ACM SIGMM Executive Committee Newsletter – 1, 2022

The Special Interest Group in Multimedia of ACM, ACM SIGMM, provides a forum for researchers, engineers, and practitioners in all aspects of multimedia computing, communication, storage, and applications. We do this through our sponsorship and organization of conferences and workshops, supporting student travel to such events, discounted registrations, two regional chapters, recognition of excellence and achievement through an awards scheme, and we inform the Multimedia community of our activities through the SIGMM Records, social media and through mailing lists. Information on joining SIGMM can be found at https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/sigs/sigmm.

The SIGMM Executive Committee Newsletter in SIGMM Records periodically reports on the topics discussed and the decisions assumed in the Executive Committee meetings to improve transparency and sense of community. 

SIGMM Executive Committee Meeting 2022-03-16

Attended: Alberto Del Bimbo (Chair); Phoebe Chen (Vice-Chair); Miriam Redi (Conference Director); Changsheng Xu, Ketan Mayer-Patel, Kiyoharu Aizawa, Pablo Cesar, Prabhakaran, Balakrishnan, Qi Tian, Susanne Boll, Tao Mei, Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, Alan Smeaton (SIGMM Executive Committee members); Xavier Alameda Pineda (Invited guest)

Sent justification and comments: Lexing Xie (SIGMM Executive Committee member). 

We discussed the 2022 SIGMM budget. The SIGMM budget is in a good shape, and we foresee room for new initiatives to strengthen and expand the SIGMM community and improve our communication via existing and new channels.  

We approved a revision of SIGMM bylaws (proposed by Susanne Boll) to improve diversity: the chair and vice-chair will run for the offices in pairs; a way to encourage diversity without necessarily having to put quota. The proposal has been sent to ACM for approval. 

We approved three proposals for special initiatives that will improve inclusion. In late 2021, the SIGMM Executive invited SIGMM Members to apply for funding for new initiatives building on SIGMM’s excellence and strengths, nurturing new talent in the SIGMM community, and addressing weaknesses in the SIGMM community and in SIGMM activities. The fund can support auditable expenses incurred and necessary for the completion of the initiative. The proposals received were evaluated based on impact and contribution to the SIGMM community, and cost-effectiveness of the proposed budget. The three special initiatives approved so far are:

• Multi-City PhD-School (proposed by the Steering Committee Co-Chairs of MM Asia)
  This is a two-half day program which is planned to be implemented in ACM MM Asia and eventually applied to other conferences in the future. The program is hosted in 3-5 satellite sites located in different Asian cities. Each site will physically gather 30-50 PhD students plus 1-2 senior researchers in a local venue. Different sites are virtually connected by online meetings. Invited student speakers will deliver a 3-minute lightning talk in turn followed by QA talks with mentors. The program allows students to physically attend the event, talk to senior researchers, while increasing the impact of satellite events among young researchers. Students are encouraged to register for the satellite events and attend virtually. This could involve more students and minority attendees with satellite events bringing students from multiple cities for idea exchange and research training

• MMSys inclusion initiative (proposed by the MMSys’22 General Chairs & Diversity Chairs)
  The goal of this initiative is to improve diversity and inclusion in the MMSys community. The proposal includes 1) Travel support for non-student participants who self-identify as marginalized and/or underrepresented, lacking other funding opportunities; 2) an EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) panel aiming at increasing visibility and recognition of minorities and under-represented researchers in SIGMM fields, stimulating new collaborations; and promoting networking and mentoring between junior and senior researchers.

• IMX Inclusion initiative (proposed by the IMX’22 Diversity Chairs)
  The goal of this initiative is to promote the participation of groups of students and researchers that have historically been underrepresented in the IMX’s community. The proposal includes funding for 1) a panel discussion on diversity in the metaverse; 2) travel support for individuals who self-identify as marginalized and/or underrepresented in terms of gender, race, and geographical location and who lack the financial resources to attend an international conference.

The SIGMM Executive also discussed two other initiatives, namely the opportunity of using Open Review in the SIGMM flagship conference ACM Multimedia (this year it is adopted on an experimental basis in ACMMM 2022), and the project of a reproducibility platform for open streaming evaluation and benchmarking (proposed by Ali Begen) eventually extendible beyond streaming media.  They both will be further discussed and evaluated in the next future.

The Chairs of the SIGMM Executive Committee