SIGSAM Projects

Top projects:

  • Personal URL Redirection Service (SGB Proposal as PDF and PS) (19 September 2003)
  • Complimentary memberships as part of membership drive, expand awareness of SIGSAM. (Done for ISSAC 2001, 2002, ANTS-5, plus many individuals)
  • Citation standards; solicit JSC system papers (policy web page added April 2002) (October 2002: Received citation list from Michael Wester that needs processing.)
  • Have SIGSAM-Member news come out at least 4 times a year. Try to synchronize an issue with the release of a Bulletin issue on the website. So far, issues have come out in June 2002, October 2002, and March 2003. (30 March 2003)
  • Gröbner Prize: work on a proposal, recruit for a selection committee, decide how many years back to go, talked to Hal Gabow and Wolfgang Thomas of SIGACT about how they administer the Goedel Prize (June 2002) Target date: ISSAC 2003. Carlo Traverso would like to be in on the discussions to create an award. I think we could invite Gert-Martin Greuel as well, as he seemed receptive to these issues at ECCAD 2002. And we could ask Bruno. (Emil likes the idea of calling it the Sylvester Prize and trying to set this up jointly with the Johns Hopkins University's Sylvester Institute for Mathematics, Computation, and Application.)
  • Submitting nominations for ACM Fellows (deadline in August of each year). This requires significant lead time. (First nomination project underway, November 2002)
  • Additional mailing lists; figure out how to better publicize our first list for computational real algebraic geometry; publish lists in the Bulletin
    1. SIGSAM-Members list launched April 2002.
    2. OSCAS: Open Source Computer Algebra Systems launched in June 2002, reached 67 members as of 13 June 2002.
    3. Try to stimulate interest in the SAM_Comp_Real_Alg_Geom list.
    4. Arno to moderate Symbolic Linear Algebra list
    5. Mika Seppala and Josef Schicho to moderate Computational Algebraic Geometry for Curves and Surfaces
    6. Lists for systems, such as Theorema, MuPAD, KANT, Derive. (KANT group expressed interest, Magma declined, offered to Stephen Watt for Aldor)
  • Set up guidelines for student travel grants. This does not require approval by the Awards Committee.
  • Check on getting a referendum to add Members-at-Large through a Bylaws change in the Spring 2003 elections. Is electronic voting possible? The ACM has done this with the general election in 2002.
  • Organize a Nominating Committee and try to find people interested in running for office. Monique Chang is staff POC for elections. Bruce Char as Past Chair should try to organize the Nominating Committee.
  • Put in for a SIGSAM dues increase; must be done by the end of May to take effect at the beginning of July. (Missed deadline for 2002, but Irene will remind us for 2003. This can be determined by the Executive Committee with SIG Chair approval, and no vote is required.)
  • Assess how well the link to join SIGSAM on the registration form works to encourage people to join and thereby get the member discounted registration fee. If this works well, say, less than 10 percent of registrants pay the non-member rate, then we could consider this successful. Probably we could then just give complimentary memberships to the remaining few who didn't bother the first time. On the other hand, if many don't bother to join SIGSAM, then we might want to arrange the ISSAC 2004 budget to include SIGSAM membership and give them conference-paid memberships automatically. This is how we did it for ISSAC 2001 and 2002. Individuals whose employers pay for their expenses to attend conferences may not get reimbursement for joining SIGSAM unless it is incorporated into the registration fee. (May 2003)

Long-term:

  • Making SIGSAM membership more useful and increasing our membership. (Progress: complimentary memberships started May 2002.)
  • Get ISSAC Proceedings listed in MathSciNet, CompuMath Citation Index, or other databases as a periodical. (17 May 2002: the ISSAC Proceedings actually have an ISBN number, not an ISSN number, so it's less clear how to increase impact. The Bulletin does not have an ISSN number as far as I know, and it may not work to get that in citation indices.) We could try to get the Bulletin in the DL and see that its articles get indexed there. Maybe we should make sure that ISSAC Proceedings get mailed to the AMS Mathematical Reviews office and convince them to put it in MathSciNet.
  • Have SIGSAM send representatives to relevant standards committees, e.g., MathML, as ACM representatives. (May 2003)
  • Scan old ISSAC/SYMSAC/EuroCal proceedings and make them available on-line. Possible reason to request funds through the Small SIG Projects fund that Rob helped to establish.
  • Increasing appeal of ISSAC: special sessions, broader advertisement
  • Make SIGSAM more international by
    • soliciting greater European participation as officers (the Member-at-Large positions should make more opportunities for this);
    • Austin Lobo volunteered to indicate contacts in India;
    • Eliminate airmail surcharges. We can't claim to be a truly international organization if we charge an extra US$8 to everyone outside the US (and Canada?). We should probably increase membership dues across the board and treat airmail costs as a general expense. If we can't do this all at once, we could start with eliminating the surcharge to Europe. After all, ACM does have an office in Brussels.
    • emphasize support for the French Calcul formel community, which to the best of our knowledge has no comparable national organization, unlike, say, Germany;
    • Discounted dues for developing countries. Consider an electronic-only option to save on printing and postage or give a membership rate that is very close to the marginal cost.
  • The Bylaws need to be cleaned up. For instance, the position of Secretary is not listed as one of the officers, but there is a description of the position.
  • Emil still likes the idea of including short abstracts for technical reports in the Bulletin, with links. The Technical Reports feature flopped when we tried it a few years ago, but now that the Bulletin is on-line, and we have a mailing list that reaches the membership to announce this feature, it might be worth trying again.
  • Consider holding ISSAC as part of the Federated Computing Research Conference. The announcement for the FCRC in 2003 came too late for the vote on ISSAC 2003. It's a shame that was not an option for the membership to consider, given that ISSAC 2003 is being held in the US. In fact, the 1996 FCRC was held in Philadelphia. The next FCRC will probably be held in 2007. Donna Baglio says the FCRC is now being held every four years (27 June 2002). This could be a good way to get some theoretical computer scientists attending STOC to hear some ISSAC talks.
  • The London Mathematical Society's Journal of Computational Mathematics offers free subscriptions. Can we, should we do the same with the Bulletin?
  • We would like to increase recognition of ISSAC papers in the math community. Mathematicians who get a paper in ISSAC will likely find that it doesn't count as a publication. However, there are surely some math journals with a lower rejection rate than ISSAC, and a paper in such a journal would count as some publication. If we could document rejection rates, that might help put ISSAC in a more favorable light when compared to math journal publications. (EJV, 2 September 2003)

Lower priority or tangential:

  • Convince Wayne Graves to roll out personal URL redirection service for members, probably with a VBC as an alternative to be chosen by the member. (cf. Pat Ryan)
  • Update information on ISSAC steering committee. Make a separate web page?
  • Post minutes from SIGSAM Business Meetings. (all available annual reports posted on new page, 30 June 2002)
  • Make a webpage for past SIGSAM chairs (and other officers?) as recognition.
  • Track down bad addresses on the SIGSAM-Members mailing list. (Emil did some by searching in May, more trickling in as people find they are missing our emails, but not everyone with a bad address has come forward to give us a new address.)
  • Try to solicit ads for the Bulletin.
  • Estimate the actual marginal cost of adding a SIGSAM member. Printing extra copies of the Bulletin and of Proceedings has a low marginal cost. Most of the marginal cost is probably in mailings. Mailing the ISSAC 2001 Proceedings cost $1.84. Sheridan Printing does the Proceedings. Cadmus (in Maryland) does the Bulletin. They would know the exact marginal printing costs.
  • Using MathML in the Bulletin and eventually in the ACM Digital Library.
  • Get extra copies of the Bulletin printed for use as a promotional item. Send stacks to various conferences.

Progress, Issues resolved:

  • Contacted ISSAC Steering Committee about possibility of holding ISSAC in conjunction with the 2007 FCRC. (26 June 2002)
  • Started organizing a committee to nominate a candidate for ACM Fellow. (26 June 2002)

  • Done 24 June 2002 in mail to SIGSAM-Members list.

    At one time, Irene thought that a note would go out with the mailing of the ISSAC 2001 Proceedings to explain the problem. This didn't happen, so in our next email to the membership, we should explain what did happen and offer apologies. The problem was that the shipper sent the first set of Proceedings to the list of institutional subscribers, and not to the members. The ACM didn't catch this mistake until Irene had them do an audit. Since some copies were mailed, the ACM assumed they were sent to the correct recipients.

  • SIGNUM Prize money for paper prizes and travel awards (SGB EC allocated the funds in July 2000; work on proposal for paper award May 2002; ISSAC award guidelines approved by ACM Awards Committee Chair on 10 June 2002; no progress setting up travel awards)
  • Electronic version of SIGSAM Bulletin off SIGSAM website (page launched April 2002)
  • ISSAC 2001 Proceedings to members -- problem detected in December 2001 (?), finally mailed in May 2002. Must monitor this more closely for ISSAC 2002 and contact ACM HQ test recipients.
  • Get memberships for ISSAC 2001 attendees paying nonmember fee. (resolved: April 2002) Must monitor and assure this works in 2002.
  • Reallocation response (sent in Dec. 2001 to Small SIG Coordinator Mark Scott Johnson(?))
  • Created web page for the ISSAC Steering Committee with current members at the request of Keith Geddes. (November 2002)