prof. Tat-Seng Chua. The committee reviewed two aspects of ACM Multimedia and related conferences: (a) the conference organization and (b) the procedures for the management and review of papers for the SIGMM-sponsored conferences. The report is available on the SIGMM website. In January 2011, the review committee came back with a set of key recommendations that are being now implemented for the first time at ACM Multimedia 2011 conference, held in Scottsdale, Arizona.
b. We have put together two SIGMM-sponsored retrieval conferences CIVR and MIR into one outstanding conference, the International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR), which was held for the first time in Trento Italy.
c. We had the second SIGMM-sponsored ACM Multimedia Systems conference (MMSys 2011), this year, held in February 2011, San Jose, California. It was held within Cisco company and it was a very successful event with over hundred participants local and remote.
d. We have used our formalized and streamlined process for the ACM Multimedia conference location bidding. This year at ACM Multimedia 2010, we have decided that ACM Multimedia 2012 will be in Nara, Japan, and ACM Multimedia 2013 will be in Barcelona. Spain.
e. Our SIGMM e-newsletter has new articles on multimedia education where various educational activities are featured.
f. We have made significant progress in SIGMM preservation efforts via the preservation committee, led by Dr. Mohamed Hefeeda, who set up a website to preserve past SIGMM-sponsored venues as well as establish processes towards presentation of SIGMM-sponsored venues and their websites, proceedings, etc.
g. The new Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, Dr. Ralf Steinmetz, works with ACM towards a new ACM TOMCCAP Nicolas Georganas named award for “Best Paper of the Year” published in ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications.
h. The SIGMM-specific educational committee compiles and keeps up-to-date educational material in the area of multimedia computing, communications, and applications. This effort is led by Dr. Wei Tsang Ooi. This committee now has an editor on the SIGMM e-newsletter editorial board to bring articles on multimedia education to a broader community.
i. The SIGMM chapter in China is flourishing. The chapter’s own conference, 2nd International Conference on Internet Multimedia Computing and Communication (ICIMCS 2010) had its second event December 30-31, 2010 in Harbin, China, and the 3rd ICIMCS 2011 will be August 5-7, 2011 in Chengdu, China.
j. All SIGMM-sponsored events had a very strong government and industry sponsorship and/or industry participation via talks, papers, demonstrations, including National Science Foundation, and companies such as Microsoft Research, FXPal, Simula, Yahoo!, Google, Cisco, HP Labs, MICC, Manning, O’Reilly, IBM Research, RICOH Innovations, Callas, 3D Life, Technicolor, CEWE, Deutsche Institute – Florence, British Columbia Arts Council, Provincia Di Firenze, Ente Cassa Di Risparmio Di Firenze, and others.
k. SIGMM had a number of conferences/workshops in-cooperation such as the International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras (ICDSC 2010), International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI) 2010, 9th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games (NetGames) 2010, and others. Note that 21 workshops have been associated with ACM Multimedia 2010, i.e., co-sponsored and in-cooperation with SIGMM organization.
l. We had the following attendance and paper acceptances for SIGMM-sponsored conferences:
a. ACM MMSys 2011: attendance was 68 external participants (it was 40 in 2010), 82 Cisco in-room participants, 150 WebEx participants and 184 Cisco TV participants; the acceptance rate for the main track was 37% with 41 papers submitted to main track and 15 papers accepted, for the special media transport track 45% with 20 papers submitted and 5 full papers accepted, and for the new dataset track 42% with 12 papers submitted and 5 accepted.
b. ACM Multimedia 2010: attendance was 635 participants for the main event, 847 (short and long) papers were submitted and 218 (short and long) papers accepted. We had 357 papers submitted as full papers and 61 papers accepted, which is 17.09% acceptance rate. We had 490 short papers accepted and 157 short papers accepted which is 32.04% acceptance rate. We had 58 papers submitted to interactive art program and the acceptance rate was 29.31% with 16 papers accepted. We had 10 video submissions, 67 technical demonstration submissions and 22 industrial exhibition submissions. The acceptance was 8 videos accepted, 43 technical demonstrations, and 19 industrial exhibits were accepted.
c. ACM ICMR 2011: acceptance rate for oral presentations (long papers) was 16.4%, acceptance rate for poster presentations (short papers) was 35%%.
d. ACM NOSSDAV 2010: attendance was 47 attendees, 51 papers submitted and 21 papers accepted, which is 41.4%.
e. ACM MM&Sec 2010: attendance was 52 attendees, 53 papers submitted and 32 accepted, which is 60.3%.
SIGMOBILE FY'11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Roy Want, SIGMOBILE Chair
Introduction
Building on the expanding field of mobile computing, SIGMOBILE is the ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data, and Computing. Its scope includes all aspects of mobile computing and communications, such as mobile systems and applications, wireless networking protocols and algorithms, and mobile information access and management. SIGMOBILE is a strong, vibrant SIG, with significant membership, healthy finances, well-respected, successful conferences, workshops, and publications, and valuable services for its members and the community.
The current elected officers in SIGMOBILE’s Executive Committee are:
• Chair: Dr. Roy Want (Google Inc, USA);
• Vice Chair: Prof. Robert Steele (University of Sydney, Australia);
• Secretary: Prof. Ramesh Govindan (University of Southern California, USA); and
• Treasurer: Prof. Lili Qiu (University of Texas at Austin, USA).
This is the second year the Executive Committee has served since the 2009 elections, and includes the Past Chair, Prof. David B. Johnson (Rice University, USA).
Committee Appointed Positions
SIGMOBILE’s leadership has four committee appointed positions:
• Editor-in-Chief (EIC) for SIGMOBILE's journal/newsletter for our members (Mobile Computing and Communications Review or MC2R), Prof. Suman Banerjee (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, USA)
• Information Director Prof. Robert Steele (University of Sydney, Australia),
• Workshop Coordinator Prof. Ahmed Helmy (University of Florida, Gainesville, USA),
• Digital Library Coordinator: Dr. Guanling Chen (University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA).
In the Fall of 2011 we will be looking for a new Workshop Coordinator as Ahmed Helmy has stepped down after many years of service. We thank him for all his contributions to make SIGMOBILE Workshops successful.
Sponsorship for the Mobile Computing Research Community
In 2010-11, SIGMOBILE has provided sponsorship in the form of financial support for three programs in the mobile computing research community.
• The Community Resource for Archiving Wireless Data At Dartmouth (CRAWDAD) continues to be a thriving resource for the SIGMOBILE community. As of July 2011 it contains 70 datasets, each containing one or more traces about wireless networks or mobile users, and 23 tools, many of which are designed to help researchers work with such datasets. There are currently 4 datasets in pipeline for publication. There are 3,151 users from 77 countries around the world. CRAWDAD continues to be increasingly popular, with more than 800 new users registering within the past year. Although the primary archive is at Dartmouth, the CRAWDAD site and data are mirrored on servers located in UK and Australia, to guarantee uninterrupted service and fast downloads to users all around the world.
CRAWDAD data has supported at least 318 papers in the field, and continues to be the go-to place for authors wishing to share data they've collected, or to obtain data they can use for testing their system prototypes and algorithms. SIGMOBILE support makes it possible for the CRAWDAD project to retain a technical staff person (part time) to add new data sets, maintain the site, and develop new features.
• Networking Networking Women (N2 Women) is a discipline-specific community for researchers in the communications and networking research fields. The main goal of N2 Women is to foster connections among the under-represented women in computer networking and related research fields. N2 Women allows women to connect with other women who share the same research interests, who attend the same conferences, who face the same career hurdles, and who experience the same obstacles. To assist in its networking goals, N2 Women has an email list for the group: N2Women@, and there are currently over 480 members.
N2 Women is an ACM SIGMOBILE program that has been financially supported by SIGMOBILE, Microsoft Research and HP Labs. In the past year, funds from SIGMOBILE were used for the N2 Women Student Fellowship program. A student applies for a Fellowship and, if selected, N2 Women partially covers the student's travel cost (up to $500) to a conference where an N2 Women event will be held. In exchange, the student must help organize the N2 Women meeting. The benefit of doing the organization, in addition to the travel funds, is for the student to connect with the organizers of the conference who are, typically, leaders in the research field. The organization also arranges for a senior member of N2 Women to assist/mentor the student in this task.
Since June 2010, there have been 11 N2 Women Student Fellows who organized N2 Women events at the following conferences:
• Farhana Ashraf, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (SECON 2011)
• Ouldooz Baghban Karimi, Simon Fraser University (SIGCOMM 2011)
• Yue Liu, University of Michigan) (MOBISYS 2011)
• Yan Qiao, University of Florida (INFOCOM 2011)
• Yu-Han Chen, National Taiwan University (SENSYS 2010)
• Minlan Yu, Princeton University (SIGCOMM 2010)
• Afra Mashhadi, University College London (MOBICOM/MOBIHOC 2010)
• Lara Deek, UC Santa Barbara (MOBICOM/MOBIHOC 2010)
• Michela Papandrea, University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland
(SUPSI), (WoWMoM 2010)
• Pegah Sattari, UC Irvine (MobiSys 2010)
• Devu Shila, Illinois Institute of technology, Chicago (ICDCS 2010)
Also thanks to support from SIGMOBILE, N2 Women held the 1st Networking Networking Women Workshop on September 20, 2010 in conjunction with MobiCom/Hoc in Chicago, Illinois. The breakdown of the 65 female attendees is as follows: 33 students (51%), 17 senior researchers (26%), and 15 junior researchers (23%). Overall, there were 47 institutions represented by the attendees. Participants came from all over the US and from as far away as Europe and India, with the following countries represented: Canada, France, India, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. We had several participants who attended the conference because they were coming to the N2 Women workshop and several others who attended the N2 Women workshop only (i.e., they did not attend the co-located MobiCom/Hoc conferences). In fact, a few participants traveled from Europe just to attend the N2 Women workshop!
In all N2 Women announcements, SIGMOBILE (and other sponsors of N2 Women) are thanked. Further details of N2 Women are available at: .
• ACM-W: In 2011 SIGMOBILE has become a sponsor for ACM-W (ACM’s Women in Computing organization). “ACM-W's mission is to celebrate, inform and support women in computing, and work with the ACM-W community of computer scientists, educators, employers and policy makers to improve working and learning environments for women.” This is an organization that the Executive Committee whole-heartedly supports. This means that women in CS education can request sponsorship for SIGMOBILE conferences, and we will provide sponsorship for travel and registration.
SIGMOBILE Conferences and Workshops
SIGMOBILE currently sponsors or co-sponsors five annual conferences, all recognized as the premier conferences and focus areas within the field:
• MobiCom: The Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, covers all areas of mobile computing and mobile and wireless networking at the link layer and above. MobiCom has been held every year since 1995.
• MobiHoc: The ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing, addresses the challenges emerging from wireless ad hoc networking and computing, with the focus being on issues at and above the MAC layer. MobiHoc has been held every year since 2000.
• MobiSys: The International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, addresses broad systems research issues in mobile computing and mobile networking, particularly valuing the practical experience gained from designing, building, and using mobile systems, applications, and services. MobiSys has been held every year since 2003.
• SenSys: The ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, focuses on systems issues in the emerging area of embedded, networked sensors, spanning multiple disciplines, including wireless communication, networking, operating systems, architecture, low-power circuits, distributed algorithms, data processing, scheduling, sensors, energy harvesting, and signal processing. SenSys has been held every year since 2003.
• Ubicomp: The International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, addresses the interdisciplinary field of ubiquitous computing, which utilizes and integrates pervasive, wireless, embedded, wearable and/or mobile technologies to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds. Ubicomp has been held every year since 1999, and SIGMOBILE began sponsoring it in 2009.
MobiCom 2010, the 16th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, was held at the Drake Hotel, September 20-24th, 2010, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Nitin Vaidya (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) served as General Co-Chair, and Suman Banerjee (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) and Dina Katabi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) served as the Program Co-Chairs.
MobiHoc 2010 was co-located with MobiCom 2010, sharing in common the General Chair, hotel, keynotes and workshop sessions. The MobiHoc 2010 Program Co-Chairs were: Christoph Lindemann (Universität Leipzig) and Jitendra Padhye (Microsoft Research, USA).
The MobiCom/MobiHoc 2010 technical program featured an opening keynote talk, “The State and Evolution of Broadband Wireless Technologies” by Bill Payne, Vice President and CTO Motorola Networks Wireless Broadband Systems And Technologies. The MobiCom/MobiHoc 2010 program also included two days of workshops, a total of 7 in all.
There were 3 workshops on September 20th:
• W1: CoRoNet 2010: The ACM International Workshop on Cognitive Radio Networks
• W2: WiNTECH 2010: The Fifth ACM International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation and Characterization
• W3: S3 2010: The Second International Workshop on Wireless of the Students, by the Students, and for the Students
And 4 workshops on September 24th:
• W4: The Fifth Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANTS 2010)
• W5: International Workshop on mmWave Communications: from Circuits to Networks (mmCom 2010)
• W6: The Fifth ACM International Workshop on Mobility in the Evolving Internet Architecture (MobiArch 2010)
• W7: The Seventh ACM International Workshop on VehiculAr Inter-NETworking (VANET 2010)
MobiCom 2010 also supported the traditional N2 Women luncheon meeting, and a fascinating demo and poster event. The conference banquet was held as a dinner cruise leaving from the Navy Pier on the evening of September 22nd.
MobiCom 2011 will be held September 19-23rd, 2011, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
*****
MobiSys 2011, the 9th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, was held June 28th-July 1st, 2011, in Washington, DC, USA and in-cooperation with SIGOPS. Ashok Agrawala (University of Maryland, USA) served as the General Chair, and Mark D. Corner (UMass Amherst, USA) and David Wetherall (University of Washington & Intel Labs, USA) served as the Program Co-Chairs.
The MobiSys 2011 technical program began with a keynote talk by Dr. Edward W. Felten (Federal Trade Commission) on “Making Progress on Mobile Privacy”. Dr. Felten is the first Chief Technologist at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. He is on leave from Princeton University, where he is a Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy. The final day featured a second keynote by Dr. Douglas C. Sicker (Chief Technologist with the FCC) on “Technology Policy Issues at Federal Communications Commission” Dr. Sicker is the Chief Technology Officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and also the DBC Endowed Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder with a joint appointment in the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program.
On June 30th (day 2), the SIGMOBILE 2010 Outstanding Contributions Award (OCA), the most prestigious SIGMOBILE technical award, was presented to Prof Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya): “For pioneering a wide spectrum of technologies in support of disconnected and weakly connected mobile clients”. Satya’s research has always been focused on mobile systems, and hence the choice to present the award at MobiSys, rather than MobiCom. The award was followed by a plenary talk entitled, “Mobile Computing: the Next Decade and Beyond”. Satya is an experimental computer scientist who has pioneered research in mobile and pervasive computing. One example of his work is the Coda File System, which supports distributed file access in low-bandwidth and intermittent wireless networks through disconnected and bandwidth-adaptive operation. The Coda concepts of hoarding, reintegration and application-specific conflict resolution are seen in the hotsync capability of mobile devices today. Key ideas from Coda were also incorporated by Microsoft into the IntelliMirror component of Windows 2000 and the Cached Exchange Mode of Outlook 2003. Other examples of Satya´s work include Odyssey (which explored operating system support for application-aware adaptation to overcome resource limitations in mobile computing) and the Internet Suspend/Resume system (a hands-free approach to mobile computing that leverages virtual machine technology). Satya is a co-inventor of many technologies central to mobile and pervasive computing, such as cyber foraging, data staging, lookaside caching, and translucent caching. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Pervasive Computing and the founding program chair of the HotMobile workshop series.
