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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998
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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998 |
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Chair, Mike Atwood
Vice-chair for Communications, Cathleen Wharton (minutes)
Vice-chair for Conferences, Gerrit van der Veer
Vice-chair for Finance, Jean Scholtz
Vice-chair for Operations, Bob Mack
Vice-chair for Publications, Dan Olsen, Jr.
Advisory Board (1 vote) John Karat, Allison Druin, Richard Anderson
ACM SIGCHI Program Director, David Riederman
SIGCHI Adjunct-chair for Public Relations, Rosemary Wick Stevens
SIGCHI Information Director, Keith Instone
(These minutes were created on April 1, 1998, and approved by a vote of 6-0-1 on June 20, 1998.)
Cathleen Wharton reported that all minutes to date are complete but final voting by the EC still needs to take place on the December and February minutes. The January minutes as well as all other past minutes have already been approved.
Jean Scholtz presented the CHI budget report. These are the values as of February 1, 1998:
| Actual | Full Year | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 1,914,000 | 2,262,000 |
| Expenses | 1,812,000 | 2,401,000 |
| Categories | Actual | Allocated |
|---|---|---|
| EC | 49,000 | |
| CMC | 78,000 | 133,000 |
| Bulletin | 28,000 | |
| CHI+ | 20,000 | |
| Local SIGs | 250 | |
| Discretionary | 1,300 | 30,000 |
| CHI Program D. | 3,000 |
No financial activity has been recorded against the following budget categories:
Also, in discussing the budget there was a question as to when the SIGCHI FY99 Budget would become official. David Riederman took this as his action item and will get back with the SIGCHI EC with more information from ACM.
The SIGCHI EC talked more about the award that it will be giving to Doug Engelbart at CHI 98 and about what items they should discuss further at the face-to-face meetings in April and August. As part of today's discussion Cathleen Wharton reviewed the February minutes and the three core decisions made on February 23, 1998:
At the April meeting we will gather additional award ideas and discuss all of these in depth at the Summer face-to-face meeting.
Mike Atwood and David Riederman went over the list of core activities that SIGCHI EC members should participate in, if possible, at CHI 98. There are six major activities:
Also, for the Newcomers' Orientation, Mike and David will finalize the agenda for this event. Today, Richard Anderson has requested some time to talk about Local SIGs, and Allison Druin would like to spend some time talking about mentoring and volunteerism. Mike and David will determine how to best incorporate these additional requests into the current agenda.
David Riederman and Bob Mack went over the Webmaster RFP status. It was noted that four proposals were received and that all were very good. The four proposals received came from the Netherlands, California, Chicago, and Michigan.
Although all of the proposals are fine, it was noted that all proposals exceed the amount originally budgeted by the EC for our electronic infrastructure. (The SIGCHI EC originally budgeted $20K at the December 1997 face-to-face meeting.) For example, the amount of one of the proposals is $60K and another is $100K.
This leaves the SIGCHI EC with a question as to whether the amount originally budgeted is sufficient for doing all of the needed conference and non-conference work. It also raises the question of whether the EC is interested in keeping the status quo or whether it is important to add new features and functionality regularly. Again, this points to our need to know the number of server hits and how useful the site currently is to the membership.
Since many more issues have surfaced around our electronic infrastructure needs, the EC decided to wait until the April face-to-face meeting to discuss these concerns in more detail.
Steven Pemberton was not able to join the call today so we do not have the latest update about the search for a SIGCHI Bulletin Editor. Mike Atwood will follow up with Steven to get more information about the status of the search.
Jim Miller has raised the idea of breaking up the current CHI+ package. During 1996, the SIGCHI EC also raised this idea for discussion. At that time, the thought was that by breaking up the package the SIGCHI membership could then make use of an "a la carte" model that would allow SIGCHI members to pre-order conference proceedings and other conference and society products as part of their annual membership renewal. This would let members get the products they need, and do away with the competition among small conferences for inclusion in the "extra proceedings" slot of the current CHI Plus package.
Following up on this idea, Dan Olsen has sought additional feedback. He has asked a few SIGCHI members about their thoughts on the idea of breaking up the currently defined CHI+ package. In gathering this feedback the following three discussion items, among others, have been raised:
Based on this feedback, Dan suggested that the SIGCHI EC think about renaming the current package while also changing it into a bundled set of flagship proceedings to upgrade its stature. This solution would also allow the SIGCHI EC to better address how to incorporate new conferences and remove older ones, which can be problematic with biannual conferences (e.g., CSCW).
