ACM SGB Meeting Materials March 16, 2012 - Best Practice Session

1. Volunteer Development

Volunteer development is an issue that faces many SIGs.

a. How can SIG leaders nurture and develop individuals to take on higher levels of responsibility?

¨ David Pennock

- Doctoral Consortium

- Volunteer Programs

- Best Student Paper

- Awards

¨ Erik Altman

- Give new initiatives, history, blogging, newsletters, recording keynotes, etc.

b. What steps dies your SIG take to ensure development of the next generation of leaders?

¨ Erik Altman

- Initiatives like above, conference organization, executive committee

2. As a SIG Leader

What can we do to assist new SIG leaders? Please respond to the following:

a. Things I wish I had known

¨ David Pennock

- IT process

b. Things that worked

c. It seemed like a good idea at the time

3. New SIG proposals

In evaluating new SIG proposals, what should we be looking for? We currently ask proposers to address the following five questions:

1. Primary focus of this special interest group with as much detail as possible;

2. Primary audience/primary need to be served;

3. Initial activity to be undertaken by the group (publication, conferences, workshop, etc.);

4. Overlap issues with the other ACM SIGS;

5. Listing of the core group of volunteer leaders that would lead the SIG.

a. Are these the right questions?

b. What else should we be considering?

¨ David Pennock

- List of interested members

- Current activities of community

4. Social Media

The SIGs and the conferences are staying in touch with their constituencies through various social media outlets. Let’s continue to share and evolve our programs based on our experiences.

a. What social media experiences have worked?

¨ David Pennock

- Blog and Twitter

¨ Roy Want

- Website- interactive (e.g. Hotmobile indicated sessions in progress)

- Hash tags for sessions/ live commentary

¨ Sharon Hu

- Email ( maybe others that I don’t know)

¨ Joe Konstan

- Conference specific Facebook, twitter

- LinkedIn groups

- Flickr

- Many mailing lists

¨ Lance Fortnow

- Q&A sites: ex. CS theory- stockexchange.com

- Twitter, Facebook, Google + for SIGs and Conferences

¨ Jeff Jortner

- Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Calendar

¨ Hanan Samet

- Never tried

¨ Netiva Caftori

- Newsletter & web – One sided

- Email – too many

¨ Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

- LinkedIn, Twitter during conferences

- Interactive websites. Giving “most active” social media person in ACM Multimedia 2011

¨ No Name

- Interactive polling ( with real time tracking/display of response)

- We used poll everywhere

- Groups in Facebook & Linked In

- Electronic “tagging”

- Podcasts

¨ No Name

- Grassroots @ CHI- Linked In, Skype, Tweets – no control

- Twitter & Facebook feeds

- Spontaneous blogs – CompArch

- SIGGRAPH- _______________________

b. What hasn’t worked?

¨ David Pennock

- Official mailing list of members

- Giving away student scholarships, yet 1 application

- After blogging and tweeting, about 20 applications

¨ Roy Want

- No value for Facebook, so far.

¨ Joe Konstan

- Others not yet.

¨ Lance Fortnow

- Wikis and DL comments

¨ Jeff Jortner

- Wiki

¨ Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

- Blogs (Word Press), Facebook

¨ No Name

- Twitter is tough- hard to keep momentum

- 2^nd life was terrible ROI

¨ No Name

- Wikis haven’t worked- finding moderators is difficult

c. What else should we try?

¨ David Pennock

- Facebook and LinkedIn

¨ Roy Want

- Make all conference websites contain wiki, allowing members to comment/review in real time.

¨ Erik Altman

- Google as a news aggregator for each SIG

- Use news to seed IG related discussion

¨ Sharon Hu

- Maybe Blog (Twitter). We are also trying to set some discussion groups on our website, but haven’t fully implemented.

¨ Jeff Jortner

- Apps, pushed or pulled

¨ Hanan Samet

- Don’t know

¨ Netiva Caftori

- Blog, word press, LinkedIn

¨ Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

- None. In general I think people are too busy to be active in multiple social media forums.

¨ No Name

- Loads of apps that pushes info

- Google Calendar

d. Is there a role for the SGB as a whole in supporting social media for the SIGs?

