ACM SIGIR annual business meeting 2014: Secretary’s notes

The 2014 ACM SIG-IR Annual Business Meeting took place on Thursday July 10, 2014, at the SIGIR’14 Conference in Gold Coast, Australia. The meeting proper started at 11:55 and was led by SIG-IR chair Charlie Clarke. The ACM SIG-IR executive committee was introduced, consisting of Charles L.A. (Charlie) Clarke (chair), Yoelle Maarek (vice chair, unable to attend), Jaap Kamps (secretary), Diane Kelly (treasurer), and James Allan (past chair), see Figure 1. Charlie explained the role of the SIG-IR executive committee. First, to ensures continued high quality and reputation of SIGIR and its sponsored conferences (with new sponsored conferences announced later in the meeting). Second, to meets the needs of SIGIR’s members, by staying tuned to changing needs and preferences of members, both new and experienced. Third, to ensure financial stability of SIG-IR and highvisibility presence within the ACM. On the latter point, even though SIG-IR is a mid sized SIG within the ACM, Charlie is part of the SIG Governing Board and can represent our views on important issues, such as the future of the ACM DL. Basically, we are working on the things you want to happen, so we are always interested in hearing from you. Charlie thanked the many volunteers, including the 1,000s of volunteers running SIG-IR sponsored and co-sponsored conferences in various roles. The SIG-level volunteers were thanked: Krisztian Balog (information director), Raman Chandrasekar, Fernando Diaz (outgoing June and December issue SIGIR Forum editors), Ben Carterette (incoming fall issue SIGIR Forum editor), Claudia Hauff (SIG-IRList editor) Shlomo Geva and Fernando Diaz (outgoing an incoming awards chair), Charles Clarke (outgoing CIKM liaison), Ricardo Baeza-Yates (WSDM liaison), and Edie Rasmussen (JCDL liaison). Secretary’s note: At the time of writing also two other vacancies are filled: Craig MacDonald will be the spring issue SIGIR Forum editor and Guido Zuccon is the new social media director. Krisztian Balog was particularly thanked for modernizing the SIG-IR website, at http:// sigir.org/, which is the main source of information about SIG-IR with content being updated