Dan would like to get more feedback on this idea from the general membership at CHI 98. This will help the EC better understand the membership's needs and concerns. Dan will discuss these ideas at SIGCHI's Annual Business Meeting to be held at CHI 98.
Finally, it was noted that the SIGCHI EC will need to discuss this topic more thoroughly at the Summer face-to-face meeting, after the EC can gather more feedback from the membership. The SICGHI EC is responsible for the selection of the contents of the CHI+ package.
Allison Druin and Jean Scholtz discussed their ideas for how to best sign up future SIGCHI volunteers at CHI 98. Besides having a sign-up sheet at the SIGCHI Booth they would like to learn of other opportunities for signing people up on the spot. If anyone of the EC comes up with additional ideas they should share them with both Jean and Allison.
Jean and Allison are looking for new methods for getting volunteers because the Web site has had no hits, i.e., the Web site has not yielded any volunteer sign-ups to date. To help get volunteers, Jean has prepared an e-mail with a request for volunteers and will post it to CHI-Announcements. Jean and David Riederman will also get together to prepare a mechanism for signing up for volunteers at CHI 98.
Mike Atwood is now collecting a list a topics for the Summer face-to-face meeting in Italy. To date the following items have been placed on this list or were added to the list today:
Mike will continue to gather ideas and add them to the list during our next few meetings.
Richard Anderson gave a brief summary of the Bootstrap Alliance Exchange that Doug Engelbart is leading. The focus of this Alliance is to create Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) and Meta-Networked Improvement Communities (Meta-NICs) around the world. One purpose of these NICs is to build a solid (electronic) infrastructure for each NIC and to establish meaningful processes by which the NIC can improve itself and better work with other NICs over time. A Meta-NIC is effectively a network of NICs.
There is a correspondence between NICs and Local SIGs and between a Meta-NIC and what Richard has been doing to make Local SIGs successful. Similarly, a SIG in general can be thought of as a NIC -- a group that is dedicated to improving itself and its relationships with other groups over time.
The Alliance did develop and submit an NSF proposal to help fund this effort. However, it was not possible for ACM or ACM SIGCHI to meet the NSF proposal deadlines for this year. There are plans to submit a formal proposal next year.
Several questions were raised today that need to be discussed further. For example, can SIGCHI legally participate in these activities? There are strict rules about what SIGCHI can or cannot do with the U.S. Government as an ACM-sponsored group. It could also be that this would need to be an ACM-sponsored activity rather than a SIGCHI-one. All of these concerns would need to be investigated more in the future.
Another question that was raised was whether SIGCHI would be placed in a situation where it would compete with its members for the same research dollars. This is not a position that the SIGCHI EC would like to be in. It also raises the question of whether private donations or federal funds should be used to support the effort in the long-term.
Besides Richard Anderson, Clare-Marie Karat, and Mike Atwood (on behalf of SIGCHI) being involved with the Alliance to date, other organizations and companies have also been involved. Some of these groups include the Kellogg Foundation, Netscape, Fuji Xerox, Sun, SRI, HP, and Stanford.
A final question that came up in today's discussion was the identification of who should champion this effort from the SIGCHI EC going forward? Richard added his thoughts that the Local SIGs chair might be the right person.
The SIGCHI EC decided to talk more about this effort during the next EC meeting, to be held immediately after CHI 98. Richard Anderson will talk with Doug Engelbart prior to the meeting and ask him to attend the EC meeting to talk more about his ideas and the larger efforts underway.
AAAI has expressed an interest in trying out a program such as CHIkids at AAAI 99. Jim Hendler, one of the AAAI 99 Co-chairs has expressed his interest in this program. Allison Druin reported that they anticipate it being a pilot program, that is small in size (about 1/2) compared to the normal CHIkids program. This opportunity would also provide promotion of CHI. The AAAI 99 conference will be held in during July in Orlando, Florida. Allison will keep the SIGCHI EC informed of any developments associated with the AAAI 99 program.
Mike Atwood gave a brief update about the Society Status issue. The next step is to have all ACM members vote on the proposed changes to the ACM Bylaws and Constitution sometime this Spring. Thus, the first step is to see if members want to change the institution. The results of the election will help to identify the next steps to be taken. Hence, SIGCHI's transition to a Society will be a staged approach.
Mike asked the EC what we can do to rally the vote? In his chair's column he has written a spirited rally. There was also talk about posting something to CHI-Announcements, perhaps through a series of announcements over time by Mike, and to discuss this issue in more depth at the Annual Business Meeting at CHI 98.