¨ David Pennock

- Best practices

- Meta lists of existing social media outlets for SIGs

¨ Roy Want

- Web design services for SIGs

¨ Erik Altman

- Partner with Google or other news aggregators

- Mechanisms for SIGs to share detailed experiences with cities, hotels, and other conference venues

¨ Sharon Hu

- I am not sure, better web design needed. (Maybe ACM can help?)

¨ Joe Konstan

- Might help to have social media info in ACM member profile for SIGS, Conferences

¨ Lance Fortnow

- ___________ Good examples

¨ Jeff Jortner

- Standardization

¨ Hanan Samet

- Be a user

¨ Netiva Caftori

- Yes- A common medium, maybe on ACM site.

¨ Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

- Help with SIG website design and management since most social media experiences start from the web site

¨ No Name

- Provide pointers to good examples of SIG/Conference use of social media

- Provide “policies” guidelines so we don’t have to come up with them ourselves

¨ No Name

- Standardization to conference input.

- Conference app- ___________to paper to DL

5. Fund Balance

a. What are some effective ways your SIG is using its fund balance to give back to the community?

¨ David Pennock

- Lower registration fees

- Student travel support

- Pay to make proceedings open/free

- Serious awards

¨ Roy Want

- Funding public research programs and community organizations: CRAWDAD, N2WOMEN

- Discount student registration/travel

- Discount conferences

- Awards

¨ Erik Altman

- Student travel grants

- History project

- Hardship grants

¨ Sharon Hu

- Supplement a student award

- Support student travel

¨ Joe Konstan

- Putting more money back into conferences

- Specializing through steering committee

- Develop funds

- Take risk on CHI in Asia

¨ Jeff Jortner

- Special project funds, grants to speakers for small conferences

- Develop funds, surplus’ back to small conference, new locations, student sponsorship

¨ Hanan Samet

- Lower registration fees

¨ Netiva Caftori

- Awards

- Dev. Countries memberships?

¨ Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

- Student registration, lower student registration fees

- Lower conference registration for members.

- Best thesis awards

- Data sets and source code (if possible)

- TPC meeting fund

¨ No Name

- N/A at this point

¨ No Name

- Special projects funds with simple app

- Grants to coop conference to have a SIGCSE speaker

- Small conferences special project funds

- Chapter grants, travel grants

- Development projects, field or community with chairperson on EC

- Endorsements and Scholarships for students

¨ Andrew Black

- One of the best things that SIGPLAN has done recently is the Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop that we held in conjunction with PoPL in January 2012: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~sweirich/plmw12/

- This workshop had a lot of external funding too; it brought in about 100 students, IIRC.

- We also have a "professional activities fund" (PAC) that we use to give grants to students to attend our meetings. However, these tend to go to those who are presenting papers, so you might argue that the recipients are already "part of" our community, whereas the mentoring workshop was explicitly trying to get to students early enough to get them to choose to join the community.

- We have also invested fairly modest amounts of money in IT infrastructure to help support the work of the EC, e.g., managing the workflow for PAC applications.

b. Should there be a maximum fund balance for a SIG?

¨ David Pennock

- No

¨ Roy Want

- Only if related to member number

- It may force/motivate us to spend SIG funds

¨ Erik Altman

- No. SIGs earned it. This would cause community resentment. Not force wasteful spending.

¨ Sharon Hu

- I think so as long as the max can be adjusted appropriately

¨ Joe Konstan

- No, but there should be a threshold above which it is expected to justify at viability review

- (Perhaps above 2 years total expenses and $20K)

¨ Lance Fortnow

- No, especially as DL revenue is in question.

¨ Jeff Jortner

- No

¨ Hanan Samet

- No! They don’t have to charge so much for registration.

¨ Netiva Caftori

- Yes or take a % for ACM

- (50% of operations and 40% of conference)

¨ Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

- Yes. But it should be in proportion to the expected conference budget. Higher conference budgets should have higher max balance of SIGs.

¨ No Name

- No- unresponsive spending

- Exchanged to use $

¨ Andrew Black

- No, there should not be a maximum fund balance. It would promote unwise spending. However, it might make sense to help SIGS with healthy balances to find ways to spend the money — like this session!