The March 2024 SIGCHI open sessions recapped the Futures Summit and presented the FY25 budget. There were two sessions on March 12th: 1am UTC and 1pm UTC.

First session: Recording, Zoom.

Second session: Recording, Zoom.

Notes from the first session

Neha Kumar (president) notes the two items on the agenda: sharing about the FY 2025 Budget and updates from the SIGCHI Futures Summit that took place a couple of weeks prior to the meeting. 

Budget

Hao-Chuan Wang (VP Finance) provides background on the SIGCHI budget. It is based on the fiscal year (FY), so for FY25, that’s July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. In Feb, ACM updates us about how much money we have, which informs how much we can spend for the upcoming FY. This is determined by revenue (e.g., conf registration, DL downloads, membership) and expenses (e.g., conference and EC operations, ACM overhead). SIGCHI can budget more than what we have based on the assumption that we are going to continue making money, but ACM asks SIGs to have at least 50% of planned expenses at the beginning of the FY. 

For FY25, SIGCHI should have USD 3.7 million, and budget up to 7.5 million. Revenue will be USD 8 million, costs will be USD 7.5 million. Hao-Chuan summarizes the budget categories.

Elizabeth Churchill asks to see more details on how each category is further broken down. Cliff Lampe asks how much these expenses have lowered compared to the FY24 budget. Hao-Chuan says we cut USD 1 million, and not necessarily evenly across categories, as some categories are difficult to reduce, such as contracts for developing the Program app. Elizabeth reiterates that a more detailed breakdown could help with reflecting on where money has gone, is going, and where we want to invest in the future. 

Hao-Chuan then discusses financial wellbeing and challenges based on his learnings since starting at VP Finance. SIGCHI has been doing well financially for many years despite a large conference profile and financial responsibilities. Supporting conferences requires USD 6 million, which means SIGCHI should have USD 3 million in pocket. Over the past four years, the gap between SIGCHI’s account balance and the amount ACM requires to be in pocket has been closing, which reduces how much we can spend. This has been due to challenges and changes such as inflation, forms of participation, and conference losses. ACM Open (refer to blog post) is also going to impact the situation.

Hao-Chuan advocates for a systemic view of SIG finances, connecting the revenues and spending of the EC and conferences. 

Ayman says that operations costs have been flat, so if there were cuts, he would like to see year-over-year changes in budgets by category. 

Hao-Chuan notes that operations expenses have been according to budget. Kash (VP Operations) says that there were cuts in operations this year, so cuts have been across the board. 

Neha wraps up this agenda item, noting the request for more detail on where money went and will go. The EC will, similar to its previous posts on yearly budgets, write a blog post on the intended and actual spending for FY24, the FY25 budget, and reasons for conference losses. 

Hao-Chuan emphasizes that spending needs to be according to budgets, and changes are required to avoid overspending and decreases in revenue. Neha notes that the EC and conference steering committees have been actively thinking about such changes. 

Summit

Neha provides updates on the SIGCHI Futures Summit, which helped take a systemic view around conferences. There were 100 attendees in-person, and 50 online. She thanks the attendees and notes that the conversations were fantastic. She links to a blog post detailing the Summit. Throughout, there was time for conversations, brainstorming, breakout sessions, and discussing next steps. There are Slack channels for each major future step that was discussed: ACM Open, peer review, conferences, volunteers, and early careers. Transparency around all these issues was a meta-topic that came up. These conversations will also continue at CHI 24 and at the ACM level so that SIGs can connect across common challenges. 

Elizabeth supports the idea of cross-conference analysis and conversations, hoping that it can result in cross-fertilization, demonstrate how much energy there is, and greater awareness of why we have these different conferences. Neha notes that conference co-location is another topic that came up and she is looking into. 

Fabian supports the creation of Slack channels and suggests having leaders of some sort for each topic to ensure it moves forward. Neha says that pathways were the blog post, hosting a panel at CHI, and pulling out best practices/ideas from the Summit notes to decide how to take them forward. Any volunteer involvement is welcome since it’s the community that needs to take such big changes forward, not just the EC. Fabian asks what the goal of any working groups would be (e.g., a document, blog post, etc.) and emphasizes the importance of leaders. Neha agrees and notes that the goal is to figure out the best ways to move forward. 

Cliff asks how much these issues should be approached within versus across conferences and suggests creating a subcommittee of steering committee members across conferences who want to work on all these issues across conferences. Steering committee chairs can also socialize these ideas within their committees. Neha agrees and suggests leveraging the monthly sessions the EC holds with steering committee chairs. 

Elizabeth notes that trends are important, as they help to contextualize points of data such as a conference loss, which may just indicate investing in something new and growing or the need for consolidation. Neha agrees the point is not to blame but to reflect collectively, within and across SIGs, and get out of any issues we see.