The next face-to-face meeting of the SIGCHI EC will be at CHI 98. The EC will meet all day Friday, following the conference, through 3:00PM on Saturday. The SIGCHI EC's next teleconference call will be Monday, June 1, 1998. Monday May 25th is Memorial Day in the United States and as a consequence the call is moved to one week later.
(These minutes were created on April 30, 1998, and approved by a vote of 7-0-0 on 20 June 1998.)
Mike Atwood, SIGCHI Chair, welcomed the SIGCHI community and introduced all of the SIGCHI officers.
The first order of business was to give out two SIGCHI Distinguished Service Awards. The first went to Steven Pemberton for his hard work on the SIGCHI Bulletin and his dedication to the CHI community overall. The second award went to Keith Instone for his work on the SIGCHI Web site and the various conference Web sites through the years.
Next, Mike Atwood gave an overview of the Society issue that has been discussed and worked on over the past couple of years. He encouraged the membership to vote on this issue in the way that they felt was appropriate for themselves, but to vote nonetheless.
Jean Scholtz, Vice-chair Finance, gave the latest budget report for SIGCHI (the totals through February). She also reviewed the key budget items for FY 99.
Dan Olsen, Vice-chair Publications, gave a brief overview of some of the ideas that have been discussed recently about splitting up the CHI+ package. (More details about these ideas can be found in the March and April minutes of the SIGCHI EC meetings.) The discussion with the audience was fruitful, yielding both support and the expression of some important questions.
Some of the questions that were raised included:
Additional benefits cited included:
Dan concluded the discussion by thanking the community for its feedback.
Next, Steven Pemberton, SIGCHI Bulletin Editor in Chief and the new Editor of interactions, discussed the projects that he has been working on recently.
He noted that the next edition of the SIGCHI Bulletin will be a special issue and that it will be out soon. Also, he discussed the notion of making interactions the flagship publication of SIGCHI, particularly if SIGCHI achieves Society status in the future. interactions would need to be augmented with items such as a SIGCHI Chair's column to make it more of a membership vehicle in addition to its stature as an ACM publication.
If this publication change were to happen then it has also been suggested that the SIGCHI Bulletin become a Web-based publication only. Some reluctance was expressed by members in the audience about having materials only accessible via the Web since not everyone, particularly in other countries, has access to the Web. Steven also noted that there may be slightly increased fees since interactions is currently only a fee-based publication and not part of the basic membership package.
Gerrit van der Veer, Vice-chair Conferences, gave a brief overview of the Conference Management Committee. He first listed the various members of their committee and their areas of responsibility:
Next, Gerrit reviewed the mission of the group. For the SIGCHI community the mission is to ensure conference consistency, to have well-focussed conferences, to improve the possibility of participation, to survey the constituency and get regular feedback, and to maintain and develop conferences and workshops. The mission of this committee as it pertains to the conference organization is to develop and maintain the corporate history, to develop policies so that we are not reinventing work, to provide professional support, and to provide training and assist with budget management as needed.
There are various policies being developed: a video policy, a standard "core CHI conference" policy, and a cooperating societies policy. There is also work underway to formalize the CMC's Charter.
The locations of the next three CHI conferences have been selected, as have the co-chairs for the next two conferences. These choices follow:
Austin Henderson, member of the Conference Management Committee, also spent a few minutes reviewing some of the smaller conferences that will be coming up. A partial list of those conferences follows.
During 1998
During 1999
During 1998
During 1999: INTERACT
Austin also mentioned some of the ideas that are under consideration by the group to better support small conference needs. These ideas include: putting materials on a Web site, having smaller conference organizers come together and meet at CHI to develop their budgets with the help of experienced CHI people, TRMF training, establishing a central office contact (e.g., the CHI office), assisting with corporate sponsorship and online registration needs.
Other concerns that have been identified and that the committee is looking into include: the hiring and use of contractors vs. the role of volunteers, the rising costs of conferences is making it marginal whether people can afford to attend, learnings from previous conferences are not always available by the time the necessary planning and work needs to be done for the next conference, and changing the model of the conferences (e.g., more days) to better accommodate growth opportunities for new and seasoned attendees.
Bob Mack, Vice-chair Operations, gave a brief overview of the infrastructure work that is in progress. He reviewed the status of the RFPs, the need to support both volunteer and professional services, and the role of a Volunteer Information Director as a liaison between the two. More details about the work that Bob is undertaking can be found in the March and April minutes of the SIGCHI EC.