The last day of the conference (Friday, 1st July), also began with a Keynote from Dr. Douglas C. Sicker (Chief Technologist with the FCC) and a talk titled, “Technology Policy Issues at the Federal Communications Commission”. Dr. Sicker has held various positions in academia, industry and government. Presently, Doug is the Chief Technology Officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Doug is also the DBC Endowed Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder with a joint appointment in the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program. Doug is a senior member of the IEEE, as well as a member of the ACM and the Internet Society. He has served as an advisory to the Department of Justice National Institute of Justice. After leaving the FCC, he was also the Chair of the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council steering committee and served on the Technical Advisory Council of the FCC. His research and teaching interests include network security, wireless systems and telecommunications policy.
The MobiSys program also featured 4 workshops and a PhD Forum on Monday, June 28th:
• W1: MobiArch 2011: The 6th ACM International Workshop on Mobility in the Evolving Internet Architecture
• W2: HotPlanet 2011: The 3rd ACM International Workshop on Hot Topics in Planet Scale Measurement
• W3: NSDR 2011: The 5th International Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions
• W4: MCS 2011: The 2nd International Workshop on Mobile Cloud Computing & Services: Social Networks and Beyond
• PhD Forum on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
In addition, the MobiSys 2011 program included an N2 Women luncheon on Thursday, June 30th.
MobiSys 2012 is being planned for June 2012 in the Lake District, England. The General Chair will be Prof. Nigel Davies (Lancaster University), and Program Co-chairs: Lin Zhong (Rice University) and Srini Seshan (CMU).
*****
SenSys 2010, the 8th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, was held November 3-5, 2010, in Zurich, Switzerland. Jan Beutel (ETH Zurich) served as the General Chair, and Deepak Ganesan (UMass Amherst, USA) and John Stakovic (University of Virginia, USA) served as the Program Co-Chairs. SenSys is co-sponsored by SIGMOBILE and SIGCOMM (30% each); and SIGARCH, SIGOPS, SIGMETRICS, and SIGBED (10% each) and the NSF.
A keynote presentation launched the technical sessions “Building a Nervous System for Humanity”, by Prof. Sandy Pentland (MIT, USA). Alex `Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, and advises the World Economic Forum, Nissan Motor Corporation, and a variety of start-up firms. He has previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future Health. Profiles of Sandy have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review.
There were two workshops and a Doctoral Colloquium held on Monday, 2nd November.
▪ W1: BuildSys'10: The Second ACM Workshop on Embedded Sensing Systems for Energy Efficiency in Buildings
▪ W2: PhoneSense’10: The First International Workshop on Sensing for App [Smart] Phones
▪ 2010 Doctoral Colloquium: a forum to provide a friendly, supportive, and constructive atmosphere where PhD students can present their research-in-progress for an open discussion, guided by a panel of experienced researchers and practitioners.
In addition, the SenSys 2010 program included an N2 Women Event on Wednesday, November 3rd.
SenSys 2011 will be held November 1-4th, 2011, in Seattle, Washington. General Chair: Jie Liu (Microsoft Research), Program Co-Chairs: Philip Levis (Stanford University), Kay Romer (University of Luebeck, Germany).
*****
Ubicomp 2010, the 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing was held September 26th- 29th, 2010, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and co-sponsored with SIGCHI. Jakob E. Bardram (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and Marc Langheinrich (University of Lugano (USI), Switzerland), served as the General Co-Chairs, and Kai Truong (University of Toronto, Canada) and Paddy Nixon (University College Dublin, Ireland) served as the Program Co-Chairs.
A keynote presentation launched the conference: Dr. Morten Kyng presented “Making dreams come true – or how to avoid a living nightmare”. Dr. Kyng is professor of Pervasive Computing at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University. He heads the Centre for Pervasive Healthcare, which researches how to make healthcare available where and when it is needed through pervasive computing. The current focus of his research is on co-development of ICT, organization of activities and physical infrastructure in healthcare. His research is based on participatory design/user driven innovation and he has directed and co-directed major national and international projects on CSCW, web-technology and more recently software architecture.
Ubicomp’10 also supported a Doctoral Colloquium along with 14 all-day workshops on Sunday, 26th September.
• W1: Mobile Context-Awareness: Capabilities, Challenges and Applications
• W2: Designing for Performative Interactions in Public Spaces
• W3: Transnational Times: Locality, Globality and Mobility in Technology Design and Use
• W4: SISSI 2010: Social Interaction in Spatially Separated Environments
• W5: PaperComp 2010: 1st International Workshop on Paper Computing
• W6: UBI Challenge Workshop 2010: Real World Urban Computing
• W7: Ubiquitous Crowdsourcing
• W8: Research in the large: Using App Stores, Markets and other wide distribution channels in UbiComp research
• W9: CASEMANS: The 4th ACM International Workshop on Context-Awareness for Self-Managing Systems
• W10: PerEd 2010: The Third Workshop on Pervasive Computing Education
• W11: UbiHealth 2010: The 5th International Workshop on Ubiquitous Health and Wellness
• W12: UCSE2010: Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing for Sustainable Energy
• W13: DOME-IoT 2010: Digital Object Memories in the Internet of Things
• W14: Context awareness and information processing in opportunistic ubiquitous systems
Ubicomp 2011 will be held in Beijing on September 17-21st, 2011. The General Co-Chairs are James Landay (University of Washington, USA & Microsoft Research Asia, China) and Yuanchun Shi (Tsinghua University, China), and Program Co-chairs are Don Patterson (University of California, Irvine, USA), Yvonne Rogers (Open University, UK) and Xing Xie (Microsoft Research Asia, China).
*****
In addition to the conferences and co-located workshops above, SIGMOBILE also sponsors the HotMobile workshop (previously known as WMCSA) as a stand-alone event, not co-located with a conference. The HotMobile workshop series focuses on mobile applications, systems, and environments, as well as their underlying state-of-the-art technologies, in a small workshop format that makes it ideal for presenting and discussing new directions or controversial approaches. The Executive Committee encourages the MobiCom Program Committee meeting be collocated with HotMobile to ensure a representative selection of senior researchers attend the event. This workshop was previously sponsored each year by the IEEE Computer Society, but has been sponsored instead by SIGMOBILE since HotMobile 2008.
HotMobile 2011, the 12th Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, was held March 1-2nd, 2011, Phoenix Arizona, USA. Anthony Lamara (Intel Labs, Seattle USA) served as the General Chair, and Landon Cox (Duke University, USA) served as the Program Chair. The HotMobile 2011 technical program featured a keynote by Betsy Masiello (Policy Manager, Google Inc) entitled, “Communication, Information and Organization: The evolving role of mobile technology”. Betsy is currently with Google Inc, and has an MSc in Financial Economics from the Said Business School, Oxford University; and a BA in Computer Science and Economics from Wellesley College.
HotMobile 2011 also included a Doctoral Consortium, providing feedback on students' current research and guidance on future research directions, offering each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from faculty and students outside their own institution, and promoting the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research. The MobiSys 2011 program committee meeting was held the day following Hotmobile to encourage participating senior researchers to attend HotMobile, widen the discussions, and support the Doctoral Consortium.
HotMobile 2012 will be held February 2012, in San Diego, California, USA. The General Chair is Gaetano Borriello (University of Washington), and the Program Chair is Rajesh Krishna Balan (Singapore Management University, SG).
*****
SIGMOBILE also sponsored the following high-value events over the last year. These are annual decisions and sponsorship one year does not guarantee support in a following year. If the standard remains high, SIGMOBILE is likely to continue with its support.
• DIALM-POMC 2010: The Sixth International Workshop on Foundations of Mobile Computing, Sept 16th, 2010, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• WUWNet 2010: The Fifth ACM International Workshop on Underwater Networks, September 30th – October 1st 2010: Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.
We have also committed to sponsor MobiOpp 2012.
Each year, SIGMOBILE is also "in-cooperation" with a number of different events sponsored by other organizations. Events offered "in-cooperation with" SIGMOBILE allow its members to register at the same discounted rate as for members of other sponsoring organizations for the event, providing a significant savings to SIGMOBILE members. During this past year (July 2009 through June 2010), SIGMOBILE was in-cooperation with the following events:
• MobileHCI 2010: 12th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. September 7-10th, 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal.
• Wireless Health 2010, October 4-7th, 2010; Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, CA, USA.
• COMSNETS’11: The 3rd International Conference on COMmunication Systems and NETworkS: The Chancery Pavilion Hotel, Bangalore, India, January 4-8th, 2011
• WiSec’11: The 4th ACM Conference on Wireless Security: Hamburg, Germany June 15-17th, 2011
In-cooperation commitments are also in place for MobileHCI 2011 (Aug 30th -2nd Sept), Wireless Health 2011 (Oct 10-13th), MobiHeld 2011 (Oct 23rd) and ACWR 2011 (Dec 19-21st).
SIGMOBILE continues to be fortunate to receive strong support for its conferences and workshops from leading-edge companies and organizations from around the world. This last year, the organizations that have contributed to SIGMOBILE conferences and workshops, helping to ensure their success, include:
AT&T Research, Microsoft Research (MSR), Intel Labs, HP Labs, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), Autodesk, Creat-Net, IT University of Copenhagen, NSF, Usenix, Deutsche Telekom Inc. R&D Lab USA, Euro-NF, Google Inc., IBM Research, Motorola, NEC Laboratories America, Nokia, Shanda Innovations, Qualcomm, IGRS, HTC, Opzoon, Telezone, Tsinghua University, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Instituto di Informatica e Telematica, Elsevier, NEC laboratories America, International Technology Alliance (ITA).
As always, SIGMOBILE is sincerely grateful for all contributions.
SIGMOBILE Publications
In addition to the proceedings for each of the conferences and workshops that SIGMOBILE sponsors, SIGMOBILE also publishes a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal/newsletter for SIGMOBILE members, Mobile Computing and Communications Review (MC2R). Others may also subscribe to MC2R, and MC2R is available in the ACM Digital Library.
The Editor-in-Chief for MC2R is Prof. Suman Banerjee (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA). The current Area Editors for MC2R are Prof. Aditya Akella (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), Prof. Christian Bettstetter (University of Klagenfurt, Germany), Prof. Srdjan Capkun (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland), Prof. Landon Cox (Duke University, USA), Prof. Eylem Ekici (Ohio State University, USA), Prof. Adrian Friday (Lancaster University, UK), Dr. Michelle Gong (Intel, USA) , Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari (University of Southern California, USA), Prof. Prashant Krishnamurthy (University of Pittsburgh, USA), Prof. Panos Papadimitratos (EPFL, Switzerland), Prof. Andreas Terzis (Johns Hopkins University, USA), and Prof. Lin Zhong (Rice University, USA). In addition, MC2R currently has two Feature Editors: Dr. Ian Chakeres (The Boeing Company, USA), reporting on activities in the IETF MANET Working Group, and Prof. James C. Lin (The University of Illinois at Chicago, USA), reporting on health aspects of wireless communication.
MC2R publishes articles that provide a balance between state-of-the-art research and practice, with a thorough pre-publication review of every article by experts in the field. Beyond papers reporting the latest research results in all areas related to SIGMOBILE's scope, MC2R keeps the SIGMOBILE community apprised of relevant happenings in the area, by providing regular features on the status of major international mobile computing and communications standards, such as those from IETF, ITU, ISO, and IEEE. The journal also provides a variety of additional resources, such as bibliographies of recent publications in other journals, paper and book reviews, workshop and conference reports, calls for papers, information on research groups throughout the world, bibliographies and locations of technical reports, and other general news in the field.
MC2R places a strong emphasis on quick publication of interesting completed, or work-in-progress technical work; the average turnaround time for papers published in MC2R is about 6 months. Papers in MC2R are selected mainly from an ongoing open call for papers, plus special sections based on conferences and workshops, occasional special topic issues, and some invited papers. The acceptance rate for papers submitted through the open call for papers is quite selective, remaining under about 20%. All aspects of the journal's operation are run entirely by volunteers, including final assembly of each issue.
SIGMOBILE also publishes a monthly E-Mail Newsletter for its members. This electronic newsletter was started in 2004 and is edited by SIGMOBILE's Information Director, Prof. Robert Steele (University of, Sydney, Australia). The newsletter includes SIGMOBILE announcements, pointers to relevant mainstream news articles of interest to SIGMOBILE members, a calendar of upcoming events of interest to our members, and pointers to developer news for active developers in the area of mobile computing and wireless networking.
As an additional resource for our members and the community, SIGMOBILE maintains an extensive web site at , including information about SIGMOBILE and its activities, information about our journal/newsletter MC2R, and information about membership in SIGMOBILE. This web site also contains archived copies of most SIGMOBILE conference web sites, including all previous years of MobiCom, MobiHoc, and MobiSys.
SIGMOBILE Local Chapters
There are currently three Local Chapters of SIGMOBILE chartered with ACM:
• Nanyang Technological University Student Chapter: This is a Student Chapter of SIGMOBILE, organized within the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) ACM club in Singapore.
• Sydney Professional Chapter: This is a Professional Chapter of SIGMOBILE, organized in Sydney, Australia.
• Taiwan Chapter: This is a University Based Chapter organized by Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National I-lan University (NIU), Taiwan
Local Chapters provide a local focus to activities related to the area of SIGMOBILE, including mobile computing and wireless and mobile networking, and continue the work of SIGMOBILE within their local regions.
We encourage interested groups around the world to form a SIGMOBILE chapter in their local community, school, city, or region. For details about the benefits and procedures for forming a Local SIGMOBILE Chapter, see .
SIGMOBILE Membership
The SIG’s membership was 727 on June 30th 2011, down 5.8% on the previous year. However, the membership has spanned the 700-800 range for some years. SIGMOBILE provides substantial benefits to our members, including:
• The quarterly journal and newsletter Mobile Computing and Communications Review (MC2R), serving both as a newsletter keeping SIGMOBILE members informed, and as a scientific journal publishing high-quality peer-reviewed research papers on mobile computing and wireless and mobile networking.
• A monthly e-mail SIGMOBILE newsletter, including SIGMOBILE announcements, pointers to relevant mainstream news articles of interest to SIGMOBILE members, a calendar of upcoming events of interest to our members, and pointers to developer news for active developers in the area of mobile computing and wireless networking.
• Qualify for the lowest registration rates at conferences and workshops sponsored by SIGMOBILE, and for the many events that are "in-cooperation" with SIGMOBILE. SIGMOBILE sponsors five conferences each year (MobiCom, MobiHoc, MobiSys, SenSys, and Ubicomp) and the HotMobile workshop.
• Opportunities to share ideas, learn new results and practices, network with colleagues, and be active in a vibrant community of professionals and students in all areas of mobility of systems, users, data, and computing.
• Through the Member Value Plus program, automatically receive a CDROM after each of SIGMOBILE's five conferences, containing the full conference Proceedings.
In addition, SIGMOBILE provides additional benefits to the broader community served by SIGMOBILE:
• Organization and sponsorship of five annual conferences (MobiCom, MobiHoc, MobiSys, SenSys, Ubicomp), and promotion of emerging new areas through sponsorship of numerous workshops each year.
• A range of full-day and half-day tutorials at many SIGMOBILE conferences, offering attendees an easy way to broaden their knowledge.
