President’s Corner

SIGGRAPH Members,

The Executive Committee (EC) is committed to upholding ACM’s strict policy and procedures against harassment for all members of the ACM SIGGRAPH community. The open exchange of ideas and the freedom of thought and expression are central to the aims and goals of the SIGGRAPH conferences and organization. The volunteers, staff, and contractors of ACM SIGGRAPH commit to providing a harassment-free, accessible, and pleasant conference experience with equity in rights for all. 

To this end, we are assembling a new committee, ACM SIGGRAPH CARES, comprising of volunteers who will serve as a point-of-contact for our members. This group will help us ensure there is a dedicated resource and support system in place for ACM SIGGRAPH members who have been sexually harassed, or discriminated against due to their race, ethnicity, religion or creed, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law. This committee will operate year-round and will have a presence at both the North American SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences.

I am thrilled to announce that Alain Chesnais will lead this committee. Alain has been a volunteer for ACM SIGGRAPH for his entire career in graphics. He got his start stuffing envelopes in the Paris chapter back when we communicated with our membership via the mail. Among the many other major volunteer roles that he has taken on since with ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH, he served as ACM President from 2010-2012 and ACM SIGGRAPH President from 2002-2005. Despite these august positions, he maintains a rapport with the student volunteers and other new members of our community that makes him perfectly suited to take on the leadership of ACM SIGGRAPH CARES.

Alain is getting the committee up and running quickly and currently seeking volunteers to join him. Interested volunteers should want to have a direct hand in upholding this important policy, and have the skills to help others with care and the utmost discretion. They should be well-informed of ACM’s policy on harassment and the reporting mechanisms offered by ACM. The EC will provide training on how to assist members who have experienced harassment by serving as a sounding board, lending advice and support, and answering questions about policy and procedure. Our goal with the formation of ACM SIGGRAPH CARES is to have a group dedicated to assist people immediately and who can keep a watchful eye for these issues at our conferences.

If this is a volunteer role that interests you, please get in touch via siggraph_cares@siggraph.org or www.siggraph.org/cares.  The committee members will be available in August at SIGGRAPH 2018 in Vancouver.

Jessica Hodgins

SIGGRAPH Members,

The Executive Committee (EC) will be proposing a few notable changes to the SIGGRAPH Bylaws. These proposed changes have been approved by ACM and will be presented to the SIGGRAPH members for a vote in the summer election.

There will be in-depth communication and materials to come on this matter, but for now, I’d like to outline the three key changes we are proposing.

The biggest change is that all elected positions will become director positions rather than electing the President, Vice-President, and Treasurer in elections that are just for those roles as we do now. Once these changes take effect, the EC will select new officers from within the EC to serve one-year terms. The officers will be the Chair, Chair-Elect, Treasurer, and Treasurer-Elect. The Chair-Elect will become the Chair and the Treasurer-Elect will become the Treasurer the following year.

As some of you know, choosing to volunteer, particularly for these key leadership roles, is a huge time commitment. Many of us are at junctures in our careers where we may not be able to volunteer for one of these larger roles due to time constraints; this new structure within the EC would share the work more broadly across the directors of the EC and lessen the burden on the President. Our hope also is that adopting this new structure will open us up to a larger, more diverse pool of candidates who would consider taking on a leadership position within the EC.

We consulted with an expert in governance in nonprofits who advised us to assume this modernized structure. Internal elections are becoming standard practice for nonprofit, volunteer-run boards, as are one-year terms for the elected officers.

The second important change that the EC is proposing has to do with creating a structure that accurately reflects our diverse community and that will enable us to be more representative of our membership. Instead of being presented with a total of N+1 candidates for N positions as is specified in the current version of the Bylaws, voters will be presented with at least two candidates for each specific position.

For example, if three director positions are open in a given election, the nominating committee might select two (or more) candidates from industry to run for one of the open director positions, two from academia to run for the second position, and two from the education community to run for the third. This “bucketing” of the candidates into positions will allow the nominations committee to ensure that all three open director roles aren’t filled, for instance, with members who are from academia or that the EC doesn’t have only representation from North America. With this modification to the Bylaws, the nominating committee will be able to achieve increased diversity in skillset, area of expertise, and geography on the EC.

