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SIGIR viability review. March, 2011. Financial summary. 2010 fund balance growing consistently Professional membership steady or dropping Conference sponsorship 4 conferences in 2010 WSDM, JDCL, SIGIR, and CIKM Set for 2011, working on 2012 and 2013 Student support
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SIGIR viability review March, 2011
Financial summary • 2010 fund balance growing consistently • Professional membership steady or dropping • Conference sponsorship • 4 conferences in 2010 • WSDM, JDCL, SIGIR, and CIKM • Set for 2011, working on 2012 and 2013 • Student support • Close to “at cost” conference registrations • Scholarships
SIGIR member benefits • SIGIR Forum, semi-annual, print and on-line • Third “issue” of Forum is SIGIR proceedings • Reduced registration rates • Access to sponsored conferences via DL • SIGIR, WSDM, JCDL, CIKM • SIGIR-announce and SIG-IR mailing lists • Awards • Vannevar Bush at JDCL • Salton at SIGIR • Best student and Best papers at SIGIR • Student travel awards to SIGIR
Goal: successful conferences • SIGIR and other conferences doing well, but… • Attendance remains strong and steady • Concern about registration costs • Topping US$1,000 may create barrier to entry • Exploring options with chairs and community • Acceptance rates becoming too low • At 15% many excellent papers being rejected • Trying two-tier full-paper acceptance for SIGIR’11 • Challenges with globalization of conferences • Often no “regional” conference for two years • Exploring regional SIGIRs • CIKM, WSDM, and SIGIR all in Asia in 2010-11 • Dialogue with conferences and representation on boards
Goal: development for students • Successful support for students • Travel support to SIGIR conference • Roughly $60K for 2010 • Expect greater use of fund for 2011 (Beijing) • Doctoral consortium at SIGIR • Mentoring before, at, and after SIGIR • 11 students in 2010 (typically with travel support) • Best student paper award at SIGIR • Comes with $1,000 award split among authors • If “best paper” authored by student, this is dropped • Concern: SIGIR cost getting high for students
Goal: membership • Membership falling in last two years • Professional from 859 in 2007 to 766 in 2010 (-10%) • Retention after first year remains about 75% • Did not provide automatic memberships from conferences for 2009 and 2010 • Reinstating that program for 2011 • Most of these are short-term members • Does result in higher 1-year retention (50%, not 25%) • Some loss may be due to economy • Looking for ways to increase perceived “value” of membership