The SIGCHI Advisory Board consists of Allison Druin, John Karat, and Richard Anderson. Guy Boy, SIGCHI Vice- chair, stood in for John Karat during this segment of the presentation.
In brief Allison indicated that she is working on two programs. One is to help educate our members more about HCI and the other is her focus on Domain Task Forces.
Guy noted that the International Advisory Task Force completed its work during this past year and created a report with key recommendations for best supporting the international CHI community. A copy of this report can be picked up at the SIGCHI booth.
Richard Anderson highlighted his work on Local SIGs and mentioned the multitude of Local SIGs ribbons at CHI 98 in addition to the Local SIGs Workshop held on Monday for Local SIGs leaders.
Mike then officially closed the meeting.
Secretary's note: although not all programs and efforts being undertaken by the SIGCHI EC were discussed during the Business Meeting, those covered provided a good overview of the key activities underway. Other activities underway include the New Member Mentoring Program and the Membership Outreach Task Force. The SIGCHI community is encouraged to read the minutes of the SIGCHI EC meetings as currently published in the SIGCHI Bulletin.
Minutes by Cathleen Wharton, Vice-chair Communications.
Chair (non-voting), Mike Atwood
Past Chair, Jim Miller
Executive Vice-chair, Guy Boy
Vice-chair for Communications, Cathleen Wharton (minutes)
Vice-chair for Conferences, Gerrit van der Veer
Vice-chair for Finance, Jean Scholtz
Vice-chair for Operations, Bob Mack
Vice-chair for Publications, Dan Olsen, Jr.
Advisory Board (1 vote) John Karat, Allison Druin, Richard Anderson
SIGCHI Bulletin Editor-in-Chief, Steven Pemberton
ACM SIGCHI Program Director, David Riederman
SIGCHI Adjunct-chair for Public Relations, Rosemary Wick Stevens
SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for Organizational Design, Clare-Marie Karat
SIGCHI Information Director, Keith Instone
Austin Henderson
Michael Tauber
Doug Engelbart, Bootstrap Alliance
Nancy Frishberg, Bootstrap Alliance
Arnie Lund, CHI 98 Co-chair
These minutes were created on April 30, 1998, and approved by a vote of 7-0-0 on 20 June 1998.)
On Monday, April 20th at CHI 98, leaders from 28 Local SIGs, representing 11 different countries, participated in a Local SIGs Workshop. The workshop was organized by Richard Anderson from SIGCHI and Lillian Israel from ACM. The purpose of this workshop is to help Local SIG leaders meet and learn from each other so that they can better capitalize on their synergies. There are many differences in the services that each Local SIG provides, in their histories, and in their goals; these differences present both challenges and opportunities to the Local SIGs
At this workshop the Local SIGs considered proposals for increasing the amount and type of support from ACM, SIGCHI, and other Local SIGs. There was a strong desire for linking Local SIG membership to SIGCHI membership. Unfortunately, however, we cannot track the total number of members in local SIGs because not all Local SIGs keep official membership records. Richard indicated that additional training was sought by those attending the workshop and that this workshop was positively received. Richard is also preparing a handout with the names of those who attended as well as a summary of the key issues identified by the Local SIGs for the EC. Richard will share this document with the EC when it is complete.
Local SIGs will be discussed more fully at the summer meeting in Rome. For example, at that meeting we will discuss in more detail issues of viability and the role that SIGCHI can play in disseminating annual SIG reports, lessons learned, as well how SIGCHI can best support its Local SIGs in an ongoing basis.
Austin Henderson made a request for SIGCHI to be a Policy '98 conference sponsor. He suggested a sponsorship rate of $5000. Other organizations will be providing larger donations. Austin thinks that this would be a good activity for SIGCHI now and in the future.
Steven Pemberton raised the question whether the Policy '98 conference would only have ramifications for the USA? Austin remarked that policy issues for SIGCHI need to be addressed at the international level so that all members will benefit.
A vote was taken to have SIGCHI sponsor the Policy '98 conference at a rate of $5000. Gerrit van der Veer made the motion and Guy Boy seconded the motion. The motion passed 8-0-0. In the future SIGCHI would like to look at how to co-sponsor this conference.
Austin would also like to have his transportation and hotel paid for. The fees for conference registration have already been covered. Mike Atwood noted that these expenses will be covered using the SIGCHI Chair's discretionary fund.
Doug Engelbart addressed the SIGCHI EC with his ideas and concerns around the evolution of societies and communities.
