As I prepared for the first Executive Committee (EC) meeting of the 2024-25 year, my first meeting as Chair, I found myself confronted by the breadth and scale of our activities as a Special Interest Group (SIG).
The overall organizational structure of the SIG is provided on our website. Standing committees are typically composed of a chair and volunteer committee members. Standing committees are grouped and each grouping has one or two EC directors as their liaison to the EC. The role of the liaison is to guide the standing committees on how to align their planned activities with the strategy set by the EC. Ad Hoc committees are typically new committees that are stood up in response to some need that was created by the EC overall strategy or as a result of an opportunity that was brought to the EC’s attention. Currently, we have three ad hoc committees: Design (led by Masa Inakage and Mona Kasra), Hybrid (led by Masa Inakage and Elizabeth Baron) and Volunteer Development (led by Mashhuda Glencross). At the end of the 3 year term, the EC may decide to renew an ad hoc committee, transition it to a standing committee or suspend it if the need has been fulfilled.
Our advisory groups oversee activities that are “standard” year to year. Their role is to ensure that the chair for the year is supported, that new programs are balanced with year-to-year continuity, and that decisions that need to be made on a multi-year time frame are made in a well-thought out way. The Conference Advisory Group (CAG), which oversees SIGGRAPH North America, and SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (SACAG), which oversees SIGGRAPH Asia, have somewhat of a special status in that these are the only two groups whose Chairs are appointed directors on the EC and have voting status. The Governance Advisory Board (GAB) also attends the EC meetings, but as a non-voting representative of the board. That leaves us with strategy groups. Strategy groups are created by the EC to help with big picture thinking. As an example, in the last few years, the Nurturing Communities strategy group advised the EC on the need for a Volunteer Development Committee and was instrumental in standing up this committee.
As I prepared for my first meeting, I counted 11 standing committees (+3 pending), 3 ad hoc committees, 6 advisory boards, 3 affinity groups and 1 strategy group. My mind boggled. At the very least, 23 individuals who were chairs of each of these units needed to interface with the EC. These individuals rotated in and out. When a chair stepped down, individual committee members had questions and concerns that needed to be addressed and a new chair had to be confirmed. Assigning liaisons itself is a complex optimization problem. We had new directors with their interests and expertise areas who did not necessarily have historical context. We had continuing directors who might wish to do the same thing as the previous year or change. Everyone was a volunteer working across time zones, day jobs and personal responsibilities. I found myself wondering, are we doing too much?
Though I was elected to the Executive Committee (EC) in 2022, I was kept busy by the specific activities that I was tasked with and the committees that I was liaison for. Now, I understand why there is a risk of “missing the forest for the trees”. It was only in early 2024, in the second half of my year as Chair-Elect, that I began to see how the interconnecting pieces came together and how the whole became greater than the sum of the parts.
In this essay, I hope to be able to illustrate the pieces, their interconnections and the role of the EC, for the members of our SIG. These different interconnecting pieces come together when the EC creates a strategic vision and direction for the organization. During the year 2023-24, the EC focused on reevaluating organizational efforts to ensure alignment with strategic objectives, consolidating some committee efforts to enhance efficiency and minimize redundancy, phasing out a few committees whose focus no longer aligned with strategic objectives, reassessing the budget planning process for greater transparency and effectiveness and revising the format and process for submitting annual committee reports.
Should the remaining advisory board chairs also attend EC meetings? I do not know but I am curious to hear perspectives on this. Certainly, communication between the various parts of the SIG is important, and yet, none of us wants more meetings on our calendars (I think!).
As I contemplate where our SIG is headed in the fast evolving technical and economic landscape, I am grateful for the passion and experience that members of the EC bring together toward guiding and overseeing the activities of SIGGRAPH.
This is unmanageable. Complex optimization problem. Volunteers.
You can pose a question: I am wondering, is this too much?
Eakta Jain