• Announcements via a moderated email distribution list about events of interest to those in the mobile computing and wireless networking community, such as conference Calls for Papers and Calls for Participation.
• The SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award, given to recognize an individual who has made a significant and lasting contribution to research on mobile computing and communications and wireless networking.
• The SIGMOBILE Distinguished Service Award, given to recognize an individual who has made exceptional contributions to ACM SIGMOBILE, its conferences, publications, or its local activities.
• Other awards including Best Paper awards and often also Best Demo or Best Presentation awards at SIGMOBILE conferences and workshops.
• Support for students at SIGMOBILE conferences and workshops, through reduced registration fees, student travel awards for some conferences, student poster sessions, and hosting the ACM Student Research Competition at some conferences.
• Continuing financial support and hosting meetings for the group "Networking Networking Women" (N2 Women), with the goal to foster connections among the under-represented women in computer networking and related fields of research.
• Sponsorship for conference travel and registration to Mobility related conferences through ACM-W.
• Financial support for CRAWDAD, the Community Resource for Archiving Wireless Data At Dartmouth, which archives wireless trace data and develops better tools for collecting, anonymizing, and analyzing the data.
• The SIGMOBILE web site at , including a wealth of information for the community, such as complete details on SIGMOBILE conferences and workshops; information on SIGMOBILE membership, chapters, awards, and publications; and a Ph.D. thesis collection.
SIGMOBILE Awards
The SIGMOBILE Best Paper Awards are given to the authors of the best paper from among all papers submitted to the conference that year. Typically the conference Technical Program Committee forms the Selection Committee for this award.
At MobiSys 2011, the Best Paper Award was given to two papers: 1) "SignalGuru: Leveraging Mobile Phones for Collaborative Traffic Signal Schedule Advisory" by Emmanouil Koukoumidis, Li-Shiuan Peh, and Margaret Martonosi, and 2) "Chameleon: A Color-Adaptive Web Browser for Mobile OLED Displays" by Mian Dong and L. Zhong. The Best Poster Award went to "You Driving? Talk to You Later" by Hon Lung Chu, Vijay Raman, Jeffrey Shen, Romit Roy Choudhury, Aman Kansal and Victor Bahl. The best Demo Awards were presented to "A System for Aligning Advertisement Delivery with Cellular Base-station Overloads" by Ravi Kokku, Rajesh Mahindra, Sampath Rangarajan and Honghai Zhang, and 2) "Avoiding the Rush Hours; WiFi Energy Management via Traffic Isolation" by Justin Manweiler and Romit Roy Choudhury.
At MobiCom 2010, the Best Paper Award was presented for “The κ-factor: Inferring Protocol Performance Using Inter-Link Reception Correlation”, by Kannan Srinivasan, Mayank Jain, Jung Il Choi, Tahir Azim, Edward S. Kim, Philip Levis, and Bhaskar Krishnamachari.
Featured at MobiCom 2010, The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) - sponsored by Microsoft Research, had the following winners in the Graduate Category:
• First Place: Souvik Sen, Duke University
"Listen Before You Talk, But on the Frequency Domain"
• Second Place: Shahriyar Amini, Carnegie Mellon University
"Caché: Caching Location-Enhanced Content to Improve User Privacy"
• Third Place: Dan Levin, Deutsche Telekom Labs
"TCPSpeaker: Clean and Dirty Sides of the Same Slate"
At MobiHoc 2011, the Best Paper Award was given to "EM-MAC: A Dynamic Multichannel Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks" by Lei Tang (Rice University), Yanjun Sun (Texas Instruments), Omer Gurewitz (Ben Gurion University), and David B. Johnson (Rice University).
At MobiHoc 2010, the Best Paper Award was given to "Globs in the Primordial Soup: The Emergence of Connected Crowds in Mobile Wireless Networks" by Simon Heimlicher (ETH Zurich) and Kavé Salamatian (Université de Savoie).
At SenSys 2010, the Best Paper Award went to "Design and Evaluation of a Versatile and Efficient Receiver-Initiated Link Layer for Low-Power Wireless.", by Prabal Dutta (University of Michigan), Stephen Dawson-Haggerty (University of California, Berkeley), Yin Chen (Johns Hopkins University), Chieh-Jan (Mike) Liang (Johns Hopkins University), and Andreas Terzis (Johns Hopkins University).
At Ubicomp 2010, the Best Paper Award was given to “ElectriSense: Single-Point Sensing Using EMI for Electrical Event Detection and Classification in the Home”, by Sidhant Gupta, Matt Reynolds, and Shwetak Patel (University of Washington).
Finally, SIGMOBILE presented a well deserved 2010 Outstanding Contributions Award to Prof. Mahadev Satyanayanaran (UCLA, USA), for pioneering a wide spectrum of technologies in support of disconnected and weakly connected mobile clients, presented at MobiSys 2011, June 30th, in Washington DC (see MobiSys’11 conference summary).
SIGMOBILE in the News
News Article: “Tag – Your Phone Knows You’re It” by Craig Brandhorst in FreeTimes (Columbia’s free weekly), Issue: #24 7/19-7/25, featuring a commentary about the MobiSys 2011 paper “TagSense: A Smartphone-based Approach to Automatic Image Tagging” C. Qin (Univ. of South Carolina), X. Bao (Duke Univ.), R. Choudhury (Duke Univ.), S. Nelakuditi (Univ. of South Carolina). It also appeared as a story on the ‘Zoom’, Polish news website.
Additional Executive Committee Activities
At the request of the ACM publishing group we started working on a Mobility Tech Pack. ACM Tech Packs are “innovative learning packages by subject experts for serious computing professionals”, basically an annotated reading list of the most useful papers for students or professionals wanting to enter the field, or refresh their knowledge about the latest significant publications in the area. At the time of writing this report, a draft Tech Pack has been prepared, and should be finalized by the end of Q3 2011.
Last year we established a new Editor-in-chief for MC2R, Prof. Suman Banerjee (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, USA), with a fresh agenda and new plans for the publication. At the same time there was a pipeline of prior papers and materials to publish. In the next issue we should see the first results of his planning, and new exciting content for our MC2R publication.
We have investigated adding the independent ‘Pervasive Computing’ conference to our existing five sponsored conferences, but it has not been a straightforward proposition. The historical advisory committee for Pervasive has been largely composed of European members, and they see less value in moving under the ACM umbrella. The Pervasive ‘Town meeting’ held at the June 2011 conference in San Francisco generated the following feedback:
• ~10% would like to move to ACM
• greater than 50% do not see any advantage and do not care either way
• a few people see disadvantages
• it was noted the ACM label does not make a difference for tenure cases in Asia (Korea, Japan), it's only Journals that count.
• the cost implications were noted (both in terms of overhead and discount for ACM members)
This year the Pervasive and Ubicomp conferences have formed a Joint Steering Committee (JSC) chaired by James Scott (Microsoft Research), and have committed to discussing the issue of sponsorship in that forum. They should make a final decision in the Q3 2011.
In the previous report we had talked about increasing SIG membership by looking for new chapters, creative advertising, or alliances with other SIGs such as SIGOPS. However, little progress has been made on this front. It is much harder that we had previously thought, and will be a subject of on-going discussion. However, it was noted that in terms of revenue, membership is much less significant than profits from our conferences, and monies from the ACM digital library, as a result of licensed readers downloading SIGMOBILE papers.
Our SIGMOBILE Workshop Coordinator, Ahmed Helmy (University of Florida, Gainesville, USA), has recently stepped down after many years of service. As mentioned earlier, we are very grateful for all his contributions, and will now begin a search for a new coordinator.
We have successfully found a new chair for the Outstanding Contribution Award (OCA) search committee, Victor Bahl (Microsoft Research), will step down after 15 years of service, and the new Chair will be Edward W. Knightly (Rice University, EDE Dept). We extend many thanks to Victor for his considerable energy in this role, and commitment to maintaining high standards for awarding the OCA since its inception.
Summary
Mobile computing is one of the fastest growing subfields within computer science, and as a result SIGMOBILE has become a strong, successful, well-supported organization. Membership is relatively stable, and the SIG’s conferences and workshops continue to be well attended, creating a wealth of publications for the ACM digital library, and its members. Moreover, our financial situation has strengthened further in 2011, providing the organization with flexibility and options to support additional high-value programs for the research community in the future.
SIGMOD FY’11 ANNUAL REPORT
July 2010 – June 2011
Submitted by: Yannis Ioannidis, Chair
Mission
ACM SIGMOD (Special Interest Group on Management of Data) is concerned with the principles, techniques, and applications of database management systems and data management technology:
“The goal of SIGMOD is to be the premier international community for innovative dissemination of knowledge concerning the management of data, broadly defined to include all aspects of data description, storage, querying, analysis, security, and privacy.”
Main Conferences and Newsletter
SIGMOD/PODS Conferences — These continue to be very successful and highly-regarded events bringing together theoreticians & experimentalists presenting high-quality research and other results. In 2011 the conferences were held in Athens, Greece, and approached record numbers (coming only behind the 2007 event in Beijing, China). As always, the conferences’ value was enhanced by several co-located and SIGMOD (co-)sponsored workshops.
The executive committee of SIGMOD includes a Conference Coordinator who provides continuity in the organization of the conferences from year-to-year. During the reporting period, Dr. Sihem Amer-Yahia (Qatar Computing Research Institute) has taken over as Conference Coordinator, replacing Prof. Lisa Singh (Georgetown University), who has remained on board until the actual 2011 conference to ensure smooth transition. Starting with SIGMOD/PODS 2012, Sihem is fully in charge.
SIGMOD Record — SIGMOD Record continues to be a high quality newsletter issued quarterly and its coverage has been growing. Over the past years, several columns were added (influential papers, database principles, systems and prototypes, and standards). Dr. Ioana Manolescu (INRIA) is SIGMOD Record editor and heads a team of eight associate editors. This past year, Ioana has developed a new editorial policy for the Record.
Awards
SIGMOD sponsors several awards each year that recognize excellence in the database community. In 2011, these awards were given to the following researchers:
SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovation Award: Surajit Chaudhuri (Microsoft Research)
SIGMOD Contributions Award: Gerhard Weikum (Max Planck Institute for Informatics)
SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award: “Database Cracking: Towards Auto-tuning Database Kernels”, Stratos Idreos (CWI)
SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award: “Optimizing Queries Using Materialized Views: A Practical, Scalable Solution”, Jonathan Goldstein and Per-Åke Larson (Microsoft Research)
SIGMOD 2011 Best Paper Award: “Entangled Queries: Enabling Declarative Data-Driven Coordination”, Nitin Gupta, Lucja Kot, Sudip Roy, Gabriel Bender, Johannes Gehrke (Cornell University), Christoph Koch (EPFL)
PODS Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award: “Optimal Aggregation Algorithms for Middleware”, Ronald Fagin (IBM Almaden Research Center), Amnon Lotem (University of Maryland-College Park), Moni Naor (Weizmann Institute of Science)
PODS 2011 Best Paper Award: “Data Exchange beyond Complete Data”, Marcelo Arenas (PUC Chile), Jorge Perez (Universidad de Chile), Juan L. Reutter (University of Edinburgh)
Electronic Information
As of early 2011, the SIG website and all physical information products outlined below are managed by our new Information Director, Prof. Curtis Dyreson (Utah State University), and a team of several Associate Information Directors.
SIGMOD Online — Our website () provides access to the proceedings of SIGMOD/PODS and other co-sponsored conferences, the newsletter issues, Anthology and DiSC metadata, interview videos of distinguished database researchers, and other useful information. There is currently a plan to modify the site structure to increase its usefulness, readability, and searchability.
SIGMOD Anthology — This is a collection of 6 volumes (CD/DVD) that contain over 130,000 digitized pages of database research literature, covering all research content that has been available to us. We thus find that the Anthology effort has achieved its purpose with the publication of Volume 6 and no future volumes are anticipated.
SIGMOD Digital Symposium Collection (DiSC) — This is an annual DVD publication containing the proceedings for that year for several conferences, newsletters, and video of some conference sessions. DiSC 09/10 shipped earlier this year and DiSC11 will ship by early next year. As we have evolved towards a situation where almost all content on the DiSC DVDs is available in the ACM DL, no plan exists to ship DiSC12.
Membership
The SIGMOD membership levels and fees have remained unchanged this past year. Professional membership is mainly distinguished between online (whose benefits include among others conference registration discounts and web access to significant content, e.g., quarterly SIGMOD Record issues and Anthology & DiSC metadata linking to the ACM DL) and print (which includes the additional benefit of print copies of the SIGMOD Record issues). The Member Plus option additionally offers CD/DVD copies of SIGMOD/PODS conference proceedings, DiSC, and the Anthology. Finally, student membership is at the cost of online-professional but has the benefits of the Member Plus option.
SIGMOD is the sixth largest SIG overall. Still, our membership has been decreasing steadily over the last few years, so we are working to identify ways to reverse the current trend. Our efforts are in the directions of (a) introducing new superior benefits or refining and improving existing ones and (b) engaging in community mobilization activities and other initiatives. Students as well as researchers in developing countries are important target groups in these efforts. To help our work regarding item (a), we have distributed questionnaires during SIGMOD/PODS 2011 and have received useful input for some critical issues that may be important to conference attendees (most of them members).
Initiatives
Online DiSC — Following the successful completion of the Anthology and DiSC initiatives, we have started investigating the possibility of offering (as much as possible of) the DiSC content online. When this is achieved, we will also simplify the membership structure by dropping the Member Plus option.
Experiment repeatability — After its launch in the 2008 SIGMOD conference, the program of evaluating the “repeatability” of experimental results reported in SIGMOD papers entered a 3-year trial period in which authors of accepted papers are extended the option of having the experimental aspects of their work validated by a separate SIGMOD-sponsored experimental program committee. This is de-coupled from the conference reviewing, both in terms of the program committees and timelines. Validated papers are listed in a SIGMOD Record article and can make reference to this, as an incentive for authors to participate in this effort to improve the standards of experimentation in the database field. The three years of this trial period (at the 2009, 2010, and 2011 SIGMOD Conferences) have been quite successful and the community has learned several lessons from this activity. Its future is now being thoroughly evaluated.
Undergraduate and Graduate Scholarship Program: As part of its educational mission, SIGMOD continued its subsidy of six undergraduate students from various institutions around the world to attend the 2011 SIGMOD/PODS conferences and present posters on their research work. It did the same for several graduate students who would otherwise not have been able to attend.
Traveling Speakers Program and Database Summer Schools: Both are in collaboration with VLDB and will start being implemented in the next reporting period. The former will organize multi-day visits to major campuses in a chosen country by a pair of senior database researchers while the latter will promote education in databases in developing countries.
Other: SIGMOD has several additional ongoing or new initiatives that benefit the database community. These include support for DBLP (), a book donation program from SIGMOD/PODS attendees to research institutions in needy countries, and the PubZone non-profit discussion forum for publications in the database community (in cooperation with ETH Zurich).
Collaborations and Collaborative Activities
We continue to be in close collaboration with our sister societies, such as VLDB Endowment, IEEE TCDE, EDBT Association, and ICDT Council. Especially with VLDB, we have a series of joint activities, i.e., the Summer Schools and the Traveling Speakers Program, the inclusion of VLDB material in the ACM DL, the Digital Library Donation Program (contributes SIGMOD Anthology Silver Edition DVDs to research institutions in needy countries), and others. We are also carefully observing the PVLDB journal initiative, where VLDB conference presentations are associated with PVLDB journal papers published during the preceding year and are not chosen by a special program committee.
