John C. Hart
Candidate for Director for Communications
Education
- 1991 - PhD, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
- 1989 - MS, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
- 1987 - BS, Computer Science, Aurora University
Interests
Research in fractal models and implicit surfaces.
Statement
Before 1993, SIGGRAPH subsidized its membership dues with its annual conference surplus.
This worked fine until fluctuations in conference surplus threatened the organization's
ability to function. SIGGRAPH adopted a two-part solution: first, increase dues to cover
expenses, and second, promote membership to offset the expected drop. The second part never
happened; by 1995 SIGGRAPH lost a third of its members.
My goal is to restore SIGGRAPH's lost members, through:
- Expanding membership benefits
- SIGGRAPH's online services can benefit members without increasing dues, i.e. email
forwarding (yournamehere@siggraph.org) and home-page pointers
(http://siggraph.org/~yournamehere). The online task force should become a permanent
committee supported by the Communication budget.
- Strengthening Organizational Presence at the Annual Conference.
- SIGGRAPH's annual conference provides an incredible opportunity to attract new members.
Many attendees are unaware of the organization's year-long activities, publications,
price breaks and new projects. At the "SIGGRAPH Year-Round" booth we distributed "member"
pins to thank current members, welcome new members and provide valuable feedback regarding
attendees' perception of the organization.
- Broadening the membership base.
- SIGGRAPH serves not only computer scientists in academia and industry, but also computer
users, programmers, enthusiasts and others in the arts, entertainment, education, the sciences,
engineering and other disciplines. Their broad contributions have made SIGGRAPH stronger, and we
should reward their participation with benefits packages that serve their specific needs at the
proper rate.
As a Director-at-Large, I worked on SIGGRAPH's relationship with the ACM, to better utilize our
membership funds. I worked on membership issues as securing each member's right to approve bylaws
changes and overseeing the production of "member" pins. I handled online usability issues such as
UNIX user access to our CD-ROM publications.
The Director for Communications position will allow me to devote the next two years to insure
SIGGRAPH best services its most valuable asset - its membership.
Professional Experience
- 1992-present - Assistant Professor, School of EECS, Washington State University
- 1991-1992 - Postdoc, Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago,
and NCSA, UIUC
ACM or SIGGRAPH Activities
- 1994-1996 - Director-at-large, SIGGRAPH Executive Committee
- 1994-1996 - Chair, Relationship with ACM Task Force
- 1994 - Youngest attendee of Snowbird strategic planning conference
- 1991,1994 and 1996 - Course organizer
- 1991-1996 - Speaker
- 1994-1995 - CD-ROM Tester-outer, Media (CD-ROM) committee
- 1994 - Electronic Theater committee
- 1992-1993 - Guest editor: SIGGRAPH Video Review #96, #86 and CACM 35(6),
Producer, "Technical Session Highlights," '92, '93 Electronic Theater
Awards/Achievements
- 1994 - SIGGRAPH Member
- 1996 - Captain of the winning "SIGBOWL II" team, '94
- 1996 - Co-Chair, Western Computer Graphics Symposium
- 1993 - Co-Chair, Implicit Surfaces'96 (the first Eurographics-SIGGRAPH co-sponsored workshop)
- 1991 - NSF Research Initiation Award, 1991: "un Natural Phenomena," SIGGRAPH 91 Electronic Theater
- 1989 - "Efficient antialiased rendering of 3-D linear fractals," Proc. SIGGRAPH 91
- 1989 -"Ray tracing deterministic 3-D fractals," Proc. SIGGRAPH 89
Contact
Electronic mail: hart@siggraph.org
1996 ACM SIGGRAPH Election Information
ACM SIGGRAPH General Information