Category Archives: EiC column

A new editorial team has committed to lead the ACM SIGMM Records since the issue of January 2017. The goal is to consolidate the Records as a primary source of information and a communication vehicle for the multimedia community. With these objectives in mind, the Records were re-organized around three main categories (Open Science, Information, and Opinion), for which specific sections and columns were created (more details in http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/2017/05/08/sigmm-records-serving-the-community/).

Since then, all sections and columns have provided relevant and high-quality contributions, with a higher impact than anticipated. Since the new epoch of the Records, apart from new columns, two additional initiatives have been incorporated:

• Best social media reporter: It was decided to award the SIGMM members with the most intense and valuable posts on Social Media during the SIGMM conferences. The selected Best Social Media Reporters are asked to provide a post-conference report to be published in the Records, and get a free registration to one of the upcoming SIGMM conferences. Up to now, the awardees have been: Miriam Redi (ICMR 2017), Christian Timmerer (MMSYS 2017), Benoit Huet and Conor Keighrey (MM 2017), Cathal Gurrin (ICMR 2018) and Gwendal Simon (MMSYS 2018). The criteria for the awards are specified here: http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/2017/05/20/awarding-the-best-social-media-reporters/
• Section on QoE: Starting in the third issue of 2018 (September 2018), the Records include a new section on QoE, edited by Tobias Hoßfeld and Christian Timmerer. You can find here the introduction column: http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/2018/09/08/quality-of-experience-column-an-introduction/ 

Apart from the recurrent sections, the community has as well contributed with relevant feature articles. Some examples include the article about the flow of ideas around SIGMM conferences by Lexing Xie, the article about ACM Fellows in SIGMM by Alan Smeaton, the SIGMM Annual Report (2018) by the Chairs, and an article about data driven statistics and trends in SIGMM conferences by David Ayman Shamma.

Finally, the editorial team is also working on infrastructural aspects together with ACM. First, an effective communication protocol with the ACM Digital Library has been established, enabling the publication of the issues and individual contributions in HTML format. SIGMM has indeed been pioneering in adopting the HTML format in the publication of articles. Second, the process for migrating the Records website to an ACM server and domain has started, and should be completed before the end of the year.

Pablo Cesar, the editor-in-chief, presented the new team, structure and impact at ACM MM 2017 and will update the community during ACM MM2018.

Reach of the SIGMM Records

Since August 2018, we have been collecting statistics about visitors and visits to the Records website, and making use of Social Media for disseminating the contributions and news. In these 13 months, the daily number of visitors have ranged approximately between 100 and 400, being this variation strongly influenced by the publication of Social Media posts promoting published contents. In these last 13 months, more than 80000 visitors and nearly 500000 visits (i.e. clicks) have been registered.

The top 3 countries with highest number of visitors are US (>19000), China (>10000) and Germany (nearly 7000), and the top 10 all surpass 2000 visitors. Likewise, the top 3 posts with highest impact, in terms of number of visits are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Top 3 posts on the Records website with highest impact

Finally, the top 3 referring sites (i.e., external websites from which visitors have clicked an URL to access the Records website) are Facebook (around 2500 references), Google (around 2500 references) and Twitter (>700 references). According to this, it seems clear that the social media strategy implemented by the editorial team is positively impacting the Records.

Regarding Social Media, two @sigmm channels are being used: a Facebook page and a Twitter account (@sigmm). The number of followers is still not high in Facebook (47), but it has significantly increased in Twitter (247) compared to the previous report. However, the impact of the posts on these platforms, in terms of reach, likes and shares is noteworthy. In Facebook, there are posts that have reached more than 1000 users, and in Twitter there are many tweets with tens of re-tweets and likes.

Contribute!

Our mission is to keep improving and consolidate the Records, and we are very open to getting extra help and feedback. So, if you would like to become member of our team, or simply have suggestions or ideas, please drop us a line!

We hope you are enjoying every new edition of the Records.

The Editorial team

The SIGMM Records have renewed, with the ambition of continue being a useful resource for the multimedia community. The intention is to provide a forum for (open) discussion and to become a primary source of information (and of inspiration!).

The new team (http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/impressum/) has committed to lead the Records in the coming years, gathering relevant contributions in the following main clusters:

• Open science: with columns on open source software, datasets and benchmarks, and standards.
• Opinion: with columns on multi-disciplinary topics, interviews to outstanding members of our community, and viewpoints of the community.
• Information: current affairs including call for papers, summaries of PhD theses, open positions, and reports from our social media leaders.

The team has also revitalized the presence of SIGMM on Social Media. SIGMM accounts on Facebook and Twitter have been created for disseminating relevant news, events and contributions for the SIGMM community. Moreover, a new award has been approved: the Best Social Media Reporters from each SIGMM conference will get a free registration to one of the SIGMM conferences within a period of one year. The award criteria are specified at http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/2017/05/20/awarding-the-best-social-media-reporters/

The following paragraphs detail the impact of all these new activities in terms of increased number of visitors and visits to the Records website (Figure 1), and broaden reach. All the statistics presented below started to be collected since the publication of the June issue (July 29th 2017).

Figure 1. Number of visitors and visits since the publication of the June issue

Visitors and Visits to the Records website

The daily number of visitors ranges approximately between 100 and 400. It has been noticed that this variation is strongly influenced by the publication of Social Media posts promoting contents published on the website. In the first month (since July 29^th, one day after the publication of the issue), more than 13000 visitors were registered, and more than 20000 visitors have been registered until now (see Table 1 for detailed statistics). The number of visits to the different posts and pages of the website accumulates up to more than 100000. The top 5 countries with highest number of visitors are also listed in Table 2. Likewise, the top 3 posts with highest impact, in terms of number of visits and of Social Media shares (via the Social Media icons recently added in the posts and pages of the website) are listed in Table 3. As an example, the daily number of visits to the main page of the June issue is provided in Figure 2, with a total number of 224 visits since its publication.