We are also cooperating closely with several other ACM SIGs on various activities, primarily conference co-sponsorship. Examples, include SIGKDD for the KDD Conference, SIGSOFT for the Distributed Event-Based Systems Conference (DEBS), and SIGKDD, SIGIR, and SIGWEB for the Web Search and Data Mining Conference (WSDM, ). A recent example is our collaboration with SIGOPS for the Symposium on Cloud Computing (SOCC), where the both SIGs were instrumental in creating what promises to become an important annual conference. SOCC was held for the first time in 2010, co-located with SIGMOD/PODS. The event was very successful: it was attended by more than 200 participants and its program included three keynotes by distinguished members of the two communities and 23 paper presentations selected among 119 submissions. This year, SOCC is held in conjunction with the SOSP conference, in Cascais, Portugal, and promises to be another successful event. From 2013 forward, the conference will probably have an independent life, not tied to the location and timing of SIGMOD and SOSP.
Finances
SIGMOD is a thriving, very active SIG with healthy finances in spite of the economic downturn. This is largely thanks to the efforts of our corporate-sponsorship chairs of the last few years, who have been able to secure sponsorship funds for the SIGMOD conference in excess of $100,000 on the average annually, ensuring profitability of the individual conferences as well as financial security of the SIG overall. Given this balance, we have subsidized student registrations heavily during SIGMOD/PODS 2011 and are considering further expanding our annual allocation for travel grants, scholarships, and special programs, especially those that support students at all levels and students and faculty in developing regions.
Current Status and Future Outlook
SIGMOD continues to be a thriving, healthy, and very active SIG. While there are real issues that may cause concern and require attention, we feel that SIGMOD is a strong organization and have every expectation of it continuing to provide useful benefits to its members, and thereby, continuing to grow.
SIGOPS FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Doug Terry, Chair
Overview
SIGOPS is a vibrant community of people with interests in “operating systems” in the broadest sense, including topics such as distributed computing, storage systems, security, concurrency, middleware, mobility, virtualization, networking, cloud computing, datacenter software, and Internet services. We sponsor a number of top conferences, provide travel grants to students, present yearly awards, disseminate information to members electronically, and collaborate with other SIGs on important programs for computing professionals.
Notable activities from the past year include:
* Elections were held for new officers, and Jeanna Matthews was elected as the new SIGOPS Chair, George Candea as Vice Chair, and Dilma da Silva as Treasurer. They will serve two-year terms from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2013. The past officers (Doug Terry as Chair, Frank Bellosa as Vice Chair and Jeanna Matthews as Treasurer) completed their 4 years of service on June 30.
* Planning for the next ACM Symposium on Operating Systems (SOSP), which is scheduled for October 2011 in Cascais, Portugal, has been largely completed by Ted Wobber, the General Chair, and Peter Druschel, the Program Chair. The Second ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SOCC), which is co-sponsored between SIGOPS and SIGMOD, is being co-located with SOSP in Portugal.
* The first SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys) was held on August 30, 2010 in New Delhi, India, immediately before the SIGCOMM 2010 conference. And the second instance of this workshop is being held in Shanghai, China, in July 2011.
* ACM released the first version of the Cloud Computing Tech Pack, which was produced by Doug Terry, the SIGOPS Chair.
* Consensus was reached on a set of principles concerning SIGOPS publications.
* An ASPLOS Influential Paper Award was created in cooperation with SIGARCH and SIGPLAN.
* A proposal was made to establish a SIGOPS Distinguished Service Award, but it was not approved by the ACM Awards Committee.
Awards
SIGOPS presents several awards on a yearly basis. Robert Morris received the Mark Weiser Award for creativity and innovation in operating systems research. The SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award, which recognizes the most influential systems papers, was presented at the Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI) conference.
Programs and Services
Professional SIGOPS membership dues remain at $15, and student membership is just $5 per year. We offer a “member plus” package (for $20) for those who wish to continue receiving printed proceedings for the SOSP, ASPLOS, and EuroSys conferences.
Several widely respected conferences were sponsored or co-sponsored by SIGOPS this year. This includes the EuroSys Conference (with our European SIGOPS Chapter), the International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), co-sponsored with SIGARCH and SIGPLAN, the Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), co-sponsored with SIGACT, the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys), co-sponsored with SIGCOMM, SIGARCH, SIGBED, SIGMOBILE, and SIGMETRICS, the International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE), co-sponsored with SIGPLAN, the International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), co-sponsored with SIGMOBILE, and the new Symposium on Cloud Computing (SOCC), co-sponsored with SIGMOD. Additionally, the Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys) has become a yearly event with the long-term goal of highlighting and supporting systems research in the Asia-Pacific region.
SIGOPS encourages participation in conferences and career building activities for young members of the community. For example, substantial funding was provided this year as travel grants for students to attend conferences and diversity workshops, with many of these grants targeted at women and underrepresented minorities.
SIGOPS also publishes a quarterly newsletter, Operating Systems Review, which focuses on specific research topics or research institutions, manages an electronic mailing list, which is used for announcements, and maintains a web site: .
Key Issues
Enrollment in the optional printed proceedings package is extremely low, as are requests for printed proceedings at conferences. Soon, SIGOPS needs to decide whether to produce printed proceedings at all and whether it should continue distributing the OSR newsletter in printed form. Strong arguments can be made for going completely “green”, i.e. paperless.
SIGOPS is focusing on increasing its membership in parts of the world beyond the U. S. and Europe. The establishment of the APSys workshop was one important step in this direction. Another potential step is the creation of new chapters, following the success of the SIGOPS European Chapter (EuroSys). However, questions remain to be sorted out concerning the scope of new chapters. Should we have one chapter for all of Asia or for individual countries or perhaps individual cities or universities? What financial arrangements should exist between local chapters and SIGOPS? How can we recruit people to lead such chapters?
Often, during the course of a research project, papers get published on similar topics, perhaps with overlapping content and contributions. For example, a research group might publish a 5-page paper at a workshop (like APSys), later produce an extended version of this paper for a conference (like SOSP), and then produce a revised version for a journal (like TOCS); another version of this paper might be published as a technical report or in a newsletter (like Operating Systems Review). Currently, SIGOPS does not have a policy on how to treat submissions of papers that are related to previously published papers. This leads to inconsistent treatment of such submissions across SIGOPS-sponsored conferences, workshops, and other venues. Discussions were started in the past year on this topic, but more work is needed for the community to reach consensus on a concrete policy.
SIGPLAN FY '11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Philip Wadler, Chair
Overview
SIGPLAN is flourishing. We have a robust program of conferences, some expanding to double tracks and venues in Japan and China. Downloads from the Digital Library are up, and money handed out for travel via PAC has increased sevenfold over seven years. We hand out a growing portfolio of awards.
Open meeting
The SIGPLAN Executive Committee reported on the state of SIGPLAN at the annual open meeting at PLDI in San Jose on Tuesday 7 June 2011. Following a suggestion made at last year's meeting, this year's meeting was conducted as a poster session followed by a short open discussion. This format was well received, and I recommend its use for future. The slides for the open meeting are available on the web:
.
Conferences
Over the past year, our two flagship conferences, POPL and PLDI, have decided to accept more papers and move to double tracks. POPL accepted 39 papers in 2010 and 49 in 2011; PLDI accepted 41 papers in 2010 and 55 in 2011.
The decision to increase acceptances for POPL came after a wide-ranging community discussion. It was widely felt that good papers were not getting in, and that younger researchers were feeling the pinch. The decision was approved by consensus at a business meeting held at POPL 2010 in Barcelona, and attendees at POPL 2011 confirmed that they were happy with the result.
For 2012, after considerable discussion the POPL Steering Committee has decided to adopt techniques pioneered by PLDI, and move to double-blind reviewing and use an External Review Committee to
supplement the efforts of the Program Committee.
SIGPLAN is beginning to host conferences further afield. PPoPP 2010 was held in Bangalore, ICFP 2011 will be in Tokyo, and PLDI 2012 will be in Beijing. POPL is also considering an Asian location, and is waiting while we gather experience from ICFP and PLDI.
Meanwhile, several former editors of TOPLAS have made the radical suggestion that the entire proceedings of POPL and PLDI should be published as journals, becoming issues of TOPLAS. This, in turn, has sparked a wide-ranging discussion of the relative roles of conferences and journals, and the question of whether we should adopt refereeing practices for conferences more like those of journals, as has been done by SIGGRAPH and VLDB. The discussion is ongoing, including the SIGPLAN Executive Committee, the steering committees of PLDI and POPL, and representatives of the ACM Publications Board.
OOPSLA is traditionally the venue where developers and academics meet. It used to boast vendor stalls, an extensive tutorial program, and over a thousand attendees; and during this time accumulated profits which to this day account for SIGPLAN's healthy bank balance. The vendor stalls have gone, the tutorial program has shrunk, and attendance now runs closer to five hundred. The volatile situation made planning difficult, and occasionally OOPSLA has run staggering losses.
Working closely with the SIGPLAN executive committee, the OOPSLA steering committee has taken a number of steps to reverse this trend. First, they have rebranded the confederation of conferences SPLASH, to indicate an interest in all new directions in programming languages.
The name OOPSLA is retained for the core academic conference, which is well-recognised among academics. The second core conference, Onward!, now has its own steering committee and a separate proceedings. Other workshops, such as PLoP (Pattern Languages of Programs) and DLS (Dynamic Languages Symposium) are frequently associated with SPLASH. Further, Steering Committee Chair Richard Gabriel and 2010 General Chair William Cook worked closely with SIGPLAN Vice-Chair Graham Hutton to set up a clear, modular budget for SPLASH that puts it on a sound footing---thanks to their efforts, the recent significant losses have been replaced by a tidy profit for SPLASH 2010. SPLASH and SIGPLAN will continue to try out new ideas to evolve a venue where developers and academics interact.
Awards
SIGPLAN made the following awards in FY 2011.
SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award:
Sir Charles Antoney Richard Hoare.
The award includes a cash prize of $5,000.
Announced at PLDI 2011.
SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award:
Katherine McKinley.
The award includes a cash prize of $2,500.
Presented at PLDI 2011.
SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award:
Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow for the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.
The award includes a cash prize of $2,500.
This is the second year this award was given.
Announced at PLDI 2011.
SIGPLAN Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award:
Robert L. Bocchino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for
"An Effect System and Language for Deterministic-by-Default Parallel Programming";
his advisor was Vikram Adve.
The award includes a cash prize of $1,000.
Presented at PLDI 2011.
Most Influential Paper of ICFP 2000:
Koen Claessen and John Hughes for
"Quickcheck: A Lightweight Tool for Random Testing of Haskell Programs".
The award includes a cash prize of $1,000.
Presented at ICFP 2010.
Most Influential Paper of OOPSLA 2000:
Matthew Arnold, Stephen Fink, David Grove,
Michael Hind and Peter F. Sweeney for
"Adaptive Optimization in the Jalapeño JVM".
The award includes a cash prize of $1,000.
Presented at OOPSLA 2010.
Most Influential Paper of POPL 2001:
Samin Ishtiaq and Peter W. O'Hearn for
"BI as an Assertion Language for Mutable Data Structures".
The award includes a cash prize of $1,000.
Presented at POPL 2011.
Most Influential Paper of PLDI 2001:
Thomas Ball, Rupak Majumdar, Todd Millstein, Sriram K. Rajamani for
"Automatic predicate abstraction of C programs".
The award includes a cash prize of $1,000.
Presented at PLDI 2011.
2010 John Vlissides Award:
Márcio Ribeiro, Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).
The award includes a cash prize of $2,000.
Presented at OOPSLA 2010.
Recently, ACM approved a new award, the Robin Milner Young Researcher Award, to be given yearly to a young investigator who has made an outstanding contribution to research in programming languages. The award includes a cash prize of $2,500, and will be awarded for the first time next year.
Information about SIGPLAN awards, including citations for all the awards above, is available from .
Research Highlights
The SIGPLAN Research Highlights Nominating Committee, chaired by Ben Zorn, nominates papers appearing in SIGPLAN conferences to the Communications of the ACM to appear in their Research Highlight track. In total, 17 papers have been nominated, of which 5 have appeared in CACM. Nominated papers are listed at:
Professional Activities Committee
The Professional Activities Committee (PAC) offers funding for students to attend conferences and workshops, and to support professionals that require help for childcare or because they are not able-bodied. Only SIGPLAN members are eligible for PAC funding. The PAC budget has grown from \$10K in 2003 to \$70K in 2010, with NSF supplying additional funding targeted on supporting US students to attend PLDI and POPL. Applications are increasing as more people become aware of the existence of PAC.
The SIGPLAN Executive Committee decided to grow PAC funding so it roughly matches our income from the ACM Digital Library. (SIGPLAN receives a fraction of the funds paid for subscription to the Digital Library, proportional to the number of downloads of articles from SIGPLAN conferences.) This has, so far, enabled us to fund most but not all applications to PAC, and we are keeping a close eye on the situation for the future.
SIGPLAN Notices
In its heyday, SIGPLAN Notices was filled with short articles on a wide variety of topics, contributed by SIGPLAN members. It was, for instance, where the first report on the design of Haskell was published. As the web has grown, blogs and tech reports provide better outlets for such material, and today SIGPLAN Notices is filled entirely by reprinting proceedings of conferences and workshop (plus one special issue per year, containing reports from the SIGPLAN executive and reprints of the four recipients of Most Influential Paper awards during the year). Many members still value receiving a wide variety of SIGPLAN publications in print, so it still has an audience. In addition, SIGPLAN Notices is indexed by Thompson Reuters, which can be important---some bureaucracies only count publications entered in certain indexes.
Recently, Mark Bailey retired from a long stint as editor of SIGPLAN Notices, and Jack Davidson retired from a long stint as SIGPLAN's Information Director---that is, the maintainer of SIGPLAN's web presence. We are indebted to both for their long service. Both roles are being picked up by Andy Gill. Andy has a mandate to examine how SIGPLAN should be exploiting blogs and social networking to support SIGPLAN's work, and we look forward to exciting new developments in this area. Meanwhile, we continue to consider what role should be played by SIGPLAN Notices in the future.
Membership
SIGPLAN offers two categories of membership, online and print. Online members pay reduced registration for conferences, are eligible for PAC support, receive online access to SIGPLAN publications for the year, and are posted an annual CD containing all SIGPLAN publications during the year to ensure continued access. Print members in addition receive a postal subscription to SIGPLAN Notices.
For many years, the cost of publishing and posting SIGPLAN Notices significantly exceeded the charge for print membership, leading to a drain of income. Recently, SIGPLAN decided to raise the charge for print membership to match the costs. A survey of the membership showed strong support for this plan. It also showed that some of our members care deeply about receiving print, while most prefer online membership. The rates are now:
Professional online membership: $25/year
Student online membership: $15/year
Print membership: $110/year
We also offer the option to receive print proceedings of POPL, PLDI, ICFP, and SPLASH for $16 each.
So far, print membership has continued to trend slowly downward. As print runs reduce, costs will further increase, and this may lead to an upward spiral in costs and a downward spiral in print membership. We aim to increase costs slowly, so as to stabilise at the lowest sustainable print costs.
