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Volume 28 Number 3 September 1999 |
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Vice Chair's Message
It is my pleasure to report that SIGMOD is the only SIG, among 35+
SIGs of ACM, with an increased total number of members over the past
year. As you may know, there has been a continuous decline over the
last decade in SIG membership. Although at a much slower pace than
many other SIG's, SIGMOD has also been losing members. While this was
not a serious financial problem over the short term (see the
Statement from the
Treasurer, SIGMOD Record, March 1999),
our goal was to have a stable membership
which we believe is important for a financially healthy SIGMOD and a
strong database research community in the long term.
Great new initiatives such as SIGMOD Anthology and DiSC have been
instrumental to boost membership. Both the SIGMOD Anthology, and DiSC
have been initiated by Rick Snodgrass, and made possible by tireless
efforts and endless voluntarism by Michael Ley and Isabel Cruz,
founding editors of Anthology and DiSC, respectively, and many other
volunteers. Successful and robust SIGMOD conferences with new
conference registration fee structures that promote new membership
have also played an important role in not only leveling the
membership, but also increasing it for the first time in the last 13
years. For your information, SIGMOD currently has 2453 members (as of
May 99) and is the seventh largest SIG among all ACM SIG's. Another
good news is that SIGMOD has the highest member retention rate among
all large SIG's (with 2000 or more members). SIGMOD member retention
rate, 69.9%, is also one of the highest among all ACM SIG's. (see the
full report at http://www.acm.org/sigs/membership). With the current
rate, it is very likely that we will see SIGMOD climb up in the ladder
in the list of largest SIG's in the coming years.
I also want to mention here that SIGMOD has recently adopted new
guidelines for conference approvals emphasizing the quality of the
conference, among other things, such as non-conflicting time and venue
with the SIGMOD conference. These guidelines will be posted in the
SIGMOD web site http://www.acm.org/sigmod/sigmodinfo. If you have
suggestions, or questions about the membership and conference approval
you can contact me as well as other
SIGMOD
officers.
| Meral Özsoyoglu |
| July, 1999 |
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