Last May I was elected to be the chair of University of Illinois’ local SIGGRAPH chapter. I was hesitant to accept the position because I'm not naturally outspoken, and leading a large group of people isn't something that I've had experience with. But the members of the organization viewed my contributions to SIGGRAPH as evidence that I could contribute as the chair.
I started my term as chair by attending a student organization open house where I presented SIGGRAPH to hundreds of freshmen who were looking for an organization to join. This was an intimidating experience for me because I’ve never spoken in front of so many people before, and it was critical that I did well because SIGGRAPH gets most of its new members from this open house. I prepared a short presentation about what computer graphics is, and how students can become involved. When I gave the presentation, my voice was shaky, and my face got red. But, I think I got my points across.
After the presentations we had a booth where students could come up and ask questions individually to the SIGGRAPH executive board. I was surprised by how many people seemed interested. I think SIGGRAPH stands out to students who are interested in computer science and technology who also have an artistic side that they can’t usually get to express in their current coursework. Also, there aren’t any animation or 3D modeling classes offered at the University of Illinois, but there are students who want to learn. They don’t have a place to go. I made sure to market SIGGRAPH to both art students and computer science students. This was a key difference between this year and last. Artists are probably more important than programmers in the field of computer graphics. I put up posters in the art building to attract art students. In total, we got about forty emails of interested students to put on our mailing list.
About twenty-five people attended the first meeting of SIGGRAPH which was a good turnout. However, in years past, we've had the problem where students tend to show up and are involved in the beginning of the semester, but then slowly taper off until the end of the semester where there's not very many of us. I want to change that this year. The way that I am hoping to do this is by hosting weekly tutorials throughout the whole semester on various computer graphics technologies. Also, we are organizing multiple student run projects, instead of having one organization-wide project that not everybody may be interested in. Having one student-run project is what we’ve done for the previous years, and I think is what contributes to the tapering-off of members.
Also, virtual reality is an interest of mine, and is a big part of computer graphics. This semester we absorbed the organization that worked with virtual reality because their core members graduated. To cater to students with interests in VR, I have Unity tutorials planned to teach the members of the organization how to build VR applications. Unity is a fun-to-learn, employable skill that I think will interest lots of members this year.
Hopefully with these ideas I'll be able to retain most of the people who joined in beginning of the year. Attendance has been steady so far, with second and third weeks and having about the same amount of people as the first meeting, which I view as an accomplishment. I’m also becoming more confident in my leadership skills. I’ve never been the “final say” for key decisions until this year, so I was a bit uncomfortable making decisions for SIGGRAPH at first. But, now that I’m in a leadership position, I will have to be more decisive and confident, and make the decisions that I think will benefit the student members the most. Going by this rule will help me run a more efficient executive board and, as a result, more successful SIGGRAPH. I'm excited to lead SIGGRAPH at Illinois and have big plans for this year. I am confident that with enough effort, this year will be the most successful SIGGRAPH year that we've had in a long time.