Online membership is trending slowly up, while the overall total continues to trend slowly downward. At the same time, attendance at SIGPLAN conferences continues to increase. For some reason, folk are failing to join even though the savings in registration for a single conference is greater than the cost of a year's online membership, not counting the other benefits. It may be that a print subscription was the only compelling reason to join SIGPLAN, and the internet has made it compelling no longer.
Other activities
SIGPLAN sponsors the Oregon Summer School in Programming Languages and the CRA-W Workshops that encourage women to take up careers in computing.
SIGPLAN is working with NSF to ensure the appointment of Program Directors knowledgeable about programming languages. Dan Grossman and Kathleen Fisher founded an informal e-mail group to encourage discussion of how the community can increase its engagement with NSF. As a result of this activity, NSF appointed two members of the programming language community, Bill Pugh part-time in Spring 2011, and John Reppy to begin a rotation in August 2011. The e-mail group continues.
SIGPLAN is working with ACM to revise the computing curriculum. Kathleen Fisher and Dan Grossman of the SIGPLAN Executive Committee have been appointed to the ACM/IEEE Curriculum 2013 Steering Committee, and Dan Grossman chairs the SIGPLAN Education Committee, which has produced a white paper on ``Why Undergraduates Should Learn the Principles of Programming Languages'', and will help to generate materials for the ACM/IEEE curriculum.
Key issues for next 2-3 years
The relation between conferences and journals has become a subject of increased discussion across ACM, including within SIGPLAN. We must continue the discussion. One possible line is to follow VLDB in integrating journals with conferences.
SPLASH continues to undergo teething troubles, as it seeks to maintain its status as a venue where academics and industry meet. Some structural adjustments may be required as SPLASH expands, to maintain smooth relations between its key components, OOPSLA and Onward!.
As noted last year, we will need to continue to closely monitor the balance between online and print memberships, attempting to meet the needs of both constituencies. We must support our new information director, Andy Gill, as he looks to upgrade SIGPLAN's web presence to include blogs and other social media.
SIGPLAN's education committee is well placed to influence the new ACM curriculum, and this will be one of the most important areas of action for SIGPLAN in the coming year.
SIGPLAN membership stood at 12,000 in 1990, at 4,000 in 2000, and a bit over 2,000 currently. The web has replaced the role once played by SIGPLAN Notices, undermining what had been a compelling reason to become a member of SIGPLAN. Although SIGPLAN continues to run a strong conference program, it appears that many attend our conferences without joining SIGPLAN---is this a concern?
SIGSAC FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010-June 2011
Submitted by: Elisa Bertino, SIGSAC Chair
1. SIGSAC CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
SIGSAC’s mission is to develop the information security profession by sponsoring high quality research conferences and workshops. SIGSAC’s first sponsored event was the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in 1993. Since then, it has been held twice in Fairfax, Virginia (1993, 1994), and once each in New Delhi, India (1996), Zurich, Switzerland (1997), San Francisco (1998), Singapore (1999), Athens, Greece (2000) and Philadelphia (2001). In the period 2002-2008, CCS was held in the Washington, DC metropolitan area (i.e., in Alexandria, VA).
In 2009 and 2010, CCS was held in Chicago; these editions saw a major increase in attendance (with CCS 2009 having more than 500 attendees). The 2011 edition of CCS will also be in Chicago on October 17-21. The 2012 edition of CCS will move to Raleigh (NC).
From its inception, CCS has established itself as among the very best research conferences in security. This reputation continues to grow and is reflected in the high quality and prestige of the program. In 2010, the CCS acceptance rate was 17% (i.e., 55 papers accepted from 325 submitted). Undoubtedly, CCS remains one of the most competitive conferences in the area. As in previous years, the program of CCS includes several co-located workshops. We expect that the CCS submission rate and attendance to remain high in future years.
Starting in 2001, SIGSAC launched a second major annual conference called the ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT). The first three meetings were held in Chantilly, Virginia; Monterey, California; and Como, Italy. From 2002, SACMAT meetings have been co-located with the IEEE International Workshop on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks. The 2006 SACMAT was held in Lake Tahoe, California, in 2007 in Nice – Sophia Antipolis, France, in 2008 in Estes Park, Colorado, in 2009 in Stresa, Italy, in 2010 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 2011 edition of the symposium was held in Innsbruck, Austria on June 15-17 and attracted 52 submissions of which 16 were accepted for presentation at the conference (a 31% acceptance rate). Next year, SACMAT will be held in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
In 2011, SIGSAC held the sixth instance of its third major conference, namely ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS), in Hong Kong, China, on March 22-24, 2011. The first AsiaCCS was held in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 21-23, 2006, the second was held in Singapore on March 22-24, 2007, the third in Tokyo, Japan, on March 18-20, 2008, the fourth in Sydney, Australia, on March 10-12, 2009, the fifth in Beijing, China, on April 13-16, 2010. The 2011 edition of the conference received 217 submissions and accepted 35 regular papers and 24 short papers yielding an acceptance rate of 16% for full papers and 13% for short papers. The increased number of submissions suggests that there is a sustained interest in the information security area outside North America. Next year, ASIACCS will be held in Seoul, Korea, in March 2012.
The Wireless Network Security Conference(WISEC) was started in Alexandria, Virginia, on March 31-April 2, 2008. This conference merged two successful ACM workshops, namely WiSe (held in conjunction with Mobicom) and SASN (held in conjunction with CCS) in the US, and a successful European workshop (ESAS) held in conjunction with ESORICS in Europe. In 2009, WISEC was held in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2010 the conference was held in Hoboken, New Jersey, on March 22-24, 2010. This year the conference was held in Hamburg, Germany, on June 14-17, 2011. The conference received 92 submissions. Of these, 10 submissions were chosen for presentation as full papers, with an acceptance rate of 11%; 9 submissions were accepted for presentation as short papers, for an overall conference acceptance rate of 21%. The location of this conference alternates between US and Europe. Next year the conference will be held in the USA and the location is currently being identified.
SIGSAC launched its fifth major conference in February 2011. This new conference focuses data and applications security and privacy. It has been motivated by the fact that with rapid global penetration of the Internet and smart phones and the resulting productivity and social gains, the world is becoming increasingly dependent on its cyber infrastructure. Criminals, spies and predators of all kinds have learnt to exploit this landscape much quicker than defenders have advanced in their technologies. Security and Privacy has become an essential concern of applications and systems throughout their lifecycle. Security concerns have rapidly moved up the software stack as the Internet and web have matured. The security, privacy, functionality, cost and usability tradeoffs necessary in any practical system can only be effectively achieved at the data and application layers. This new conference provides a dedicated venue for high-quality research in this arena, and seeks to foster a community with this focus in cyber security. The inaugural edition of the new annual ACM Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy (CODASPY 2011) was held February 21-23, 2011 in Hilton Palacio Del Rio, San Antonio, Texas. Professor Ravi Sandhu from the University of Texas at San Antonio served as general chair and Professor Elisa Bertino from Purdue University served as program chair. The conference received 69 submissions. Of these, 21 were selected for presentation, with an acceptance rate of 30%. The conference also included three keynote talks, three industry and application invited presentations, and a panel on “Research Agenda for Data and Application Security”. The next edition of CODASPY will be held again in San Antonio, Texas, in February 2012.
2. SIGSAC PUBLICATION INITIATIVES
ACM Transactions on Information and Systems Security (TISSEC) remains our major journal venue for research publications. We do not expect to sponsor another journal for the foreseeable future.
3. SIGSAC SPECIAL PROJECTS
The establishment of the SIGSAC Doctoral Dissertation Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in Computer and Information Security has been completed; this project started in 2010. This annual award by SIGSAC will recognize excellent research by doctoral candidates in the field of computer and information security. The SIGSAC Doctoral Dissertation Award winner and up to two runners-up will be recognized at the ACM CCS conference. The award winner will receive a plaque, a $1,500 honorarium and a complimentary registration to the current year’s ACM CCS Conference. The runners-up each will receive a plaque. The award will be assigned starting from 2012.
4. AWARDS
The two SIGSAC awards started in 2005. The 2005 Outstanding Innovation Award was given to Dr. Whitfield Diffie of SUN Microsystems, and the Outstanding Contribution Award was given to Dr. Peter G. Neumann of SRI International. In 2006, the Outstanding Innovation Award was given to Dr. Michael Schroeder of Microsoft Research and the Outstanding Contribution Award was given to Dr. Eugene Spafford of Purdue University. The 2007 Outstanding Innovation Award was given to Dr. Martin Abadi of the University of California, Santa Cruz (and Microsoft Research) and the Outstanding Contribution Award was given to Professor Sushil Jajodia of George Mason University. The 2008 Outstanding Innovation Award was given to Professor Dorothy Denning of Naval Postgraduate School and the Outstanding Contribution Award was given to Professor Ravi Sandhu of the University of Texas at San Antonio. The 2009 Outstanding Innovation Award was given to Dr. Jonathan Millen of The MITRE Corporation, and the Outstanding Contribution Award was given to Dr. Carl Landwehr of the University of Maryland.
The 2010 Outstanding Innovation Award was given to Dr. Jan Camenisch of IBM Research, Zurich, and the Outstanding Contribution Award was given to Professor Bhavani Thuraisingham of The University of Texas at Dallas.
5. ACM DIGITAL LIBRARY
The ACM Digital Library has become an important source of revenue for all SIGs. With the addition of several workshop proceedings, SIGSAC received a healthy share of the total revenue. SIGSAC will seek new ways to add to the library’s content (such as collecting speakers’ slides and videos of conference invited talks, tutorials, and paper presentations) to strengthen and broaden its appeal to all subscribers.
6. ELECTIONS AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
At CCS 2007, the SIGSAC membership approved the policy that any SIGSAC officer can serve for at most two, two-year terms. This policy is intended to demonstrate the depth of leadership talent within the ranks of the SIGSAC membership, and to give dedicated individuals an opportunity to serve the profession in leadership roles.
Following the elections held in 2009, the following officers started their terms on July 1, 2009:
Professor Elisa Bertino of Purdue University (Chair),
Professor Vijay Atluri of Rutgers University (Vice-Chair), and
Professor Peng Ning of North Carolina University (Treasurer).
According to the bylaws of SIGSAC, the executive committee starting from July 2009 consists of the elected officers and the previous SIGSAC Chair, Professor Virgil Gligor of CMU. The chair of the executive committee is Professor Elisa Bertino.
The officers were granted an extension of their terms and will serve until June 2013.
7. SUMMARY
SIGSAC is in excellent shape both in terms of successful technical activities and financially. We expect that, in the coming years, SIGSAC will continue to sustain and build on existing activities.
SIGSAM FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Jeremy Johnson, Chair
SIGSAM Communications in Computer Algebra
The Communications in Computer Algebra has been published since 1965 (previously SICSAM Bulletin and SIGSAM Bulletin). The CCA is published quarterly; however, only two double-issues are printed and mailed per year, with the four electronic issues appearing through the digital library and the SIGSAM website. The change to two rather than four printing was made to prevent delays and save money and is consistent with the wishes of many of our members.
Manuel Kauers (Austria) and Ilias S. Kotsireas (Canada) served as co-editors, with an editorial board consisting of Chris Brown (USA), Jean-Guillaume Dumas (France), Massimo Caboara (Italy), Laureano Gonzalez-Vega (Spain), Michael Wester (USA), Lihong Zhi (China), Eugene Zima (Canada). Four issues were published in the period covered by this report (issues 173-176) with two printed copies. The CCA continued with a mix of refereed papers, conference and workshop poster abstracts (including ISSAC, ECCAD, WWCA and a workshop honoring Doron Zeilberger’s 60th birthday), dissertation abstracts and announcements of interest to the computer algebra community.
Conference and Event Sponsorship
ISSAC. The International Symposium for Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (ISSAC) for 2010 was held July 25-28, 2010 at the Technische Universität München, in Munich, Germany. ISSAC 2010 was sponsored in full by Fachgruppe Computeralgebra, in cooperation with ACM SIGSAM. The proceedings were published by ACM Press and conference discounts were available to ACM and SIGSAM members.
ISSAC 2011 was held June 8-11, San Jose, CA as part of ACM’s Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC). The 2011 Symbolic-Numeric Computation (SNC) conference was held June 7-9 in affiliation with ISSAC and was also part of FCRC 2011. Both conferences were fully sponsored by ACM SIGSAM.
As of this date the books were not closed for the conference; however, preliminary financial analysis at the conference business meeting suggests that the conference will break even or have a small profit. This information was well received due to a concern that there would be lower than normal attendance due to higher than normal conference fees ($465 and $280 for early registration for members and students vs. 180€ and 60€ for ISSAC 2010) and consequently the possibility that the conference would lose money. The conference fees are normally lower since the conference is usually held at a university where various costs, including room rental, are waived. Attendance ended up at 50 for SNC and 121 for ISSAC 2011. These numbers were slightly higher than ISSAC 2009 in Seoul (109) but lower than those for ISSAC 2010 (175).
SIGSAM reserves a portion of its funds (referred to as the ISSAC contingency fund, and tracked by the SIGSAM treasurer to support the ISSAC conference series. The level of this contingency fund is currently USD 7070.99 and does not include potential funds or loss from ISSAC 2011.
ISSAC 2012 will be held July 22-25 in Grenoble, France. It is expected that the organizers will seek in cooperation status from ACM SIGSAM and have the proceedings published by ACM. The location for ISSAC 2013 was selected by vote at the ISSAC 2011 business meeting and will be held in Boston (USA). It is anticipated that they will seek ACM sponsorship.
ECCAD and PASCO. SIGSAM sponsored the East Coast Computer Algebra Day (ECCAD’11), in cooperation with ACM, on April 9, 2011, at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo ON, Canada. Poster abstracts from ECCAD’11 were published in CCA. In the Summer of 2010, SIGSAM sponsored a conference on Parallel Symbolic Computation (PASCO 2010), in co-operation with ACM, in Grenoble, France from July 21-23. Proceedings from this conference were published by ACM Press in the ACM Digital library.
Awards
SIGSAM sponsors prizes in computer algebra and nominates our best researchers for top-level awards and prizes.
ISSAC Awards. SIGSAM sponsors the ISSAC Distinguished Paper and Distinguished Student Author prizes. This is from an endowment with a value of USD 52,238 as of September 2010.
• The ISSAC 2011 Distinguished Paper award was given to Wei Li, Xiao-Shan Gao, and Cum-Ming Yuan for their paper “Sparse Differential Resultant”.
• The ISSAC 2011 Distinguished Student Author Award was given to Armin Straub (with Jonathan Borwein) for his paper “Special Values of Generalized Log-sine Integrals”.
Jenks Memorial Prize. SIGSAM also sponsors and administers the ACM SIGSAM Richard Dimick Jenks Memorial Prize for Excellence in Software Engineering applied to Computer Algebra. The prize is normally given in alternating years and was awarded this year at ISSAC 2011. The prize was awarded to “Maple Project at the University of Waterloo". Keith Geddes and Gaston Gonnet were on hand to receive the prize and graciously donated the prize money back into the Jenks fund. The prize was selected by a committee consisting of Xiao-Shan Gao, Mark Giesbrecht (recused), Erich L. Kaltofen (Chair), Lakshman Y. N., and Robert S. Sutor. This award is granted from an endowment with a value of USD 28,134 as of September 2010.
Transactions on Mathematical Software
SIGSAM has a seat on the editorial board of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS). This position was previously held by Gene Cooperman of Northeastern University (USA). Michael Monagan from Simon Fraser University (Canada) will be taking over this position.