Lastly, the third major change to the Bylaws is that the EC would be allowed to appoint three voting members to its rank. Currently, the Chair of the Conference Advisory Group, for instance, serves in an ex officio, non-voting capacity. As we are all aware, the SIGGRAPH conference is our group’s marquis outward-facing program, and we feel it is important to have this individual in a voting position. This change will also allow the EC to increase representation and expertise from core constituencies as needed to complement the make-up of the elected EC.

The EC has been working on these modifications for the past two years, and what we hope to achieve is a more modern, efficient, flexible, and diverse volunteer-run operation. These Bylaw changes will allow us to be more representative of the ACM SIGGRAPH membership, and in turn, help us create a strategic direction and programs that will better benefit the entire community.

We will be providing additional information on this as we near the June 15 elections, and we urge all of you to read and review our modifications and to please cast your vote. We feel now is the time for a change to our organizational structure and believe that this change will enable the Executive Committee to better serve the forward-thinking organization that is ACM SIGGRAPH.

Please see a copy of the proposed ACM SIGGRAPH Bylaws here.

Jessica Hodgins

ACM SIGGRAPH Members,

The Executive Committee has recently established the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy to recognize individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of computer graphics and interactive techniques. In its inaugural year, the SIGGRAPH Academy will induct recipients of the Stephen A. Coons Award, the Computer Graphics Achievement Award, and the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art as its first class of members.

We are very excited to introduce the inaugural class but before we do so, here is a brief rundown on the SIGGRAPH Academy.

The SIGGRAPH Academy was set up to shine a light on those individuals—researchers, practitioners, technologists, artists, designers, and educators—whose work is influential and who are having a direct impact on the field as proven through the development of new research or innovations in computer graphics and interactive techniques. These nominees will be accomplished and active members of the ACM SIGGRAPH community.

Holly Rushmeier (Yale University), chair of the selection committee, says with the formation of the SIGGRAPH Academy, we are able to recognize more leaders in the field who are making significant contributions, and the ‘impact’ they are having is more broadly defined than it is in our current Awards program.

I’m excited about the Academy because it gives us an opportunity to spotlight more members whose work and accomplishments in the field are resonating, cutting edge, and have a wide reach. Academy members will receive an award and will be invited to the annual awards lunch at the SIGGRAPH conference.

Holly will be joined by five voting members on the selection committee, which we also plan to announce in August at SIGGRAPH. Each year, this selection committee will elect five to eight new members to the Academy. Nominations can be made by any member of the SIGGRAPH community and must be entered by January 31st of each year. For more details, visit our awards page.

Jessica Hodgins

SIGGRAPH members,

I’m starting a regular column as a way to keep everyone informed of news and updates from the SIGGRAPH Executive Committee. I’ll be updating you on key initiatives and priorities set by the Committee as well as providing information on a range of matters that I feel are worth sharing. If you have a topic idea or question you would like me to cover, please email me.

For my inaugural post, I’d like to spotlight a new award we’re offering this year, and for which we are currently accepting nominations. The ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Award has been established to recognize outstanding contributions to the practice and advancement of Computer Graphics and Techniques. With this award, we want to honor individuals who are influencing the SIGGRAPH community through practice rather than through research; the result of their contribution is significantly influencing or being used by other practitioners in our field.

The co-chairs of the selection committee for this new award are Mark Elendt, developer at SideFX, and Natalya Tatarchuk, graphics director at Unity Technologies. As Natalya has shared, “We are looking to recognize people whose contributions propelled the industry forward by the efforts of designing practical software and hardware systems that yielded significant impact on the industry, whether by enabling creation of content in a new way, or by sharing the learned lessons through the development of this practical solution.”

I’m thrilled that we have this new award in place in time for it to be presented at SIGGRAPH 2018. I am looking forward to paying tribute to someone whose work is having an immediate and practical impact on our SIGGRAPH community. The recipient of the inaugural Practitioner Award will receive a plaque, a $2000 honorarium, as well as travel and registration expenses for the North American SIGGRAPH conference, which will be held in Vancouver this summer.

To read about the award criteria and for further details, visit our awards page on the SIGGRAPH website.

Jessica Hodgins