Tag Archives: election

Voting Time!

If you’re an ACM member, this is a reminder that the ACM 2010 Council Election voting deadline is noon (EDT) on May 24th. So vote now. You’ll need the piece of paper mailed to you, along with your ACM membership number (find that here or look at the label of a CACM sent to you, if you don’t recall it). Voting itself takes a minute, tops. While you’re at it, vote in the ACM SIGGRAPH elections – deadline is June 4th. Who to vote for? Here’s Naty’s take. Disappointingly, very few candidates have responded so far to his questionnaire (a few candidates’ email addresses could not even be found, which is pretty sad).

I find voting theory fascinating, since there’s no perfect way to set up voting when there are more than two candidates, to name just one dilemma. I just noticed this book on Amazon, which I’ve put on reserve at the library – Poundstone’s books are usually entertaining.

ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 Election

I received my ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 Election form today, it provides some login info and a PIN. SIGGRAPH members can vote for up to three people for the Director-At-Large positions.

I can be pretty apathetic about these sorts of elections, ACM and IEEE, I have to admit. Sometimes I’ll get inspired and read the statements, sometimes I’ll skim, sometimes I’ll just vote for names I know, sometimes I’ll ignore the whole thing. This year’s ACM SIGGRAPH election is different for me, because of issues brought up by the Ke-Sen Huang situation. Specifically, the ACM’s copyright policy is lagging behind the needs of its members.

For this SIGGRAPH election I was happy to see that James O’Brien is on the slate. In the past James has worked to retain the rights to his own images, so he’s aware of the issues. In his election statement he writes:

The ACM Digital Library has been a great success, but the move to digital publishing has created conflicts between ACM and member interests. ACM and SIGGRAPH are fundamentally member service organizations and I believe that through thoughtful and progressive copyright policies we can better align organization and member needs. Successful copyright policy has to work across formats, and SIGGRAPH is unique among ACM SIGs in that member-generated content spans a diverse range encompassing text, images, and video. Other organizations have embraced Open Access initiatives, but SIGGRAPH and ACM should be leading the way in this area.

He has my vote. He’s also the only candidate who addresses this area of concern, and in a thoughtful and professional manner. If you’re a SIGGRAPH member, I hope you’ll take the time this year to read over the statements, figure out your login ID and user number, and then go vote.