SIGSAM Elections
The current ACM/SIGSAM officers requested that they remain for a second term. The reason for the extension was the feeling that a two year term was insufficient, given the start up cost, to accomplish the goals they put forth in their election. They will serve until June 30, 2013.
SIGSAM Membership
As of June 10, 2011, SIGSAM had 251 members, which was a significant drop from the previous year 346. The 2010 membership count was artificially high following ISSAC 2009 where membership was provided to all non-SIGSAM members attending ISSAC. However, the count was still 292 the preceding year and the drop to 251 is a concern. SIGSAM officers will investigate this, do a review of member benefits, and determine a plan going forward to raise membership.
SIGSAM Advisory Board
The Advisory Board advises the Chair on matters of interest to SIGSAM. It consists of the officers, the Past Chair, the newsletter Editor(s) and up to ten Members at Large elected by ballot by the members of SIGSAM at the Annual General Meeting. The advisory board has not been active in the last four years and the SIGSAM officers will look at how best to use the advisory board and a plan to reactivate the board.
SIGSAM Finances
The attached financial report was prepared by Agnes Szanto (SIGSAM Treasurer), which is summarized below. Note that the financial report is conservative in that it accounts for an estimated loss for ISSAC 2011, which appears unlikely.
Summary
We inherited a financially robust SIGSAM, with an opening balance of over $50,000, well above what is minimally required, thanks to the fiscally conservative policies of our previous leaderships. SIGSAM was financially successful during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 fiscal years. During the 2009-2010 year SIGSAM added around $3000 to the balance, and we expect the same amount for the 2010-11 fiscal year. The SIGSAM Board is considering to use some of the surplus funds to support student participants of future ISSAC conferences.
SIGSIM FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Drew Hamilton, Chair
Awards
a) An award of the ACM SIGSIM Distinguished Contributions Award, which recognizes individuals based on their overall contributions to the field of modeling and simulation, including technical innovations, publications, leadership, teaching, mentoring, and service to the community was not made this year. The recipient of the Award typically receives a plaque and an honorarium of $1500. Dick Nance has agreed to reorganize the SIGSIM Awards Committee.
b) Adrian Ramirez (Arizona State University) was awarded the ACM SIGSIM Best Ph.D. Student Paper Award at the 2010 Winter Simulation Conference. The recipient of the Award received a plaque and an honorarium of $200.
Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings
SIGSIM sponsored the following two conferences and one workshop.
• Winter Simulation Conference (WSC)
• ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM)
• Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS)
WSC, MSWiM, and PADS publish high quality papers in their proceedings. It is infeasible to identify which papers were significant since they all contribute to the state of the art in many different dimensions. Additionally, we continue expand in coops with many other simulation conferences, notably from the Society for Modeling and Simulation and in doing so we increase the size of the simulation holdings in the ACM Digital Library.
Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
SIGSIM provided the following benefits to its members:
a) SIGSIM-members-only access to ACM SIGSIM M&S Knowledge Repository
b) Proceedings (CD) of the annual Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) mailed to each SIGSIM member
c) Proceedings (hard copy) of the annual International Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS) mailed to each SIGSIM member
d) Reduced registration fees for many conferences including WSC and PADS
e) SIGSIM members are granted full on-line access to the proceedings of the SIGSIM sponsored / supported conferences in the ACM Digital Library
SIGSIM provided the following benefits to its community:
a) Distinguished Contributions Award
b) Ph.D. Colloquium and Poster Session at the annual WSC
c) Best Ph.D. Student Paper Award at the annual WSC
d) Sponsorship of annual conferences: WSC, PADS, and MSWiM
e) In-cooperation support of many conferences including: DEVS, DS-RT, EOMAS, MASCOTS, MSI, SIMUTools, SpringSim, SummerSim and SW
f) LinkedIn Professional Group named “ACM SIGSIM”, which provides professional networking among the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) professionals
g) Announcements via a moderated email distribution list about events of interest, Calls for Papers, and Calls for Participation.
SIGSIM’s benefits delivered to its members and community together with the two conferences and one workshop it has sponsored providing a springboard for further technical efforts. However these conferences and workshops are run outside of ACM, Our plan is to establish a unique SIGSIM conference to give our SIG more of its own identity as well as increasing participation by new members.
Innovative programs which provide service to our technical community
SIGSIM’s Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Knowledge Repository (MSKR) at
has been an innovative program which provided services to the SIGSIM technical community.
Summary of key issues that SIGSIM membership will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years
SIGSIM’s mission continues to promote and disseminate the advancement of high quality state-of-the-art in Modeling and Simulation (M&S) across a broad range of interests and disciplines. The expansion of the M&S Knowledge Repository’s content to provide better technical service to the SIGSIM membership is promising, but may be slow growing unless SIGSIM provides a venue for more growth. This expansion is very important for SIGSIM to accomplish its mission. How to motivate people to submit multimedia contributions for publication in the M&S Knowledge Repository remains to be a challenge. An ACM SIGSIM Conference could help motivate that effort.
SIGSOFT FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: David S. Rosenblum, Chair
SIGSOFT had another excellent year, both technically and financially in 2010-11. This report provides a summary of key SIGSOFT activities over the past year.
AWARDS THAT WERE GIVEN OUT
SIGSOFT has a large awards program that recognises the many achievements of the software engineering community.
Our prestigious service, research and education awards were presented again this year at ICSE 2011 in Hawaii. The ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award was presented to Jeff Kramer, in recognition of his many years of service to ICSE (including General Co-Chair of ICSE 2010, Program Co-Chair of ICSE 1999, and member and chair of the ICSE Steering Committee), as well as his service to the leading archival journals in software engineering (including Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology). The ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award was presented to Mary Shaw and David Garlan for their work on the development and promotion of software architecture. As is customary for this award, Mary and David will have the opportunity to deliver a keynote address about their work at ESEC/FSE 2011 in Hungary. Finally, the ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award was presented to Ian Sommerville, who is the author of probably the most widely used general textbook in software engineering (currently in its 9th edition) as well as co-author of two texts on requirements engineering and the Director of the Graduate Academy of the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance.
At ICSE we also recognised new ACM Senior Members, ACM Distinguished Members and ACM Fellows for 2010 from the SIGSOFT community. The new ACM Senior Members are Jeffrey C. Carver (University of Alabama), Kevin Daimi (University of Detroit Mercy), Glenn D. House, Sr. (2Is Inc.), Chang Liu (Ohio University), Andrian Marcus (Wayne State University), Sudarshan Murthy (Wipro Technologies), Martin P. Robillard (McGill University), Joseph P. Skudlarek (Cypress Semiconductor Corp.), Colin Smythe (Dunelm Services Limited) and Jayakanth Srinivasan (MIT). Linda M. Northrop (SEI, Carnegie Mellon University) was recognised as a new ACM Distinguished Engineer, while the new ACM Distinguished Scientists are Donald D. Cowan (University of Waterloo), Gail C. Murphy (University of British Columbia), Lori L. Pollock (University of Delaware), Walter F. Tichy (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). Finally, the new ACM Fellows are Dieter Rombach (for contributions to empirical software engineering research and its successful application to industrial practice), David Rosenblum (for contributions to software testing and distributed systems, and for service to the software engineering community) and Andreas Zeller (for contributions to automated debugging, and to mining software archives).
The SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award recognizes a paper published in a SIGSOFT conference at least 10 years earlier that has had exceptional impact on research or practice. The 2010 SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award committee, led by David Notkin, selected the paper "Bandera: Extracting Finite-State Models from Java Source Code" by James C. Corbett, Matthew B. Dwyer, John Hatcliff, Shawn Laubach, Corina S. Păsăreanu, Robby, and Hongjun Zheng, from the Proceedings of ICSE 2000. Accepting the award at FSE 2010 were Matt, John and Corina, who gave a keynote presentation reflecting on the origins and impact of their paper.
We also presented Retrospective Impact Paper Awards to papers from the first 23 years of SIGSOFT's history of conference sponsorship. Michal Young chaired the selection committee, which selected the following four papers:
Thomas Reps and Tim Teitelbaum. "The Synthesizer Generator". In Proc. First ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments (Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 23–25 April 1984).
Karl J. Ottenstein and Linda M. Ottenstein. "The Program Dependence Graph in a Software Development Environment". In Proc. First ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments (Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 23–25 April 1984).
Robert Balzer. "Tolerating Inconsistency". In Proc. 13th International Conference on Software Engineering (Austin, TX, USA, 13–17 May 1991).
David Lorge Parnas. "Software Aging". In Proc. 16th International Software Engineering Conference (Sorrento, Italy, 16–21 May 1994).
And many of our sponsored meetings this year presented ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards to the authors of a select number of their accepted papers.
SIGNIFICANT PAPERS ON NEW AREAS THAT WERE PUBLISHED IN PROCEEDINGS
The problems and topics addressed in the papers presented at SIGSOFT meetings remain tremendously varied and timely. As in many other fields, analysis of large data sets is seeing increased interest, with relevant data sets in software engineering being code repositories, version histories, bug reports and fixes, and their interrelationships. Related to this is the increasing use of statistical analysis and reasoning in software engineering, including the application of data mining and machine learning techniques. Testing and analysis remain the predominant areas of research interest, with increasing numbers of papers exploring approaches that combine static and dynamic analysis for fault detection, fault localisation and even automated fault removal. And researchers are also targeting more specialised forms of software such as Web-based systems, software for multicore processors and software for clouds.
SIGNIFICANT PROGRAMS THAT PROVIDED A SPRINGBOARD FOR FURTHER TECHNICAL EFFORTS
This year we established our first SIGSOFT chapter, the India Chapter of SIGSOFT (ISOFT). This effort was spearheaded by our India Liaison, Pankaj Jalote, and it will serve an important and active segment of the global software engineering community.
Also this year, at ICSE 2011 we continued our support for two established student programs, the Student Contest on Software Engineering (SCORE) and the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC). These programs serve to recognise significant achievements of student members of the community and to provide stronger integration of students with professional attendees at our sponsored meetings.
SIGSOFT will be a significant participant and supporter at ACM's Turing celebrations in 2012. Our efforts for this are being led by Carlo Ghezzi, Mark Grechanik and Will Tracz.
And this year we obtained approval for a new award, the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, for outstanding PhD dissertations in the field of software engineering. We expect to be making our first award in the coming year.
INNOVATIVE PROGRAMS WHICH PROVIDE SERVICE TO SOME PART OF THE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY
Through the efforts of our History Liaison, Tao Xie, SIGSOFT continues to provide valuable resources to the community documenting the history of our field and the people involved in that history. This year we released the SIGSOFT Community Directory (SIGSOFT-CD, ), which provides an alphabetical listing of ACM SIGSOFT officers, ACM officers from the SIGSOFT community, General Chairs and Program Chairs of SIGSOFT-sponsored meetings, recipients of SIGSOFT-related awards, and other such contributors to our community.
We also continued our outreach to the community through our increasing presence in social media outlets, and we have an entry in Wikipedia as well. And there was a significant change this year to SEWORLD, the SIGSOFT-hosted email list announcing calls for participation, faculty and postdoc positions and other events to the software engineering community: After nearly two decades of tireless management and moderation of the list, Alexander Wolf decided to retire from his SEWORLD responsibilities. The list is now being managed by Jim Vallino and Mike Lutz at Rochester Institute of Technology.
As in past years, we made numerous awards to support travel by PhD students to SIGSOFT-sponsored meetings, under our CAPS Conference Attendance Program for Students (CAPS). We also continued to make CAPS awards to undergraduates and provided awards for childcare support at conferences. Regrettably we were unable once again to identify a suitable recipient this year from the SIGSOFT community for the SIGBED/SIGSOFT Frank Anger Memorial Award.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF KEY ISSUES FACING THE SIGSOFT MEMBERSHIP
Conference finance remains the key challenge for SIGSOFT, particularly for the volunteers who organise its sponsored meetings, and ultimately for its membership who pay the registration fees for those meetings. Operating and venue costs for conferences continue to soar, but the effects of the global economic downturn seem to have softened somewhat this past year, since our meetings enjoyed an increase in contributions from companies and other external supporters. In addition, meeting organisers are finding ever more creative ways to keep costs and registration fees down while still providing a rich and rewarding experience for attendees, with the high quality programs, benefits, amenities and activities they have come to expect.
SIGSPATIAL FY'11 Annual Report
July 2010-June 2011
Submitted by: Hanan Samet, SIGSPATIAL Chair
1. SIGSPATIAL CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
SIGSPATIAL's mission is to address issues related to the acquisition, management, and processing of spatially-related information with a focus on algorithmic, geometric, and visual considerations. The scope includes, but is not limited to, geographic information systems (GIS). These issues have become increasingly important in terms of public awareness with the growing interest and use of online mapping systems such as Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Maps and Google Earth as well as the integration of GPS into applications and devices such as, but not limited to, the iPhone. Presently, SIGSPATIAL is fulfilling this mission by sponsoring high quality research conferences and workshops. As indicated by its mission, SIGSPATIAL's domain is much more than just geographic information systems and with this in mind it tries to differentiate its conferences and workshop from others by focusing on the computer science aspects of the field rather than on the available commercial products. In addition, a major concern and focus of the SIGSPATIAL leadership is keeping its flagship conference, the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS), affordable so that it can continue to be of good value to its attendees and be competitive price-wise with related conferences which are priced at considerably lower levels than most ACM SIG conferences. SIGSPATIAL has been able to achieve this goal by being very active in soliciting sponsor contributions as well as being vigilant at minimizing SIGSPATIAL's financial exposure in terms of contractual obligations when planning the conference by building reserves that can be used in years when the financial climate is not so healthy.
2010 was the third year of SIGSPATIAL and its main activity was its flagship conference (ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS) that was held in San Jose, California, USA, on November 3-5, 2010. ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010 was the eighteenth event of an annual series of symposia and workshops with the mission to bring together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners carrying out research and development in novel systems based on geo-spatial data and knowledge. The conference fosters interdisciplinary discussions and research in all aspects of Geographic Information Systems and Science (GIS) and provides a forum for original research contributions covering all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of GIS and ranging from applications, user interface considerations, and visualization to storage management, indexing, and algorithmic issues.
This was the third time that the conference was held under the auspices of the new ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information (SIGSPATIAL). The conference program attracted a record number of 247 attendees. The technical program lasted for two and half days, and based on the feedback of the participants, we can conclude that the conference was very successful in terms of new ideas presented and level of interaction provided.
The call for papers led to 209 paper submissions over four tracks: research, industry, PhD showcases, and demos. The research paper track attracted 172 research paper submissions, of which 36 were accepted as full papers and another 36 were accepted as poster papers. The industry track attracted six submissions, of which four were accepted as full papers. The Ph.D. Showcase track received 12 submissions, of which 5 were accepted, while the demonstrations track received 19 submissions, of which 12 were accepted. The submissions were reviewed by a program committee of 120 members. Each paper was reviewed by at least three reviewers, and in most cases four. This resulted in 793 reviews over all paper tracks. These numbers indicate the continued health, interest, and growth of the research field of geographic information systems, and the need to bring its researchers, students, and industrial practitioners together.
The conference program featured two outstanding invited speakers:
1. Maneesh Agrawala, University of California at Berkeley, for a talk titled "Designing Maps to Help People"
2. Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University and Google, for a talk titled “Photographing the World Ground Up".
