Comments on: Statement from the SIGACT chair

By: Paul Beame

Paul Beame — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:45:06 +0000

Answering Salil: Contingency is just that; it is not at all a part of the conference closing. The way things are supposed to work for jointly sponsored conferences is that prior to any fees being deducted, the actual expenses are deducted from the actual income and these are divided 50-50 between IEEE and ACM. On the ACM side, this 50% goes direct to SIGACT except for 16% of this 50% or 8% which SIGACT pays to ACM. The rest is surplus for SIGACT. At IEEE 20% of this 50% is 10% which IEEE keeps as expenses (or $2500, whichever is larger). Of the remaining amount which is the surplus, the TCMF will get 50% the year after conference closing (to spend in that year, unlike SIGACT the TCMF has no ability to carry over funds) if the conference is in good standing (no recent deficits) and the conference closing has happened within 6 months of the end of the conference. Back in 2011, when I was TCMF chair there was some discussion at IEEE of an experiment of letting the conference itself keep some of the surplus but I have not heard of the status of that proposal since.

By: Salil Vadhan

Salil Vadhan — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 20:30:30 +0000

In reply to Jeff KInne.

Hi Paul,

I want to confirm my understanding of your comments regarding conference budgeting. As I understand it (and in my own experience a CCC local arrangements chair), the complaint is not about the fact that the conference needs to include a contingency in the budget (which is of course a good idea), but rather that unused contingency does not get returned to the conference or TCMF for the next year (though your comments suggest that maybe TCMF is able to get 50% of it to use two years later). The other grievance is the 20% IEEE service fee. From your response, it sounds like ACM is better than IEEE in both respects – it returns the entire unused contingency and any surplus to SIGACT, and has a 16% service fee. With a jointly sponsored conference, I understand that the service fee would be the average (18%). What would happen with unused contingency and other budget surpluses?

Thanks!

Salil

By: Jeff KInne

Jeff KInne — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:48:23 +0000

Note that the chair of SIGACT, Paul Beame, has posted his response to the manifesto, above. Please take a look - it is thorough and clarifies a few points brought up in the manifesto.