Issue
Article
Vol.29 No.2, April 1997
Article
Issue
Issue |
Article |
Vol.29 No.2, April 1997 |
Article |
Issue |
Mike Atwood, Chair (non-voting)
Clare-Marie Karat, Vice Chair for Finances
Jim Miller, Past Chair
Gary Perlman, Vice Chair for Publications
Barbee Teasley, Vice Chair for Communications (minutes)
Marian Williams, Vice Chair for Operations
Gene Lynch, Vice Chair for Conferences
Chairs' Appointees (1 vote for the Board as a whole)
Robin Jeffries, Member, Advisory Board
John Karat, Member, Advisory Board
Steven Pemberton, Editor-in-Chief, SIGCHI Bulletin
Diane Darrow, ACM
(These minutes were created on October 21, 1996, modified on October 30, 1996 and approved by a vote of 7-0-0 on December 7, 1996.)
The web version of the CHI 96 conference proceedings is now ready to be moved to the ACM web server. It will be accessible from both the CHI conference site and the ACM Publications site. Michael Tauber and Steven Guest are writing a report on their experience in creating the web version. They have already stated that the process took longer than expected.
ACM has begun updating the material in the web site. By October 31 of this year, they plan to be ready for secure transactions, which will allow site visitors to order publications.
Copies of CHI proceedings have been distributed to HCI professionals in soft-currencies countries. This project was undertaken by Jakob Nielsen.
The committee agreed that the new convention for SIGCHI email names on the ACM server will be chi-x (e.g., chi-chair or chi-smith). The advantage of this approach is that all SIGCHI-related addresses will group together when an entire list of addresses is printed, and because guessing at syntax of addresses based on positions would be facilitated.
[Note: The email conventions as actually implemented in December, 1996 actually use the format "name@acm.org" and "chi-position-name@acm.org"]
The CHI Conference videos have now been transferred to SIGCHI. Perlman has been seeking a volunteer to oversee the minor editing of the videos that is needed. Local SIG chapters were asked if they were interested in having a set of videos for their libraries. While some chapters are interested, they do not have processes in place to make good use of the videos. Richard Anderson, Adjunct Chair for Local SIGs, will be asked to come up with a model plan for setting up a library and promoting its use.
Perlman proposed that choosing the bonus proceedings for 1997 now might have several advantages. He also provided a list of candidate proceedings. Advantages include savings for both SIGCHI and the conference publishing the proceedings. and possible increased submissions due to wider distribution of the proceedings. Darrow will provide the EC with additional comparative cost information and a decision will be made at the next EC meeting.
The HCI bibliography which is currently maintained by Perlman on a site at Ohio State University must be moved. C. Karat moved (Jeffries seconded) that the EC create an action plan to insure that SIGCHI takes responsibility for the site, including publishing on the ACM server, and ongoing maintenance of the content. The vote was unanimous (7-0-0). A plan for this action will be presented at the December meeting of the EEC. The time, resources and policies for the project need to be estimated.
The idea of having a short, timely publication on the SIGCHI web site was discussed. It could be quick start-up and low maintenance, or it could be more formal. The primary draw back is finding a volunteer editor. Consensus was that there are currently too many good projects that are languishing for lack of champions to bring on new projects at this time.
ACM has approved the appointment of a full-time professional to take on conference management for SIGCHI. A half-time position to support the administration of electronic communications was also approved. A proposal to hire a membership director has not been approved yet.
The next meeting of the EC will be via conference call on October 30, 1996, at 11:30 EDT, 15:30 UTC. The November conference call meeting will be held on November 20. The December meeting will be held in New York, beginning the morning of December 7 and ending at 3 p.m. on Monday, December 9.
Mike Atwood, Chair (non-voting)
Guy Boy, Co-Chair
Clare-Marie Karat, Vice Chair for Finances
Gary Perlman, Vice Chair for Publications
Barbee Teasley, Vice Chair for Communications (minutes)
Marian Williams, Vice Chair for Operations
Chairs' Appointees (1 vote for the Board as a whole)
Robin Jeffries, Member, Advisory Board
John Karat, Member, Advisory Board
Steven Pemberton, Editor-in-Chief, SIGCHI Bulletin
Rosemary Wick Stevens, Adjunct Chair, Publicity
(These minutes were created on November 5, 1996, modified and approved by a vote of 7-0-0 on December 7, 1996.)
Perlman has not been able to find a volunteer willing to oversee editing of the 1990-1994 CHI videos. The alternative is to hire someone with the necessary knowledge and equipment. Perlman moved that SIGCHI allocate up to $3000 for the editing of the CHI videos, as necessary. C. Karat seconded. The motion passed unanimously, 6-0-0. Perlman will work through ACM channels to manage the project.