The Bootstrap Alliance was started about 1 year ago. Doug's goal for this Alliance is to have every scientific community be a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) -- to be the leaders at the forefront of the movement. In particular, Doug is interested in having SIGCHI do this and would like to have SIGCHI commit to making a plan for how it might be involved in the Alliance going forward. After this initial step of making a plan he would like SIGCHI to make a formal commitment, at a later date, to be an NIC partner in the Bootstrap Alliance.
The goal of the Bootstrap Alliance is to boost the collective knowledge of these communities so that they can continually improve. A key objective of a NIC is to have its "collective intelligence" be centered around its Dynamic Knowledge Repository (DKR) which consists of the following three core components:
When improvements are made to the infrastructure of communities, the communities are said to be augmented networked improvement communities.
For this goal to be met Doug believes it is essential that everyone participate. There needs to interoperability within and across NICs, a meaningful collection and capture of knowledge, and adequate tools to support the effort.
Doug thinks that SIGCHI is an excellent candidate for being a NIC given its focus on HCI, which is an important piece of the puzzle. Many SIGCHI programs could also benefit from SIGCHI's involvement in the Alliance.
Doug and the Bootstrap Alliance will seek NSF support through a proposal for $1 million/year for 3 years. Additionally, Doug will seek other forms of support from organizations and companies. From the SIGCHI community, Doug is looking for us to come up with a plan on how we would like to participate in this Alliance, even if this is only a letter of support initially. He needs this letter of support by May 8, 1998.
During this weekend the SIGCHI EC will discuss their next steps. Richard Anderson will be the temporary champion and help the EC focus on the nature of the plan along with what is needed to develop a SIGCHI letter of support by next week.
Jean Scholtz presented the FY 99 Standards Budget Proposal from Harry Blanchard, the SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for Standards. The proposal is for $5000 that is comprised of room rental and AV costs in addition to other potential costs. This budget proposal had $3000 is definite expenses and $2,000 in potential expenses.
Dan Olsen made a motion to approve the Standards proposal, but only for the $3,000 total. The motion was seconded by Jim Miller. The SIGCHI EC voted on the proposal and it passed 8-0-0.
There was much discussion about whether these standards meetings are open to the CHI general membership and how the SIGCHI EC can help the general membership to be more involved, as possible.
Several ideas were presented. First, it was noted that Harry should continue to write the Standards column for the SIGCHI Bulletin. The SIGCHI EC would also like to have Harry hold a formal SIG each year for presentation of a summary of the standards meeting and also have Harry help the CHI membership better participate in these meetings, as appropriate. Mike Atwood will take these ideas back to Harry as appropriate.
Bob Mack and Keith Instone reviewed the RFP responses received for the SIGCHI Information Infrastructure work that we will need to have done over the next year. Bob reviewed the approximate costs for the conference Web site (and corresponding e-mail listservs) and the SIGCHI Web site (and corresponding e-mail listservs). Four contractors submitted proposals for consideration. (Note that Rosemary Wick Stevens and Steven Pemberton left the meeting for this segment of the meeting.)
The dollar amounts for each of the proposals submitted along with the small budget originally allocated to this project in December, 1997 meant that the SIGCHI EC needed to discuss in depth and prioritize both our immediate needs and longer-term needs. Note that the cost estimates do not include any volunteer maintained pages, the online SIGCHI Bulletin, etc.
To organize the discussion three straw proposals for the redesign of the SIGCHI Web Site were outlined:
Although SIGCHI EC member views were mixed, the last item was accepted as the approach at this time.
The next step in this discussion was to determine what work was needed and whether the CMC or conference should pay for work related to their needs.
It was assumed that the CMC or conference should pay for the work for one of two options: (1) extensions to the conference Web site only, or (2) the entire conference Web site including any needed extensions.
It was decided that the entire conference Web site should be covered by the conference with the return back from the conference going back into the CMC budget. The CMC should manage the contractor for the Web site work, but not the work needed on the conference Web site. The conference team would be responsible for the content of the conference Web site, etc. but the CMC would maintain the contractor relationship.
After separating out the type and scope of the work and associated costs of the CHI conference Web site from the SIGCHI general Web site, the SIGCHI EC decided that the work for both of these efforts needs to be estimated and then rebid on. The rebid will be for a subset of the current contractors under consideration. The list of contractors has been narrowed to two at this point and SIGCHI will now go back and ask for a rebid from these two contractors based on the narrowed scope of criteria. Additionally, the work to be done by a Volunteer Information Director and others needs to be formalized. David Riederman, on behalf of SIGCHI, will thank the two contractors who did not make it to the next round.
