ACM SIGDOC Viability Report 2012

1. ACM SIGDOC Viability Report 2012 Emphasizes study and publication of processes, methods, and technologies for communicating and designing artifacts such as printed and online information, documentation designs and applications, multimedia and web-based environments. Brad Mehlenbacher, NC State,ACM SIGDOC Chair Rob Pierce, IBM, Vice Chair Liza Potts, Michigan State, Treasurer brad_m@ncsu.eduwww4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m March 16, 2012

2. SIGDOC Financial/Membership Health • Action Items related to Membership: • Limit overseas conferences to one every 4-5 years (review conference attendance, balances, and budget outcomes) • Lower conference costs for members (ramp up social media promotion of upcoming conferences) • Offer returning members limited time offers on lower membership fee (raise membership to $50/$35 and/or ask each member to get two members to join) • Invite and involve new board members (20+ people identified) and task them with specific responsibilities (e.g., task board member with contacting young faculty in field, cultivating student involvement, contacting conference sponsors, etc.) • Form task force to articulate major questions of our field and survey active and inactive members about what we’re doing right/wrong (launch CDQR around these questions/issues) • Affiliate with other societies to strengthen numbers (e.g., IEEE PC, STC, ATTW, UPA, etc.).

3. SIGDOC Member Benefits • Benefits to ACM SIGDOC Members: • SIGDOC’s website (www.sigdoc.org) and complimentary materials related to site • SIGDOC’s online newsletter published four times per year for members (current newsletters and archives soon to be available via the ACM DL) • Discounted registration at SIGDOC’s annual conference and workshops • Reduced registration at conferences held in cooperation with SIGDOC (e.g., ACM Symposium on Document Engineering) • Broad professional contacts and valuable networking opportunities • Considerable opportunity for member volunteers and for board involvement and reward • Free access to the ACM Digital Library content (portal.acm.org) for SIGDOC conference, workshop proceedings, the ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, and archived SIGDOC Newsletters (soon also to be new SIGDOC newsletter, entitled Communication Design Quarterly Review) • Discounted student memberships available at a highly competitive rate.

4. SIGDOC Goals and Engagement • Goals • Encourage greater graduate student involvement • Approved NCSU Student Chapter • Holding annual ECU Workshop • Applying for ISU Student Chapter. • Establish international collaborations • EuroSIGDOC (European SIGDOC Chapter) offers successful OSDOC workshop three years in a row. • Reach out to and affiliate with broader community of writers, information engineers, technical communicators, and IT professionals working with information • Redesigning more interactive website in Wordpress • Integrating social media announcements and information exchange. • International development • Conferences result in small surpluses (~5K) and losses (~8K) • Three European conferences since 2005: in Coventry, UK; Lisbon, Portugal; and Pisa, Italy • SIGDOC 2010 held in Sao Carlos, Brazil • SIGDOC 2013 to be held in Kyoto, Japan (input on this decision would be helpful). • Community development • Graduate Student Competition Award sponsoring travel and publication (offered annually) • Rigo and Diana Award for individual and organizational contributions to the field (alternative years) • SIGDOC-ANNOUNCE listserv.

5. Volunteers, Representation, Presence • Volunteer growth • Full slate for SIG elections • Added new Information Director-Webmaster • Added two new Members-at-Large • Plans to enlarge board. • Representation balanced • 5 academics/4 industry on board • Dominated by professionals, followed by affiliate and student members. • Diversity of professional interests • Writer-designers, academic researcher-teachers, managers, and students • Increase in student members (via development of student chapters). • Reputation as high-level technical society for writers • Versus STC, PCS, ATTW, CPTSC • Increasing ACM DL download and citation numbers. • Recognition (awards sponsored) • Rigo: individual contributions, e.g., Baranauskas and de Souza, Bodker and Ehn, Goswami and Miller • Diana: institutional contributions, e.g., Apple, SAP, Lab for Usability at UW • Graduate Competition: e.g., U of Waterloo students. • Presence via social networking established for communication design community

6. Outreach and Community Building • Information distribution: promoting presence of communicator-designers in computer science and beyond • SIGDOC and ACM Members (137), SIGDOC and ACM DL Subs (60), SIGDOC only Members (45), and Total SIGDOC Members (187) • Quarterly newsletter, entitled Communication Design Quarterly Review, co-edited by colleagues from Michigan State and East Carolina Universities • ACM DL published articles (2,003), total citings (3,051), total downloads last year (47,899), total downloads overall (532,669) • Active website (17,610 unique visitors and 829,045 total hits), listservs (247 Subscribers), and social networking presence via Wikipedia (viewed 2,507 in 2011), Facebook (117 Followers), LinkedIn (182 Followers), Slideshare (5 Members), and Twitter (132 Followers).