The conference was run in a single track with one of the highlights being a fast forward poster session in the first afternoon where each poster author was given 2 minutes to present the highlights of their work to the audience. This was followed by a poster reception in the evening where the conference participants had an opportunity to interact with the poster authors. Poster paper authors were encouraged to do a good job by having two awards: one for best fast forward presentation and one for the actual poster. The poster component of the conference proved to be very popular with both the conference audience and the poster authors.
The conference also included a business meeting for SIGSPATIAL which was open to all SIGSPATIAL members as well as to all conference attendees. The meeting included a discussion of budgetary issues, plans for next year's conference, a discussion of some initiatives such as ensuring that the ACM Digital Library has copies of all past issues of the conference proceedings, and soliciting feedback from members.
The conference was preceded by a workshop day with the following seven workshops:
1. CTS 2010: The Third International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science
2. DMGIS 2010: The First International Workshop on Data Mining for Geoinformatics
3. IWGS 2010: The First International Workshop on GeoStreaming
4. HPDGIS 2009: The First International Workshop on High Performance and Distributed Geographic Information Systems
5. ISA 2009: The Second International Workshop on Indoor Spatial Awareness
6. LBSN 2010: The Second International Workshop on Location-Based Social Networks
7. SPRINGL 2010: The Third International Workshop on Security and Privacy in GIS and LBS
This year's conference was generously co-sponsored by NSF, ESRI, Google, and Micro-soft, whose participation and generosity demonstrated what can be accomplished by a successful partnership between academia and industry. The sponsors also contributed to the conference program by participating in a very lively Sponsor Demo session preceding the conference banquet.
The SIGSPATIAL leadership is currently planning for the 2011 ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS Conference which will be held in Chicago, Illinois on November 2-4, 2011 with as many as 9 workshops on November 1. It has already secured a commitment from Google to be a sponsor at the Gold Level which also includes financial aid in the form of sponsorship for women to attend the conference. In addition, ESRI, Microsoft, and Navteq will also be sponsoring the conference at the Bronze Level. SIGSPATIAL has also been successful in securing $20,000 from the National Science Foundation for holding a Doctoral Symposium in conjunction with the flagship conference. This will augment the Ph.D. Showcase track of the conference.
SIGSPATIAL also participated in the 3rd International Workshop on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP) on September 18-19, 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey on an in cooperation basis as it did with the conference in 2009, and is also currently doing in 2011 with the Workshop being held in Lipari, Italy on June 30-July 1. Similarly, SIGSPATIAL participated in the 2010 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM '10) on an in cooperation basis and will also do so in 2011. In addition, SIGSPATIAL is exploring sponsoring other conferences in the field as well as cooperating with other conferences
(e.g., UBICOMP'11 which has already been approved on a 0% sponsorship basis), SIGs, and professional organization in the GIS area.
2. SIGSPATIAL PUBLICATION INITIATIVES
SIGSPATIAL is continuing to explore the idea of starting an ACM Transactions on Spatial Systems and Algorithms or some mutually acceptable variant of this title, but this is still a year or two away as the current focus of the SIG continues to be on maintaining the quality of the flagship conference, and getting the workshops organized. Nevertheless, a draft proposal is circulating among some key members who are expected to form the nucleus of the Editorial Board of the proposed Transactions. The model is based on the anticipation that the papers published in the workshops and conferences would be expanded upon and submitted to the Transactions for consideration for possible publication.
3. AWARDS
In 2010, SIGSPATIAL continued to offer a best paper award, but chose not to make any best student paper awards as virtually all papers had some student authors. The ad hoc 2010 ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS Best Paper Award Committee consisting of Peter Scheuermann, Agnes Voisard, Peter Widmayer, and Ouri Wolfson selected the papers for the following two awards:
Best Paper:
Natural Neighbor Interpolation Based Grid DEM Construction Using a GPU
Alex Beutel (Duke University), Thomas Molhave (Duke University), Pankaj K. Agarwal (Duke University)
Runner-Up for Best Paper:
T-Drive: Driving Directions Based on Taxi Trajectories
Jing Yuan (University of Science and Technology of China), Yu Zheng(Microsoft Research Asia), Chengyang Zhang (University of North Texas), Wenlei Xie (Microsoft Research Asia), Xing Xie (Microsoft
Research Asia), Guangzhong Sun (University of Science and Technology of China), Yan Huang (University of North Texas)
Awards were also made at the conference by a pair of ad hoc committees for the best poster paper presentation and the best fast forward poster paper presentation:
Best Poster Paper Presentation:
Location Recommendation for Location-Based Social Networks
Mao Ye (Pennsylvania State University), Peifeng Yin (Pennsylvania State University), Wang-Chien Lee (Pennsylvania State University)
Best Poster Presentation Runners-up:
Efficient Indexing Structure for Scalable Processing of Spatial Alarms
Myungcheol Doo and Ling Liu (GaTech), Nitya Narasimhan (Motorola Applied Research Center), Venu Vasudevan (Motorola Applied Research Center)
Algorithms for Compressing GPS Trajectory Data: An Empirical Evaluation
Jonathan Muckell (SUNY Albany), Jeong-Hyon Hwang (SUNY Albany), Catherine T. Lawson (SUNY Albany), S. S. Ravi (SUNY Albany)
Best Fast Forward Poster Paper Presentation:
Augmenting Internet Maps with Property Information from Aerial Imagery
Philipp Meixner (Graz University of Technology), Franz Leberl (Graz University of Technology)
Best Fast Forward Poster Paper Presentation Runners-up:
A Model for Progressive Transmission of Spatial Data based on Shape Complexity
Fangli Ying (NUIM), Peter Mooney (EPA, Ireland), Padraig Corcoran (NUIM), and Adam C. Winstanley (NUIM)
Time Geography Inverted: Recognizing Intentions in Space and Time
Peter Kiefer (Universitat Bamberg), Martin Raubal (UCSB), Christoph Schlieder (Universitat Bamberg)
In addition, for the first time, SIGSPATIAL initiated a Distinguished Service Award to recognize individuals whom the Executive Committee felt made significant contributions to the success of the SIG. These awards were made at the banquet of the 2010 conference to:
1. Prof. Yan Huang of the University of North Texas for her outstanding contributions in ``maintaining the financial health of the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems'' in her continuous role as Conference Treasurer thereby ensuring the financial well-being of SIGSPATIAL for which the conference serves as the key source of revenue.
2. Prof. Robert Laurini of INSA de Lyon for his outstanding contributions to the foundation of the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advance in Geographic Information Systems who for many years served as the head of the ACMGIS Steering Committee which oversaw the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advance in Geographic Information Systems in its various states as a workshop, symposium, and eventual transition to a conference at the time of the founding of SIGSPATIAL.
4. ACM DIGITAL LIBRARY
SIGSPATIAL plans to expand its presence in the ACM Digital Library by soliciting workshop proposals both in its role as a sponsor and on an in cooperation status. This can be seen by the increased number of workshops that it sponsored in 2010. These workshops were proposed independently to SIGSPATIAL. In 2010, SIGSPATIAL was more proactive in soliciting workshop proposals and designated its Treasurer, Markus Schneider, as the Workshops Chair. He successfully created a uniform framework for them. He continued in this role for the 2011 Workshops.
5. SIGSPATIAL CHAPTERS
Fiscal year 2010 saw the chartering of the first two SIGSPATIAL Chapters:
1. SIGSPATIAL China
2. SIGSPATIAL Australia
We have also had inquiries about starting a SIGSPATIAL Korea chapter as well as a proposed Taiwan chapter. These chapters are representative of the amount in interest in SIGSPATIAL from members in these regions and are reflected by their participation in the flagship conference as authors and attendees.
6. PLANS FOR THE 2012 FISCAL YEAR
SIGSPATIAL is working hard to fulfill its mission of sponsoring high quality research conferences and workshops. It will start to be more proactive in soliciting workshops and will also continue to seek out more sponsors and try to devise activities that will increase its attractiveness to the potential sponsors. It will try to continue to maintain, as well as build on, the momentum of its first three years of existence.
7. ELECTIONS
SIGSPATIAL held its first elections for officers this year. The candidates for the various positions were:
Chair:
Walid G. Aref, Purdue University
Pusheng Zhang, Microsoft Corporation
Vice-Chair:
Chang-Tien Lu, Virginia Tech University
Markus Schneider, University of Florida
Secretary:
Divy Agrawal, University of California at Santa Barbara
Mohamed Ali, Microsoft Corporation
Treasurer:
Mohamed Mokbel, University of Minnesota
Shawn Newsam, University of California at Merced
The SIGSPATIAL membership elected the following for a three year term
running from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2014:
Chair: Walid G. Aref, Purdue University
Vice-Chair: Chang-Tien Lu, Virginia Tech University
Secretary: Divy Agrawal, University of California at Santa Barbara
Treasurer: Mohamed Mokbel, University of Minnesota
SIGUCCS FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010- June 2011
Submitted by: Robert Haring-Smith, Chair
During the past year, SIGUCCS (Special Interest Group for University and College Computing Services) continued its service to the community of professionals who provide computer support at institutions of higher education while also preparing for two significant transitions. This was the final year, for at least a while, in which we held our Fall Conference and spring Management Symposium as separate events. In the fall of 2011, they will be held jointly as part of a SIGUCCS annual conference. Also this year, we prepared for a leadership transition and conducted elections for a new Executive Committee for the SIG.
The Executive Committee members for 2010-2011 (Chair, Bob Haring-Smith; Vice Chair/Fall Conference Liaison, Kelly Wainwright; Secretary/Management Symposium Liaison, Tim Foley; Treasurer, Alex Nagorski; Information Director, Patti Mitch; and Past Chair Leila Lyons) completed the final year of their three-year term of office. Continuing to serve as appointed members of the board were Karen McRitchie (Tutorial Chair), Greg Hanek (coordinator of the Communication Awards program), and Christine Vucinich (chair of the Membership and Marketing Committee). Other volunteers too numerous to name here individually contribute their energy and ideas to the organization through service on conference and program committees, on the Awards Committee, on the Membership and Marketing Committee, and as judges for the Communication Awards. Many of these individuals are listed in appropriate pages on the SIGUCCS web site ().
The election was held in the spring, but we started to publicize it last fall in order to solicit volunteers to run for office and to encourage voting participation by the membership. A strong slate of two candidates for Chair and nine candidates for the other four newly elected positions on the Committee was assembled by the Nominating Committee. No one petitioned for inclusion on the ballot. Kelly Wainwright was elected Chair and Melissa Bauer, Mat Felthousen, Karen McRitchie, and Parrish Nnambi won the other positions.
Awards and Grants
The SIGUCCS Awards Programs have been in place for more than a decade. The Penny Crane Award for Distinguished Service recognizes significant multiple contributions to SIGUCCS and the profession from individuals over an extended period of time. The Hall of Fame awards recognize selected individuals who have contributed their time and energies to benefit SIGUCCS. For descriptions of the awards programs, please go to: .
Penny Crane Award for Distinguished Service – Lida Larsen was the recipient of the 2010 Penny Crane Award. For more information please go to: .
Hall of Fame – Two people were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2010, Ann Amsler and Jennifer Whiting. See for more information.
Conference attendance grants – The SIGUCCS Grant Program provides partial support for students and employees in institutions of higher education to participate in the SIGUCCS Management Symposium or the SIGUCCS Fall Conference. This support is funded by SIGUCCS and consists of a complimentary conference registration, hotel room accommodations for the nights of the conference, and complimentary registration for one workshop at the conference.
In selecting grant recipients, we favor applicants from institutions that have not been represented at recent SIGUCCS conferences. This approach is intended to make the conferences more widely known and build future attendance.
The program completed its third year in 2010-2011 and underwent an evaluation to determine the extent to which it was achieving its goals. The outcome was that, while we feel the program does provide a service to the profession, it is not achieving the goal of promoting attendance at subsequent SIGUCCS conferences by institutional colleagues of grant recipients. In light of recent budget deficits run by SIGUCCS, the decision was made to scale back the program by restricting awards to full-time employees and offering only three grants beginning with SIGUCCS 2011.
From 10 applicants for Fall Conference grants in 2010, the following five people received grants:
Stephen McTigue, Roanoke College
Patrick Pow, University of Washington - Tacoma
Ayola Singh-Kreitz, University of Florida
Gary Wong, Community College at Lingnan University
Jay Yates, IUPUI (student)
From 6 applicants for SIGUCCS Management Symposium grants in the spring of 2011, the following five people received grants:
Melissa Bauer, Baldwin-Wallace College
David Kleckner, UNC- Chapel Hill
Steve McKinney, Moravian College
Gary Sullivan, University of Oregon
Elizabeth Wagnon, Texas A&M University
On January 1, 2011, Teresa Lockard became Chair of the SIGUCCS Awards Selection Committee and Dennis Mar became Past Chair, following the rotation of the committee’s membership described at . Two new members, Nancy Bauer and Rob Paterson, replaced John Bucher and Jayne Ashworth, who retired from the committee at the end of 2010.
2010 Communications Awards - As we have done for many years, we held our Communications Awards competition in conjunction with the Fall Conference. A description of these awards and the 2010 winners can be found at: . Judging for this competition is led by Greg Hanek who has overseen the Communications Awards competition for several years. The Communications Awards Committee is formed each year from the previous year’s top award winners in each category.
As can be seen from the listing, there need not be an award made in a category, even if there are submissions. Each year the categories in the competition are reviewed to ensure that they appropriately represent the range of communications currently used in higher education.
Conferences
The thirty-eighth Fall Conference was held October 24-27, 2010 in Norfolk, Virginia, with the theme of “Navigation & Discovery.” The keynote speakers were Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Charlie Kiriakou of the US Navy. Technical sessions covered a wide range of topics, including training, new technologies for teaching, and developing and promoting new services. Seven pre-conference workshops were offered on subjects ranging from project management to Second Life. For the complete program, see .
The SIGUCCS Management Symposium was held from April 10-13, 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The theme was “IT: Leading the Revolution.” The program featured discussions of strategic planning, career development, IT management, and virtualizing services. Plenary addresses were given by Dr. Peter Jonas of Cardinal Stritch University, Sheri Stahler of Temple University, and Dr. Doug Gale of the Internet Legacy Institute. Dr. Stephen G. Payne led a pre-conference seminar on leadership. The complete program is available at .
Planning is currently underway for the next two annual conferences, which will combine a Management Conference and a Service and Support Conference. The two parts will occur in sequence but share a plenary session. Attendees can register for either or both parts of the conference. The SIGUCCS 2011 conference committee has selected a theme that brilliantly evokes both the San Diego setting of the conference and the spirit that led to consolidating the events: One Team, One Mission. We expect to learn a lot from presenting this first combined conference, so that it continues to be an effective means for members of our profession to connect with and learn from each other.
As a cost saving measure and in recognition of the search capability and other features in ACM’s Digital Library, the SIGUCCS Board decided to discontinue distribution of conference proceedings to all members beginning with SIGUCCS 2011. Those attending the conference will still receive the proceedings on CD as they have for many years, so that they will have full papers available when deciding which sessions to attend or authors to whom they wish to speak at the conference.
Webinars
SIGUCCS instituted a series of professional development webinars early in 2010 and has continued the series over the past year with five new webinars, under the leadership of Tutorial Chair Karen McRitchie. Management of staff, especially student staff, is of great interest to the SIGUCCS community and has been a focus of the webinars. In addition, one was offered on time management. An average of 62 people per webinar participated over the course of the year. Recordings of past webinars are available on the SIGUCCS web site at .