It was also decided that we did not need to plan for the FY 00 budget today.
Dan Olsen brought up the issue of having the amount returned by conferences to officially cover all CMC costs. Currently we have an 8% return. The SIGCHI EC wanted more information about past returns to better understand whether this could be accomplished. As a result of this discussion, David Riederman and Jean Scholtz agreed to gather the past 5 years of conference costs and budget returns to get more information. Using this data, David and Jean will determine (1) the cost per member, (2) the costs of contractors to help offset volunteer time, and (3) correlate the actual conference costs and CMC budgets. They will do this in preparation for the summer face-to-face meeting.
David Riederman informed us that Borysa Struk will be leaving Paul Henning's organization to pursue other activities. Borysa put in endless hours of work at the CHI conferences over the past few years and will be greatly missed. A motion was made by Steven Pemberton and seconded by Allison Druin to thank Borysa for all of her hard work during this time. The motion was approved by acclamation. David will prepare a thank you letter for Borysa on behalf of the SIGCHI EC.
The SIGCHI EC had a round table discussion about their reflections and lessons learned at CHI 98. Some EC members raised questions, while some made statements. Below is a list of the key concerns raised. Note: items are not listed in any particular order.
The CHI 98 Co-chairs met with the SIGCHI EC to give their readout of CHI 98. There were 10 key items that were covered.
Arnie Lund and Clare-Marie first discussed their findings around the Application Domain approach to the conference. They noted that it helped to bring people from related fields to our conference. They also noted that this approach provided opportunities for added avenues for publicity which is great.
To best support those who do not traditionally attend our conference, however, a few items need to be refined. First, we need to better accommodate the payment of non-members from these application domains. Second, we need to establish even more standards for reviewing papers to make sure that all papers are uniformly reviewed since people from these different areas are accustomed to different submission and review processes. Additionally, the mentoring process needs to be larger for domains outside of our area due to different expectations. Intellectual property concerns also filter into this discussion.
They then raised the issue of how do we best keep in contact with these new people on an ongoing basis.
The reviews and reviewer databases used this year allowed for better access to the community of reviewers and an easier assignment of reviewers to the various papers (e.g., to have both junior and senior reviews). It also simplified and sped up the notification process of reviewers (and the hierarchy of people in the review process). The system also provided easy access to the database to verify information and answer questions concerning reviews.
One challenge was how to best keep the database up-to-date with the latest contact information from our mobile members. Some leverage was gained from people using their SIGCHI e-mail aliases, but this was not true for all.
Through the hard work of Gerrit van der Veer, Paul Henning, and David Riederman, the management structure for CHI 98 worked well. Arnie and Clare-Marie had easy access to key team members (volunteer and professional staff) which allowed them to have a quick turn around on important decisions.
Also, Clare-Marie and Arnie found that having the chairs take only the roles of conference and technical chairs made the management of the conference more enjoyable and also allowed those expert in the operations area to do their thing in their own quality way. Hence, the structure allowed people to concentrate on activities in their own area of expertise.
By allowing the ACM (in the person of Darin Ramdin and John De Lorenzo) to build the conference budget, it helped the conference chairs to make the appropriate decisions in a timely manner. Darin and John could leverage data from the past conference records to help support decisions. This approach also allowed Arnie and Clare-Marie to phase-in wish list items as budget updates were known.
Use of the online registration process helped Arnie and Clare-Marie to get more accurate and timely information. By having online registration it allowed for quick access to the latest registration data (numbers and profit). Over 80% of the registrations were made via the Web! (This was the second year of Web-based registrations. Last year was around 40%.)
The only problem was that with registration now being on the Web, people tended to wait until the last minute to register which meant many decisions could not be made until very late. We need to look for ways to induce people to register earlier or else move the dates appropriately to get everything done at the latest time possible. This also means looking at how all dates coincide.
It was noted that CHIkids should also be added to the online registration process in the future. CHIkids was well attended this year, once again.
In the past, CHI sponsorship was done on a volunteer basis. This year there was the use of a paid professional. Carol Klyver was the principle fund-raiser this year and she exceeded her target. Carol received a monthly salary and a percentage of the sponsorship and in-kind contributions to CHI 98. Last year the total amount raised by volunteers was around $160K which included some in-kind donations. Carol surpassed that total and was able to raise around $210K plus some in-kind donations. She also added new sponsors this year. Although in years past fund-raising for CHIkids was handled by the volunteer in this same position, this year CHIkids sponsorship was covered by the CHIkids group only. The grand prizes for this year were also donated.
