SIGSIM FY'04 Annual Report

July 2003 - June 2004
Submitted by: John Tufarolo, SIGSIM Chair

Mission:

The ACM Special Interest Group on Simulation (SIGSIM) is advancing the state-of-the-art in simulation and modeling through a world-wide membership of cross-disciplinary professionals.

Services:

SIGSIM is an ACM Special Interest group (SIG) providing the following services and publications in exchange for its membership fees.

Proceedings:

• Proceedings of the Annual Winter Simulation Conference (CD-ROM version)

• Proceedings of the Annual Parallel and Distributed Simulation Workshop

Electronic Groups:

• ACM SIGSIM Web Site: http://www.acm.org/sigsim

• ACM SIGSIM Mailing List: [email protected]

• USENET News Group: comp.simulation

Online Distinguished Lectureship Series http://www.acm.org/sigsim

• Historic and leading-edge material

• Multimedia presentations

• Hosted on SIGSIM web site (members-only)

• Three completed

  • Phil Kiviat

  • Paul Fishwick

  • Roger Smith

ACM Digital Library Content Access:

• SIGSIM members are granted full access to the SIGSIM-sponsored portions of the ACM digital library, including full-text access to all or portions of the following:

 

ACM SIGSIM NEWSLETTER

• Simulation and Modeling

PROCEEDING SERIES

• ANSS: Annual Simulation Symposium

• MSWiM: International Workshop on Modeling Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems

• PADS: Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation

• SCN: Simulation of Computer Networks

• SIGMETRICS: Joint International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems

• WSC: Winter Simulation Conference

Conferences:

SIGSIM sponsors the following conferences.

 

Topic:	International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM)
Frequency:	Yearly in October
Location:	Varies
Attendance:	= 60
Web site:	Varies
Sponsorship:	100%
Topic:	Winter Simulation Conference (WSC)
Frequency:	Yearly in early December
Location:	Varies; every 3rd year in Washington, DC
Attendance:	=600
Web site:	http://www.wintersim.org
Sponsorship:	1/8
Topic:	Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS)
Frequency:	Yearly, in late spring
Location:	Varies
Attendance:	=50
Sponsorship:	1/3

SIGSIM has an "in-cooperation" agreement with the following conferences.

 

Topic:	International Workshop on Inter-Doman Performance and Simulation
Frequency:	Yearly in March
Location:	Varies (March 04 in Budapest, Hungary
Attendance:	= 50
Web site:	http://www.tmit.bme.hu/ips2004
Topic:	Simulation Workshop Series- UK Operational Research Society
Frequency:	Yearly mid-September
Location:	Various locations in the UK
Attendance:	unknown
Topic:	Simulation Interoperability Workshop (SIW)- Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO)
Frequency:	Spring and Fall each year
Location:	Various locations; often in Orlando
Attendance:	unknown
Web site:	http://www.sisostds.org

SIGSIM Membership:

As of Dec 2004, SIGSIM had 558 total members. SIGSIM's membership history roughly tracks with the general trend of all ACM SIGs.

Management:

The last SIGSIM election was held in 1999, in conjunction with the transition to a conference-only SIG (elections were not required for SIGS with that classification). Fall '03 ACM and the SIG Governing Board (SGB) removed the various SIG categories. There are now simply SIGS. Each SIG produces a list of member benefits that details the specific services the SIG provides for its members. The other aspect of this change is that every SIG will now be required to conduct elections. The next election cycle begins Fall 2004.

The current SIGSIM officers are: 

 

Chair:	John Tufarolo, [email protected]
Vice-chair:	Rick McKenzie, [email protected]
Secretary/Treasurer:	John Tufarolo (acting), [email protected]
Information Director:	Simon Taylor, [email protected]

 

Finances: (Note: Financial data from December 2004)

Following a rocky period a few years ago, SIGSIM is currently in a good financial situation. 

SIGSIM continued to voice concern over the SIG allocation charges during this reporting period. As a small SIG primarily supporting conferences, we believed the charging model was unsupportable. Our conferences use other organizations to manage the conferences. As such, we could not "tax" the conference fees. With little to no utilization of ACM conference services, we maintained that a minimum $15K allocation charge was somewhat excessive. During this past year, this minimum charge was reduced to 10K. This, along with the Digital Library income, has contributed greatly to a positive financial situation. We will continue to work with the SGB to stay current on this situation.

The continued presence of the ACM Digital Library (DL) revenue allocated to SIGSIM is critical to SIGSIM's existence. During previous SGB meetings, a method was devised and approved for distributing the ACM DL revenue across the SIGS (who are primarily responsible for DL content). The basis for distribution was in relation to the accessing/downloading of digital library content associated with a SIG. For SIGSIM, this apportionment greatly offsets the SGB allocation charges and thereby keeps SIGSIM solvent.

TOMACS Editor-in-Chief

SIGSIM presented a plaque to the outgoing Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) editor-in-chief, thanking him for his service form 1997 - 2003 as the editor-in-chief. In conjunction with this rotation, SIGSIM was asked to provide a nomination for the next EIC. Richard Nance volunteered to lead the nominating committee and through the work of that committee, James Wilson was nominated and subsequently approved as the next EIC of TOMACS.

Technical Program Goals and Milestones:

SIGSIM is the leading simulation professional group in the world. We support two of the leading conferences in the field - WSC and PADS. We would like to increase our value to our membership, and will strive towards the following goals:

• Continue to support leading simulation conferences

• Seek out and add more "in-cooperation" conferences to help add exposure for the conferences while adding Digital Library content for SIGSIM members

• Improve communications between ACM and SIGSIM leaders

• Improve communications between SIGSIM leaders and SIGSIM members

• Learn how to better serve the SIGSIM membership