We subscribe to GoToMeeting’s webinar service, which both saves us a substantial amount of money over our previous means of conducting phone conferences for board meetings and provides a versatile medium for SIGUCCS services and operations. We use it extensively, not only for webinars and board meetings, but also for committee meetings, pre-conference orientation sessions for first-time attendees at the SIGUCCS Fall Conference, and other on-line volunteer gatherings.
Special Projects
Two special projects occupied groups of SIGUCCS volunteers during the past year.
Conference Management System: The need for a more effective means of managing abstracts and papers for our conferences was identified early in the tenure of the Executive Committee that just left office. The Fall Conference had used a variety of home-grown systems over the years, while the Management Symposium had developed its own system that worked well for the limited needs of that event, but would have been unsuitable for the Fall Conference. Our goal was to find or develop a system that would serve both conferences and could be used consistently from year to year.
We compiled a list of candidate systems based on what other SIGs use and on suggestions from other sources. Upon examination, we found that none of the systems aligned well with our usual paper review process for the Fall Conference. Some of the front-line support personnel who make proposals for that conference are writing their first professional papers, so the reviewer is as much an editor helping the author hone the paper. This is in keeping with SIGUCCS’ mission of professional development, but the systems that we saw do not readily support this type of interaction between author and reviewer.
Nonetheless, we settled on Microsoft Research’s Conference Management Toolkit () for use in handling paper flow for SIGUCCS 2011. We hope to grow more skilled in our use of the system from year to year, and perhaps to engender new features that will make the system better suited to our needs.
SIGUCCS 50: SIGUCCS was founded in 1963 and held its first conference in 1973, so 2013 is both the 50th anniversary of SIGUCCS and the 40th anniversary of that first conference. A group led by former SIGUCCS Chairs Leila Lyons and Jack Esbin has been meeting periodically to brainstorm about what form the recognition of these milestones might take. In anticipation of trying to book some particularly distinguished keynote speakers, we will accelerate our normal process for selecting a conference site in order to have SIGUCCS 2013 conference dates set earlier than usual.
It is important to the “SIGUCCS 50” group that the anniversary celebration not be simply an exercise in nostalgia for older members of the SIGUCCS community, but have clear value for all who rely on SIGUCCS services. Certainly, many of the biggest challenges we face are perennial problems of management, communication, and staff development. Recognizing how the problems persist even as the technology changes may be an important outcome of the SIGUCCS 50 events. Planning for the 50th anniversary recognition is ongoing.
Issues
The economic downturn and its effect on college and university finances continue to be the most important issues that we face. Participation in our conferences, from submission of papers through attendance at the conference, depends on college and university support for staff travel and professional development—support which has been greatly curtailed over the past few years. Attendance at the Fall Conference in Norfolk rebounded noticeably from the low we reached in St. Louis but remains well below average registration levels for the past ten years (324 for Norfolk versus 213 in St. Louis and an average of 414 from 2001 through 2008). Registration for the Management Symposium in Philadelphia was, disappointingly, lower than the preceding year in Victoria (78 versus 92) despite the large number of institutions of higher education in easy reach of Philadelphia.
Since, like most SIGs, SIGUCCS depends on its conferences for most of its income, attendance problems at the conferences are quickly translated into financial problems for the SIG. The good news is that we entered the economic downturn with a substantial reserve for a SIG our size and that our financial losses from last year’s conferences are significantly lower than for the preceding year. The bad news is that the losses are continuing.
Reduced conference registration also depresses membership in the SIG because the registration discount for members encourages many to join SIGUCCS or to renew their memberships. While there are other reasons to join the SIG, the financial savings loom large. Offering webinar registration first to SIGUCCS members, as we do, creates a small incentive to be a member. In coming years, the decision to discontinue distribution of proceedings CDs to all members may induce some to retain their memberships in order to have continued access to the SIGUCCS content in the Digital Library.
We have increased conference registration fees judiciously in order to garner more revenue without discouraging attendance. We are also paying especially close attention to major conference expenses like audio-visual support, Internet access, and food and beverage costs—trying to maintain the appeal of our events while controlling those costs. But our best opportunity for changing the bottom line lies on the revenue side of the ledger. We need to market SIGUCCS and its conferences more effectively so that those working in IT support in higher education know of us and feel that the conferences are worth the time and money that it takes to attend them. That will likely be the new Executive Committee’s biggest challenge.
SIGWEB FY’11 Annual Report
July 2010 - June 2011
Submitted by: Ethan Munson, Chair
BACKGROUND
SIGWEB represents a unique interdisciplinary research community centered on the technical and human issues that arise from systems of linked information.
This idea of explicitly linking pieces of information gave birth to a rich well of research trying to augment the human intellect, a vision articulated by the legendary computing pioneer Douglas Engelbart nearly half a century ago. Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and other early researchers realized this vision through hypermedia systems, which are still of interest to the SIGWEB community today, including the World Wide Web, the largest hypermedia system ever built.
Modern researchers have found a host of other realizations of this vision, ranging from digital libraries to knowledge management systems. SIGWEB includes more than just computer researchers and professionals, though. From cognitive psychologists to ethnographers to anthropologists to hypertext writers, SIGWEB embraces those researchers and practitioners that address how people use computers, so that better tools for augmenting the human intellect can be built. SIGWEB also balances the findings of the research world with the experiences of the practical world, in which our ideas and theories are tested daily.
SIGWEB (originally SIGLINK) was founded 21 years ago to provide a home for the hypertext community and the ACM Hypertext conference. Over the years, SIGWEB has changed its name and has begun to sponsor a wide range of conferences encompassing hypertext, Web science, document engineering, digital libraries, knowledge management and Web search.
ELECTIONS
New officers were elected in June 2011 for terms that run from July 2011 to June 2013. The membership of the Executive Committee for the 2009-11 term was:
Ethan Munson (Chair)
Maria de Graça C. Pimentel (Vice-Chair)
Simon Harper (Secretary/Treasurer)
Yeliz Yesilada (Information Director)
Darren Lunn (Newsletter Editor until 1/2011)
Claus Atzenbeck (Interviews Associate Editor)
Peter Brusilovsky (Member-at-large)
The newly elected officers are:
Simon Harper (Chair)
Dick Bulterman (Vice-Chair)
Maria de Graça C. Pimentel (Secretary/Treasurer)
Newly-elected Chair Simon Harper will announce the membership of the 2011-13 Executive Committee soon.
FY 2010 TECHNICAL MEETINGS AND AWARDS
The technical meetings sponsored by SIGWEB were:
• ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng) 2010
(held in September 2010 in Manchester, UK)
• ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management 2010
(held in October 2010 in Toronto, Canada)
• ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2011)
(held February 2011 in Hong Kong, China)
• ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2011)
(held June 2011 in Ottawa, Canada)
• ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (HT 2011)
(held June 2011 in Eindhoven, Netherlands)
• ACM International Web Science Conference (WebSci 2011)
(held June 2011 in Koblenz, Germany)
The awards presented by SIGWEB in FY 2011 were:
• The Douglas C. Engelbart Best Paper Award for 2011 (HT 2011)
“Beyond the Usual Suspects: Context-Aware Revisitation Support”
Ricardo Kawase, George Papadakis, Eelco Herder and Wolfgang Nejdl
• The Theodor Holm Nelson Newcomer Award for 2011 (HT 2011)
“A3P: Adaptive Policy Prediction for Shared Images Over Popular Content Sharing Sites”
Anna Squicciarini, Smitha Sundareswaran, Dan Lin, and Josh Wede
• The Vannevar Bush Award for 2011 (JCDL 2011)
“SharedCanvas: A Collaborative Model for Medieval Manuscript Layout Dissemination”
Robert Sanderson, Benjamin Albritton, Rafael Schwemmer and Herbert Van De Sompel
• The DocEng Best Paper Award for 2010 (DocEng 2010)
“Using Versioned Tree Data Structure, Change Detection and Node Identity for Three-Way XML Merging”
Cheng Thao and Ethan V. Munson
PARTNERSHIPS
SIGWEB shares sponsorship of three conferences: JCDL is co-sponsored with SIGIR and the IEEE TCDL; CIKM is co-sponsored with SIGIR; and WSDM is co-sponsored with SIGIR, SIGKDD, and SIGMOD. Also, while the WebSci conference series is entirely sponsored by SIGWEB, it is governed by a Memorandum of Understanding with the Web Science Trust and its steering committee includes a representative from the International Communications Association.
FINANCES
SIGWEB’s finances are stable and strong. The SIG’s fund balance stands at over $520,000. This is a small decrease from the preceding year, but substantially higher than several years ago. The fund balance is more than adequate to support SIGWEB’s planned activities under ACM’s formula.
SIGWEB’s conferences have generally been making profits and in some cases have made large profits. However, in the past year, HT 2010 lost $10,000 and DocEng 2010 had a tiny deficit (less than $500). The responsibility for the loss at HT 2010 should rest with the Chair (Munson), who approved registration fees that were too low, in retrospect.
SIGWEB runs a surplus on its basic operational expenses, largely due to Digital Library income. In the last three years, the SIG has initiated a system of student travel awards, paid out of the operational budget (or the fund balance, depending on your viewpoint) and this substantial new expense has reduced the operational surplus.
MEMBERSHIP
In June 2011, SIGWEB had 555 members (439 professional, 41 student, and 75 affiliate). This is a substantial decrease from June 2010, when SIGWEB had 666 members (466 professional, 57 student, and 143 affiliate). Previous membership totals were:
• June 2009: 699
• June 2008: 644
• June 2007: 534
Clearly, membership has fallen back to the levels of June 2007. The reasons are not clear. The current best guess is that the SIG has not been as efficient in processing the free memberships given to attendees of 100%-sponsored events as we were in 2008 and 2009.
It is worth mentioning SIGWEB’s system of free memberships for conference attendees, because it is a topic of some controversy in ACM SIG circles. Clearly, giving away memberships can increase membership totals. However, the additional members are less “sticky” because they haven’t decided to join on their own. As a result, membership totals can be more variable. SIGWEB chooses to offer free memberships because it appears to us to be a meaningful benefit to our community. Much of SIGWEB’s active conference attendance comes from Europe. European academics, in general, are not allowed to pay for society memberships from university funds, even when doing so would reduce the total cost of attending a conference. So, the SIGWEB Exec Comm believes that the SIG can support its natural members by giving them memberships automatically when they attend conferences that only SIGWEB sponsors.
GOALS
Like many ACM SIGs, SIGWEB had seen falling membership in recent years. While the declines were not precipitous, they were a real cause for concern and the Executive Committee has taken several actions to successfully reverse this trend:
• As mentioned in the previous section, SIGWEB is giving complimentary SIGWEB memberships to attendees at our three 100% sponsored conferences (Hypertext, WebSci, and DocEng).
• SIGWEB is publishing a newsletter. The primary distribution medium is the Internet, but a one-page color flyer containing abbreviated articles with URLs is mailed to all members. This is done in the belief that a physical document is easier to share and provides a tangible reminder of membership. Overall, we consider this effort a success and we are considering expanding the format to a four-page format (single 11x17 sheet, folded), provided that we can do so at reasonable cost.
• SIGWEB has been running a Student Travel Award program for the last three years. The program was modeled on those of SIGIR and SIGAPP and is primarily used with the 100%-sponsored conferences. In 2009, about $10,000 was given for students presenting at Hypertext 2009 and DocEng 2009 ($5000 each). In 2010, about $17,000 in total will be given for Hypertext, JCDL, and DocEng. In 2011, about $25000 total will be given from JCDL, WebSci, Hypertext and DocEng. This is a way that SIGWEB can return some of its surpluses to the community and it is certainly popular with the participants. (Note that the $5000 of travel awards for JCDL is matched by $5000 from SIGIR. We have encouraged JCDL to consider how to create a structure where IEEE TCDL participates financially in the awards.)
• SIGWEB has worked to strengthen its traditional flagship conference by broadening its scope to include Social Linking and Networking. The meeting saw a dramatic increase in attendance in 2009 (from 90 to 150), but this was somewhat illusory, because the host institute allowed for many complimentary registrations. Attendance in 2010 was solid at about 100, so the conference appears stable, but may not be growing.
• In June 2011, SIGWEB signed an MoU with the Web Science Trust establishing SIGWEB sponsorship of the International Web Science Conference. The agreement sets up a trial period through 2013. The SIGWEB Exec Comm is very pleased with this expansion of SIGWEB’s conference offerings. The WebSci conference is very much in SIGWEB’s tradition of interdisciplinary events, since it brings together computer scientists with social scientists and other scholars interested in the Web’s impact on society and human life.
Volunteer development has historically been a challenge for SIGWEB. However, the elections that were completed just this past June showed that this is no longer a serious issue. The nominating committee easily found two solid candidates for each of the three offices and elections proceeded smoothly. Other volunteer development efforts have included:
• Previous reports have mentioned the Advisory Committee, which includes active volunteers and conference representatives. This has been a reasonable effort, but the number of issues that require broad discussion is not that great and thus the committee has not been very active in the last year.
• The SIGWEB Executive Committee has been recruiting volunteers for new roles, especially for the newsletter. There is a new associate editor, Danielle Lee, who is editing a column on recent PhD dissertations.
• The Exec Comm has been trying to establish a Publicity Committee to manage distribution of flyers and other promotional materials at conferences, but this effort has not proceeded well yet.
• A group of members has proposed the establishment of a Social Media Working Group that will organize workshops at various events. This group has a good amount of energy and is in discussions with the newly elected SIGWEB leadership about various activities.
A redesign of the SIGWEB Web site is nearly complete at the time of this writing. The previous is dated in both style and technology. A new webmaster is being recruited and the new site should go live by August 2011.
CONCLUSION
SIGWEB has successfully expanded its range of conference sponsorships. SIGWEB is also working hard on membership and volunteer development. SIGWEB is financially healthy and has solid leadership.
-----------------------
|Conference |Year |Type |Co-located|Approval |Sent |Surplus |
| | | | | |dd/mm |(deficit) |
| | | | | | | |
|2011 |2011 |2011 |2011 |2011 |2011 |2011 |
|Web 3D |2011 |Sponsored |yes |Approved | | |
|CyberWorlds |2011 |In coop | |Approved |June 2011 | |
|APGV |2011 |Sponsored |yes |Approved |July 2011 | |
|SCA 11 |2011 |Sponsored |yes |Approved |Apr 2011 | |
|EG SR11 |2011 |In coop | |Approved |Apr 2011 | |
|FDG 11 |2011 |In coop | |Approved |Apr 2011 | |
|UIST 11 |2011 |Sponsored | |Approved | | |
|MIG 11 |2011 |In-coop | |Approved |June 2011 | |
|SoCG'11: |2011 |Co-sponsored | |Approved |May 2011 | |
|SG |2011 |In coop | |Approved |June 2011 | |
|SGP |2011 |In-coop | |Approved |June 2011 | |
|HPG |2011 |Co-sponsored |yes |Approved |June 2011 | |
|SBIM/NPAR/CAe |2011 |sponsored |yes |Approved |June 2011 | |
|UIST |2011 |Co-sponsored | |Approved |July 2011 | |
|SIAM |2011 |In-coop | |Approved |June 2011 | |
|C&C |2011 |In-coop | |Approved |June 2011 | |
|VRCAI |2011 |Co-sponsored | |pending |July 2011 | |
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