Some difficulties were encountered with the Student Volunteer program this year. Although 150 student volunteers were budgeted for, only 118 showed up to the conference. Originally there was a waiting list of 600 student volunteers, but students from the local area were not as plentiful and so that was not a resource that we could draw on. The true needs of the conference were about 130 student volunteers. A Web site was used this year to let students know of their assignments, etc. There was also a brief discussion about how we might be able to get students to "put skin into the game" (e.g., put in a refundable $50 and you get a value of $750) so that we don't have a shortfall of volunteers in the future.
Clare Marie and Arnie also gave their tentative financial readout. The revenue for CHI 98 was $2,165,000 the highest ever. Expenses were $1,671,000. Beyond the return back to the ACM and the standard requirement of an 8% return back to SIGCHI, there was a surplus of $134,000 beyond the required commitment. These financials were obtained through the careful management and use of a phased cutbacks and a phased wish list.
In total there were 2354 conference attendees including staff, VIPs, and the press. A total of 3910 tutorial units were sold. 152 on-site registrations were processed but only 54 were budgeted for. The large number of on-site registrations was due in part to the lead article in the LA Times. Many people from the LA area attended the conference that are not generally part of our community.
Arnie and Clare-Marie closed their readout with a presentation to the SIGCHI EC with a proposal to have $18,000 removed from the $134,000 surplus to set up an endowment. This endowment would be used to purchase a gold "superbowl-type" ring that would be given to all past and future CHI conference chairs for their hard work and dedication to the SIGCHI community. The SIGCHI EC deferred any decision on this proposal until the summer face-to-face meeting in Rome, Italy, where the type of awards and processes for giving these SIGCHI awards has already been slated as a discussion topic.
The SIGCHI EC broke up into four different working groups where they focussed on a small set of hot topics. The four working groups were:
The reports of these working groups follow.
Richard Anderson and Allison Druin reviewed the ideas that the Bootstrap Letter working group captured. First, he listed some of the reasons why SIGCHI is a good application domain for this effort:
At least five champions will get this process going at the SIGCHI level, and a subset of these will attend at least 2 quarterly Bootstrap Alliance exchanges. To undertake the necessary work, it is estimated that these champions will need $7,500 to cover travel, Bootstrap Alliance registration fees, Web support, etc. The long-term funding of this activity needs to be further analyzed and discussed by the EC. In the meantime these costs will be covered by the SIGCHI Chair's Discretionary Fund.
The goal of the work for the next few months would be to develop a "blueprint" for the future -- a plan to encompass the initiatives that we would need to undertake. This blueprint is due by December and a final plan is needed by CHI 99. This plan would be discussed with SIGCHI members further at CHI 99 and via the Web.
Our immediate step is to prepare a letter on behalf of SIGCHI that we can give to Doug Engelbart to express our interest in this effort. Doug's deadline for getting his information to the NSF is May 13th. Since SIGCHI is an application domain for Doug our letter would not be in any form of competition with our membership. A motion was made to allow this subcommittee to draft this letter to the Bootstrap Alliance for EC review and approval. The motion was made by Allison Druin and seconded by Dan Olsen. The motion passed 8-0-0.
More information about the Bootstrap Alliance and the Bootstrap Institute can be found at http://www.bootstrap.org.
Mike Atwood and Dan Olsen generated a large list of names of those who might be interested in running for a SIGCHI-elected office for the 1999-2001 term. Mike will contact each of these nominees and generate a list to be handed off to a SIGCHI nominating committee.
More work still needs to be done on the issue of the needed analysis of the SIGCHI Web site.
The team reported that they have identified a starting list of potential societies with whom they hope to establish a cooperating society relationship with. Their focus will be on member benefits, growth of the field, and growth of SIGCHI. This team will report back with their latest efforts at the summer face-to-face meeting.
Cathleen Wharton highlighted some of the planned activities for Membership Outreach Task Force. For example, looking at how to best establish a volunteer database from which volunteers can become easily and better involved. She also talked about creating a Consultants Directory, and several other proactive ideas designed to get people actively involved. This team will report back with their latest efforts at the summer face-to-face meeting.
The larger publication plans for the SIGCHI Bulletin and interactions magazine are still unfolding. As a result we have not been able to select the next SIGCHI Bulletin editor yet. Due to Steven Pemberton's current double duty, we will incur some costs due to the need to hire contractors to help him out until we have a Bulletin editor in tow.
