My SIGGRAPH and Student Volunteer Program Story – Part 1

The next few posts are a bit more personal – they will try to explain my involvement with SIGGRAPH, and the people I’ve met along the way. They are an expansion of this post. Read it first if you haven’t. If you don’t know these people or me, the next few posts might be a bit boring. You’ve been warned. If nothing else, be inspired by the power of SIGGRAPH and the friendships it has helped build. I will be publishing these slowly as I finish them. -J
Link to Part 2.
Link to Part 3.

SIGGRAPH 2011 marked the 38th SIGGRAPH conference since its inception in 1974. SIGGRAPH stands for Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques. I’d love to think that in 1974 they just called it Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and when people asked about the long name they simply responded, “Yeah, we’re working on it.” /Agent Coulson Voice. You can read more about SIGGRAPH 2011 in the blog post I’ve authored here.

So, as part of the annual SIGGRAPH conference, there is a group of particularly awesome and dedicated students and industry professionals called the Student Volunteer Program. This is a highly prestigious program where only a few hundred students are accepted from a field of over 1500+. They are asked to volunteer to help run the conference and get some valuable face time with their future industry peers. There is a lengthy and intense application process determining need, want, dedication, and other traits necessary of a SIGGRAPH Student Volunteer. Once accepted, students enter into a very elite fraternity… of assassins… and get to meet Angelina Jolie… and bend bullets. Ok only part of that is true.

I started as a Student Volunteer back in 2007 when I was still in college. I worked various jobs in E-Tech trying to translate for some Japanese wind-vision presenters, or checking membership ID numbers at the membership booth. I also got to meet the inventor of the original Nintendo Power Glove. He was working on stereoscopic microscopes. Live germs in 3D! Heck yes. By the way, did I mention I _don’t_ speak Japanese? One of the first people I met that year was a guy from Singapore named Tan Wei Keong. He and I worked various shifts in E-Tech together, and I’ll talk more about him later.

The following year I applied to be a Team Leader, one of 20-ish students selected to lead the other 400. As a Team Leader you are selected to run certain venues at the conference, and you are the first level of questions/problems/conflicts/explosions that happen at that venue. So as a first time Team Leader and only a second year SV, I was given the Registration Hall, and we were in Los Angeles. Typically TL’s have partners so they can cover for each other and help out when things start to get crazy. But not me. For whatever reason I didn’t have a partner. Awesome.

On day 1 I showed up to Registration and was greeted by a line of 15,000 strong. I had 3 SV’s on shift that were supposed to serve a mob of 15k. Stubbornness took the better of me and I wasn’t going down without a fight. I strapped into my blue vest (the signature uniform of a Team Leader) and put on my SV Hat and got to work. Ten hours later I was wondering when I might get lunch. The day had flown by. At some point I reported to the office how ridiculously small my team was, and they sent me some backup. I also had help from a very dear friend who had run Registration before. I’ll also talk more about her later – her name is Gracie and as it turns out we went to highschool some 5 miles away from each other. (Small world huh?) By the end of the week SIGGRAPH had totally changed my life. I had met some amazing people in Los Angeles and totally made friends I knew I’d never forget. I also think I had earned my metaphorical stripes, as the sole Team Leader in charge of a Registration Hall that signed up 28,000+ attendees, not all of whom were always the most pleasant to help.

It was also at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles that I had heard about a new SIGGRAPH conference that was coming in a few months – SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. I wanted to know more, but unfortunately I found out that the time to sign up for volunteering for this program had passed. Unacceptable. I figured at this point I had tricked enough people into thinking I was semi useful – surely there was someone else who might take the bait again.

His name was Jim Kilmer. Jim is one of those super high level thinkers who sees everything from the 30,000 foot view, but also knows how many blades of grass are in each square mile. It’s kind of scary really. Anyway, I had been told that my only chance to attend SIGGRAPH Asia was to talk to this person, and I had no idea what he looked like or where to find him. To be honest, by the end of the week I had almost given up – a mixture of exhaustion from my stint in Registration that week and the little bit of sleep the Team Leaders were getting because of parties and working so early day after day.

By the end of the week we had been invited to the wrap party the organizing committees throw for all the important people at SIGGRAPH. Note when I say invited I really mean “crashed”. And when I say important people I didn’t mean me. So if you’re wondering what I was doing there, join the club. Anyway, I’m standing in line with my one and only holy free drink ticket the chair of the Student Volunteer Program (Josh Grow) had given to all the Team Leaders, and there are two people in front of me talking about SIGGRAPH Asia. I happened to catch a glance of one of their badges. Jim Kilmer. Schweet. Poor guy. Long story short, I harassed him for a good 20 minutes about SIGGRAPH Asia and how much I had enjoyed being a Team Leader this year in Los Angeles. I told him I’d love to attend the conference in Singapore, so he gave me his email address.

Within a few weeks of arriving home I sent him an email – a shot in the dark I figured. Somehow he remembered me, and in a few months I was setting sail for Singapore to join the Student Volunteer Program there as a Committee Member. I helped with logistical support during the conference there, mostly manning the office and making sure to put out fires when they arose. It’s not typical for an undergraduate student to be sitting on a conference sub committee, but it was quite an honor that my ambition refused to pass up. I think I learned an important lesson in that whole experience. You don’t get what you never ask for, and you’d be surprised what you DO get if you’d just ask. So you know that annoying guy who puts his nose everywhere and asks all those questions? Yeah, that’s me now.

SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore was pretty small – and I think ultimately a bit of a loss for the organization. At least in real dollars. Anyone who attended knows the strength of the friendships that were formed there, and the bond cemented between existing ones. Many of my very best friends today were people I met in SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. In fact, many of us have traveled the world together since. We’ll get to that later, but here’s some of us on the Great Wall of China just because I like to brag.

The following year SIGGRAPH was held in New Orleans. I was chosen again as a Team Leader, and again was chosen to run Registration. Lucky for me they had given me a partner this time (Melissa you are awesome), and on the first day I had 18 SV’s to run my venue. Apparently my whining the year before had paid off. Things went incredibly smooth, and with the exception of the NOLA plague everyone caught on the last day, New Orleans was full of fun memories.

Nico Gonzalez, who was the SV Chair that year and is now part of SIGGRAPH Student Services (S3) had ordered these psychological evaluations for everyone. They were awesome. We each took these series of tests and questionnaires to determine our personality traits. We were then paired with people we might or might not get along with during the conference. It was pretty cool. I thought my psycho evaluation was pretty accurate. There was a list for, “What to do when speaking to Jeremy,” and it said, “Thank him for his time.” That one was probably my favorite.

New Orleans was my last chance to become a Team Leader, as I had been a student already for 4 years. I had the chance to move up to a Committee position, so I applied and was hopeful. If I didn’t get it, I would probably be an attendee again, or find another way to contribute. As far as the Student Volunteer Program was concerned though, the buck stopped here.

In the meantime, I attended SIGGRAPH Asia in Japan where I also helped the committee with various logistics both pre-conference and on site. Japan was an amazing place, and after the conference I went backpacking from Yokohama to Tokyo to Mt Fuji on to Osaka, Kobe, Nara, and Kyoto with a friend I had met in Singapore, Eugene Harng. We spent Christmas on a rooftop in Kyoto with an Englishman and 2 Australians we had met, and to be honest I’m not quite sure how we made it home alive. But that’s a whole-nother story. By now though real friendships had taken hold, and I was meeting people from all over the world, from Eastern Asia to Northern Europe, and from India to South America.

Stay tuned.