Finally, the top 3 referring sites (i.e., external websites from which visitors have clicked an URL to access the Records website) are Facebook (>700 references), Google (>300 references) and Twitter (>100 references). So, it seems that Social Media is helping to increase the impact of the Records. More than 30 users have accessed the Records website through the SIGMM website (sigmm.org) as well.

Table 1. Number of visitors and visits to the SIGMM Records website

Table 2. Top 5 countries in terms of number of visitors

Table 3. Top 3 posts on the Records website with highest impact

Figure 2. Visits to the main page of the June issue since its publication (199 visits)

Impact of the Social Media channels

The use of Social Media includes a Facebook page and a Twitter account (@sigmm). The number of followers is still not high (27 followers in Facebook, 88 followers in Twitter), which is natural with recently created channels. However, the impact of the posts on these platforms, in terms of reach, likes and shares is noteworthy. Tables 4 and 5 lists the top 3 Facebook posts and tweets, respectively, with highest impact up to now.

Table 4. Top 3 Facebook posts with highest impact

Table 5. Top 3 tweets with highest impact

Awarded Social Media Reporters

The Social Media co-chairs, with the approval of the SIGMM Executive Committee, have already started the processes of selecting the Best Social Media Reporters from the latest SIGMM conferences. In particular, the winners have been Miriam Redi  from ICMR 2017 (her post-summary of the conference is available at: http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/2017/09/02/report-from-icmr-2017/) and Christian Timmerer for MMSYS 2017 (his post-summary of the conference is available at: http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/2017/10/02/report-from-acm-mmsys-2017/). Congratulations!

The Editorial Team would like to take this opportunity to thank all the SIGMM members who use Social Media channels to share relevant news and information from the SIGMM community. We are convinced it is a very important service for the community.

We will keep pushing to improve the Records and extend their impact!

The Editorial Team.

The SIGMM Records are renewing, with the continued ambition of being a useful resource for the multimedia community. We want to provide a forum for (open) discussion, but also to become the primary source of information for our community.

Firstly, I would like to thank Carsten who was run, single-handed, the whole records for many many years. We all agree that he has done an amazing job, and that his service deserves our gratitude, and possibly some beers, when you meet him at conferences and meetings.

As you are probably aware, a number of changes in the records are underway. We want your opinions and suggestions to make this resource the best it can be. Hence, we need your help to make this a success, so please drop us a line if you want to join the team.

The two main visible changes are:

We have a new amazing team to lead the records in the coming years. I am so glad to have their help: http://sigmm.hosting.acm.org/impressum/

We have reorganized the records and its structure, in three main clusters:

• Open science: with columns on open source software, datasets and benchmarks, and standards.
• Opinion: with columns on multi-disciplinary topics, interviews to outstanding members of our community, and the viewpoints of the community.
• Information: current affairs including call for papers, summaries of PhD theses, open positions, and reports from our social media leaders.

More changes to come. Stay tuned!

Pablo (Editor in Chief) + Carsten and Mario (Information Directors)

Dr. Pablo Cesar leads the Distributed and Interactive Systems group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands. Pablo’s research focuses on modeling and controlling complex collections of media objects (including real-time media and sensor data) that are distributed in time and space. His fundamental interest is in understanding how different customizations of such collections affect the user experience. Pablo is the PI of Public Private Partnership projects with Xinhuanet and ByBorre, and very successful EU-funded projects like 2-IMMERSE, REVERIE and Vconect. He has (co)-authored over 100 articles. He is member of the editorial board of, among others, ACM Transactions on Multimedia (TOMM). Pablo has given tutorials about multimedia systems in prestigious conferences such as ACM Multimedia, CHI, and the WWW conference. He acted as an invited expert at the European Commission’s Future Media Internet Architecture Think Tank and participates in standardisation activities at MPEG (point-cloud compression) and ITU (QoE for multi-party tele-meetings). Webpage: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~garcia/

Dr. Carsten Griwodz is Chief Research Scientist at the Media Department of theNorwegian research company Simula Research Laboratory AS, Norway, and professor at the University of Oslo. He is also co-founder of ForzaSys AS, a social media startup for sports. He is steering committee member of ACM MMSys and ACM/IEEE NetGames. He is associate editor of the IEEE MMTC R-Letter and was previously editor-in-chief of the ACM SIGMM Records and editor of ACM TOMM.

Dr. Mario Montagud (@mario_montagud) was born in Montitxelvo (Spain). He received a BsC in Telecommunications Engineering in 2011, an MsC degree in “Telecommunication Technologies, Systems and Networks” in 2012 and a PhD degree in Telecommunications (Cum Laude Distinction) in 2015, all of them at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV). During his PhD degree and after completing it, he did 3 research stays (accumulating 18 months) at CWI (The National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands). He also has experience as a postdoc researcher at UPV. His topics of interest include Computer Networks, Interactive and Immersive Media, Synchronization, and QoE (Quality of Experience). Mario is (co-) author of over 50 scientific and teaching publications, and has contributed to standardization within the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). He is member of the Technical Committee of several international conferences (e.g., ACM MM, MMSYS and TVX), co-organizer of the international MediaSync Workshop series, and member of the Editorial Board of international journals. He is also lead editor of “MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization” (Springer, 2017) and Communication Embassador of ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction). Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/mamontor/