During the summer face-to-face meeting the SIGCHI EC will talk more about making interactions as the flagship publication. Jean Scholtz will get the relevant financial information from the ACM and coordinate with Dan and Steven in preparation for the summer meeting.
Also, at that time we will talk about the idea of changing CHI+ into a proceedings set. There will also be discussion about ordering proceedings a la carte along with the original focus and purpose of CHI+. Dan will get a committee together to further investigate these issues and then discuss this issue more fully at the summer meeting. Cathleen Wharton also took notes at the SIGCHI Annual Business Meeting on this same matter. She will prepare these minutes so that Dan and others can use to help shape their discussions as well.
The SIGCHI EC brainstormed a list of the various aspects of the current SIG's identity and foundational support systems that will need to be changed should we be able to move to a Society. Below is the list of things that will be impacted by a change to Society status. Note: items are not listed in any particular order. Also, those items that would need to be taken care of first have an exclamation (!) mark after them.
Each of these items will be discussed more at the summer face-to-face meeting. In preparation for this meeting Clare-Marie Karat and Jim Miller will prepare a draft of the changes that would need to be made to our existing bylaws. This will help us to speed up the transition.
Jean Scholtz, Bob Mack, Allison Druin, and Cathleen Wharton will get together and prepare an article on Volunteerism for the July 1 deadline for the SIGCHI Bulletin. This article will address the opportunities and benefits that come from being a SIGCHI volunteer and has as its primary goal getting more people actively involved in the SIGCHI organization. This team will also look into ways in which volunteer efforts can be expanded and be more rewarding. This team will also partner with the Membership Outreach Task Force as appropriate. (The readout for the Membership Task Force is given earlier in this summary.)
Allison Druin reiterated the successes and concerns that Arnie Lund and Clare-Marie Karat had regarding the use of domains at the CHI 98 conference. Allison will give a more detailed report at the summer face-to-face meeting on the next steps for the Domain Issues Task Force.
Jean Scholtz noted that she, Allison Druin, and Richard Anderson are making plans for how to spread the word about the mentoring program through the Local SIGs. Thus, to jump-start the mentoring program they will take a proactive stance.
Guy Boy noted that the final version of the International Task Force report was complete and that free copies were provided at the SIGCHI booth for anyone who might be interested. Guy will talk more about the next steps of this task force at the summer face-to-face meeting.
Jean Scholtz provided the SIGCHI EC with a handout that identified the list of budget categories that will be setup for tracking for FY 99. She asked for feedback as to whether others had key items that they wanted to track. The only concern that came up was to make sure that we were clearly tracking travel costs as associated with any of the major categories. The level of tracking identified by Jean to date will help the SIGCHI EC track its activities and funds at the necessary level of detail.
It is the policy of SIGCHI to reaffirm all votes taken by the SIGCHI EC that have happened since the SIGCHI EC's last face-to-face meeting. The following votes were reaffirmed.
A motion was made by Bob Mack and seconded by Jim Miller to reaffirm these votes. The motion passed 8-0-0.
The next face-to-face meeting of the SIGCHI EC will be held in Rome, Italy from July 31-August 2, 1998. SIGCHI will pay for hotel for 4 nights in Rome and the travel to and from the meeting, along with one guest meal. It is recommended that the EC fly directly into Rome. The meeting will be held in partnership with the Local SIG.
Many topics have been identified to be covered at this face-to-face meeting. The list of topics below will be used as the foundation for any additional generated lists (e.g., as from June, 1998). Next to each item on the list is an approximation of the amount of time that will be needed to cover the topic during the summer meeting.
The SIGCHI EC's next teleconference call will be Monday, June 1, 1998. Monday May 25th is Memorial Day in the United States and as a consequence the call is moved to one week later. Steven Pemberton objected to it being moved to a day that was a holiday in Europe.
The time of the teleconference meeting will change to be 19:30 Universal Time Coordinated. The meetings will continue to be held on the last Monday of the month.
The next face-to-face meeting of the SIGCHI EC will in Rome, Italy, July 31-August 2. On Friday, July 31st, 1998 the SIGCHI EC and representatives from the Local SIG will meet from 9:00 am-5:00 pm and then participate in an activity with the Local SIG that evening. Saturday's meeting will be from 9:00 am-5:00 pm, followed by dinner. The meeting on Sunday will go from 9:00 am-3:00 pm.
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