SIGDOC Program Review 2010 Brad Mehlenbacher SIGDOC Chair www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m March 8, 2010

Financial/Membership health of ACM SIGDOC Healthy with a fund balance that has ranged between ~40K (500 members) and ~75K (211 members) since the mid 1990s Fund balance increase since 2004 Small surplus generated in all conferences since 2000 (<5K) Expenses limited to conference organizer and board travel/expenses Minor investment in 500 print brochures Investigating delivering proceedings digitally at conferences Membership currently 211 Membership has decreased since 2004 (primarily among affiliate members) June 2003 = 350 members June 2004 = 284 members June 2005 = 245 members June 2006 = 259 members June 2007 = 233 members June 2008 = 237 members June 2009 = 211 members Evaluation of member needs Member-to-member interaction Regional activities desired

SIG Goals and Engagement Goals since 2008 review Encourage greater graduate student/campus involvement Establish international collaborations and membership Strengthen message with new name/audience Reach out to broader community of writers, information engineers, technical communicators, and IT professionals working with information Communication, Website, newsletter, journal proposed being redesigned Members-only quarterly newsletter developed by student team at Old Dominion University) International development goals since 2004 SIGDOC conferences result in small surpluses (~5K) Two European conferences since 2005 (Coventry, UK, and Lisbon, Portugal) SIGDOC 2010 being held in Sao Carlos, Brazil, September Conference planning for Boston (2011), Paris (2012), Seattle (2013) Engagement with European and South American colleagues European SIGDOC chapter being established

Volunteers, Representation, Presence Reputation as high-level technical society for writers Versus STC, PCS, ATTW, CPTSC Co-operating with DocEng Goal to co-operate with other ACM SIGs Recognition (awards sponsored) Rigo (individual contributions, e.g., Ramey, U of Washington) Diana (institutional contributions, e.g., Apple) Graduate Competition (e.g., U of Waterloo students) Presence via social networking established for communication design community Volunteer growth Full slate for SIG election Added Information Director- Webmaster Added three new Members-at-Large Representation balanced 5 academics/4 industry on board Increase in student membership Diversity of professional interests Writer-designers, academic researcher-teachers, managers, and students Increase in student members (via development of student chapters)

Membership/Chapter Creation Sponsored conferences to increase graduate student involvement Locating conferences on campuses and seeking sponsorship from schools/colleges for special student registration and membership opportunities ACM SIGDOC08 (Lisbon) sponsored by ISCTE and ACM SIGDOC09 (Bloomington) sponsored by the IU School of Informatics, the Kelley School of Business, and Old Dominion U 31 students attended (and volunteered) for SIGDOC09 European chapter being finalized Student Chapter formed at Old Dominion U and in the process of forming an NC State U chapter (welcome meeting this month) and ECU chapter

Outreach and Community Building Information distribution: promoting presence of communicator-designers in computer science and beyond Targeted distribution of new ACM SIGDOC brochure Quarterly newsletter managed by Old Dominion team Working on proposal for Communication Design Journal Half-dozen books on technical communication published since 2002 by ACM SIGDOC members Investigating strategies for facilitating member/nonmember communication, collaboration, and exchange Established active social networking presence via Wikipedia (viewed >250 times/month since 2009), Twitter (75 followers, LinkedIn (85 members), Facebook (66 members), Ning (19 members, mostly board members), and Slideshare (2 members, 6 from SIGDOC 2009)