SIGAPP FY'04 Annual Report

July 2003 - June 2004
Submitted by: Barrett R. Bryant, SIGAPP Chair

The SIGAPP mission is to further the interests of the computing professionals engaged in the development of new computing applications and applications areas and the transfer of computing technology to new problem domains.

SIGAPP Officers

Chair - Barrett R. Bryant, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Vice Chair - Ernesto Damiani, DTI - University di Milano, Italy
Secretary - Juan Llorens, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Treasurer - Ronaldo P. Menezes, Florida Institute of Technology, USA 
Web Master - Hisham Haddad, Kennesaw State University, USA
ACM Program Coordinator, Donna Baglio, ACM HQ

Status of SIGAPP

SIGAPP's and SAC's strength and uniqueness among ACM SIGs continues to be the opportunity for scientific diversity and crosscutting multiple disciplines within the ACM community. The officers look forward to continue working with the ACM SGB to further develop the SIG by increasing membership and providing those members with services beyond our annual conference, such as the Applied Computing Review (ACR) newsletter. Current plans are to publish a backlog of ACR papers in the original format and then consider changing the newsletter format to encourage more submissions. Members would like to see the status of the newsletter upgraded from a "reviewed" publication to a "refereed" publication. We will look into the appropriate means by which such a change could be made within ACM guidelines for SIG publications.

The current membership stands at 314, which is the largest membership SIGAPP has had in recent years. The proposed efforts in improving ACR will potentially enlarge this membership, which now primarily consists of those who attend SAC.

An awards committee is being established to initiate the granting of SIGAPP awards of distinguished service. This award has been identified but never granted.

SAC continues to be an important and very successful ACM symposium as sponsored by SIGAPP, as detailed below.

Status of SAC

SAC 2004 was held in Nicosia, Cyprus, March 14-17, 2004, hosted by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. Thanks to a great organizing committee, it was the most successful symposium in SAC history. New tracks included Data Streams, Engineering e-Learning Systems, Information Access and Retrieval, Internet Data Management, Object-Oriented Programming, Organizational Engineering, and Ubiquitous Computing. The number of SAC papers submitted was 787 in 26 tracks with 280 papers accepted based upon extensive Track reviews, for a 36% ratio, a ratio that continues to decrease from previous years thanks to SAC program chairs and track chairs. For the first time, we also hosted a poster session of 20 posters. The large number of papers accepted fully packed our available sessions. Furthermore, there were an unusually large number of on-site registrations which pushed attendance to well over 300, another SAC record. It was decided to add an additional day to SAC 2005 to accommodate an even larger number of papers should submissions continue to increase, as has been the case nearly every year since 1999. Our annual SIGAPP membership meeting discussed the issues addressed above concerning future planning of SIGAPP activities.

SAC 2005 will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 13 - 17, 2005, the first time SAC has spanned 5 days. SAC 2005 is hosted by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. It will be the 20th SAC and appropriately returns to the central United States where the conference began (in the neighboring state of Oklahoma). The web site http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2005 has further details such as symposium committee and track chairs. Observe that submitted papers and proposed tutorials are due September 3rd.

SAC 2006 is being planned for Dijon, France.

Summary

1. Awards that were given out - none

2. Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings - new tracks in SAC 2004 on Data Streams, Engineering e-Learning Systems, Information Access and Retrieval, Internet Data Management, Object-Oriented Programming, Organizational Engineering, and Ubiquitous Computing

3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts - planned expansion of SAC 2005 to 5 days to allow for additional tracks and papers if justified by increased submissions

4. Innovative programs which provide service to some part of your technical community - plan to upgrade Applied Computing Review from a reviewed newsletter in an appropriate refereed publication

5 A very brief summary for the key issues that the membership of that SIG will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years - the initiation of awards and establishment of an enhanced ACR.