SIG Best Practices: Open Business Meetings William G. Griswold Chair, SIGSOFT Computer Science & Engineering UC San Diego From the SIGSOFT Bylaws (proposed) Article 14. Meetings. The Group will conduct at least one business meeting each year, normally in conjunction with a conference sponsored or cosponsored by the Group. All meetings sponsored by the Group must be open to all members of the ACM. The Group may hold meetings only in places that are open to all classes of members of the ACM.

2 Open Business Meetings Many ways to run a business meeting Many things could be discussed (or not) Hard to run a good meeting Schedule into the larger event Get people to show up Members hear what they need to, EC learns what they need to, make decisions, energize community

3 SIGSOFT Back Story Typically would hold business meeting at end of conference day in main conference room EC would make a long presentation Introductions, numbers and initiatives Open floor to questions Result: a few tired people in a huge room listening to boring stuff; few questions, little discussion

4 Take 2 – Town Hall Meeting Open to all attendees of conference Schedule into event, not around event Serve food and beer Short introduction by Chair (me) Play PowerPoint slide show as people come in Raise key community issues and open discussion to all in attendance

Three Variants Tried Schedule in parallel with reception (ICSE) Lively, mostly SIGSOFT members No griping from the event were competing with Between talks and reception (FSE, ICSE) Surprisingly lively when scheduled & located right Lunch, separate room (ICSE) People hadnt figured out what room to go to 5

A Sampling of Topics Digital versus paper conference proceedings Many interesting issues and hybrid solutions Health of the profession Education, practitioners What is SIGSOFTs core community – practitioners, academics, researchers, students Cost of conference attendance 6

Whats working, whats not Attendance up, energy up, right issues on table Keys to success: free food, advertising, location Relaxed atmosphere, ease of attendance Embrace the conference format, context What works for single-track SIGSOFT FSE different than what works for multi-track IEEE/SIGSOFT ICSE Particulars of specific instantiation a big factor Scheduling and location constraints a conundrum Co-sponsoring parallel event (reception) helps 7

Biz Meetings – Work in Progress How do you run your meetings? scheduling, location, format Why? Whats working and whats not? what can we learn from each other? how can we help each other? 8