A part-time person is being hired by ACM to take on responsibilities associated with maintaining the ACM web site and email. A disk crash at ACM has been dealt with. The incident showed that the restoration and backup procedures currently in place are less than optimal. These processes will be revamped so that future problems can be dealt with more easily. Perlman has added a News Box to the SIGCHI web site home page. The box contains timely news items, and will be frequently updated to keep the contents fresh. The contents of the ACM Publications web site has been updated, as per the committee's request. Perlman has been seeking a replacement for Scott Robertson as Information Director and has several possibilities.
C. Karat reminded the group that budget requests for 1997 fiscal year are due to her by November 20.
Jeffries has received another request for access to a CHI database of information about reviewers. She was asked to check with Lynch, Vice Chair for Conferences, to see if the database belongs to the conference or to the Executive Committee. If it belongs to the conference, then they will be asked to formulate a policy to handle this request and other similar requests.
The next meeting of the EC will be via conference call on November 20, 1996, at 11:30 EDT, 15:30 UTC. The December meeting will be held in New York, beginning the morning of December 7 and ending at 3 p.m. on Monday, December 9.
Mike Atwood, Chair (non-voting, minutes)
Guy Boy, Vice Chair
Clare-Marie Karat, Vice Chair for Finance
Jim Miller, Past Chair
Gary Perlman
Marian Williams
Chairs' Appointees (1 vote for the Board as a whole)
Robin Jeffries
John Karat
(These minutes were submitted on December 3, 1996 and approved by a vote of 7-0-0 on 12/7/96.)
Perlman is looking for a volunteer to take on the position of email manager, but has not yet found one.
The educators' mailing list (currently educators.chi@xerox.com) will be moved to chi-educators@acm.org under listserv on December 1, 1996. Gary has sent notice of the move to announcements.chi@xerox.com announcing that interested people should re-subscribe or subscribe. Gary will also create a chi-bibliographic@acm.org list for people interested in bibliographic data bases.
All lists will be open for subscription, posting, and review. The only membership that the L-Soft listserv knows about is list membership, so anyone on the internet can review a public list. A private list is reviewable only by its members and a list that is reviewer=owner can only be reviewed by its owner(s). People will be periodically informed about how to conceal their identity from others reviewing the list.
It may not be possible to simply convert the Xerox lists to the ACM listserv because the Xerox list subscriptions were administered manually, while the ACM listserv administers subscriptions directly with subscribers, using the email address on file as the address from which all requests must come. To override this convention, a list owner can manually add or delete subscriptions. So, if user@host on list.chi@xerox.com is added to the chi-list@acm.org as
add chi-list user@host Firstname Lastname
then any changes by user would have to made from host. The problem is that that host might be a forwarding address, such as acm.org, so any changes would have to made by a list owner. For large lists, this could mean hundreds of change requests. The best solution might be to (1) provide clear instructions, (2) provide advance notice, (3) require that people subscribe to the new lists during an interim period, and (4) on some fixed date point list.chi@xerox.com to chi-list@acm.org. ACM now provides email forwarding as a benefit of membership and an on-line member directory which people can search to find member email addresses. The service is in beta test at: http://www.acm.org/account/
The SIGDOC conference proceedings will be included with the 1997 CHI Plus package. Vote: 6-0-0. The proceedings are currently produced outside of ACM. Darrow will investigate printing the copies for CHI Plus distribution within ACM.
Keith Instone is appointed as SIGCHI's Information Director. He has already started to make improvements to our web site. His short-term goal is to make more tools available to those who develop pages for the SIGCHI web site. His long-term goals are (1) to decide what new major features (e.g., a membership directory) to add next and (2) to implement a user-centered, collaborative redesign of the SIGCHI Web site and to document this process for others to learn from.
Atwood and Darrow met with Lillian Israel and members of her staff to discuss additional ways that ACM's Member Services Department could support SIGCHI. They selected first-year member retention as the issue to tackle first. Jointly, a program was defined to send letters to members at the 9-, 10-, and 12-month mark in the subscription period outlining the benefits of SIGCHI membership and including an exit survey with the 10 month letter. Lapsed members will be called at the 13th and 14th month and asked either to re-subscribe or complete an exit survey during that call. Israel will determine the additional cost to SIGCHI of this program and send it to Atwood prior to the December EC meeting.
Atwood is on a task force chartered by the SIG Board to assess the impact of having societies within ACM. A face-to-face meeting is planned for January 1112, 1997. Teleconferences are expected to occur prior to this meeting. Atwood will provide updates on these activities at the monthly meetings. An overview of the society issue appears in the Chairs' Column in the January, 1997 Bulletin.
C. Karat reviewed preliminary budget proposals. Descriptions of completed proposals will be included in the minutes of the December meeting.
Miller, acting as chair of the nominations committee, announced that the slate for the next election will be announced in early December.
Assigning responsibility to monitor the various mailing lists to EC positions will be discussed at the December meeting.
Issue |
Article |
Vol.29 No.2, April 1997 |
Article |
Issue |