4. OVER 1200, AND RECENTLY OVER 1500
ATTENDEES

At the beginning, the SIGCSE Technical Symposium attract-
ed a modest group of computing professionals who had inter-
ests in computing education—both at the undergraduate and
graduate levels. Records of attendance during the early years
are spotty. The earliest records of SIGCSE attendance show 143
for SIGCSE 1970 in Houston, TX, 179 at SIGCSE 1972 held in
St. Louis, MO, 200 for SIGCSE 1973 at Ohio State University,
and 300+ for SIGCSE 1974 in Detroit, MI. Interestingly, this
attendance level of a few hundred is consistent with some his-
toric ACM guidelines for the size of conferences labeled as a
“symposium.”
Records of attendance during the combined ACM Comput-
ing Week also require interpretation, since attendees could reg-
ister for one conference or for combinations.

Starting in the mid-1990s, attendance records are consistently available, although different sources (e.g., [ 7, 8]) sometimes report slightly different numbers. (Perhaps an individual could not attend because of a medical condition, or an invited speaker received a complimentary registration.) The graph in Figure 1 represents merged data from both [ 7] and [ 8].

 

Overall, symposium attendance was generally consistent at 700 to 800 during ACM Computing Week. The number decreased for SIGCSE 1997, when the symposium started on its own, but the next several years showed a steady increase. Finally, in 2004, attendance broke 1200 (reaching 1228), and attendance hovered between 1180 and 1280 through 2015 ( except 1304 attended 2013—slightly above range). Most recently SIGCSE 2017 showed a clear and substantial increase to 1501 and SIGCSE 2018 had 1731 registered attendees.

In addition to this overall pattern for attendance at the symposium, three additional factors reflect the level of attendee involvement.

• Symposium attendees often want to make the most of their time; travel can be expensive, and participants often sign up for workshops both before and after the symposium itself.

Specifically, over the years, many attendees have shown strong and increasing interest in both pre-symposium workshops (e.g., on Wednesday) and post-symposium workshops (e.g., on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings).

Computing Week 1997. Also, ACM decided to reorganize its schedule, and ACM97 was held Saturday-Wednesday, March 1–5, 1997. In this restructuring, SIGCSE 1997 had several new elements.

• SIGCSE 1997 was held Thursday–Saturday, February

27-March 1, before ACM97, rather than being scheduled afterwards.

• SIGCSE 1997 was run largely as an independent conference, with its headquarters in a hotel, and not at the conference center.

• SIGCSE 1997 had a full program, with up to six parallel sessions; some discussion considered whether sessions should extend to Saturday as well, but this seemed more than could reasonably be handled at this stage of the conference’s evolution.

• In line with some previous experience with conferences on the west coast, submissions and attendance were down somewhat. Overall, 75 of 177 papers were accepted (including 18 of 39 from outside the United States).

• Although largely independent, ACM had arranged contracts for SIGCSE 1997, ACM97, and related activities. Also, the same management company supporting ACM97 was also utilized for SIGCSE 1997.

• As separate SIGCSE and ACM conferences evolved during 1997, some issues related to communications and misunderstandings arose. However, when accounts closed, SIGCSE 1997 finished with a small budget surplus, and SIGCSE had gained much new experience.

 

SIGCSE 1998

Starting in 1998, the SIGCSE Symposia have been completely on their own—not affiliated with separate ACM conferences, although SIGCAS has held a co-located meeting. This independence allowed some expansion of the overall program.

• Regular sessions ran all day Thursday and Friday, and on Saturday morning.

• A Doctoral Consortium was organized for all day on Wednesday.

• Workshops were spread throughout the conference (but not during other symposium sessions).

• SIGCSE 1998 coordinated with the ACM Programming Contest.

• As was the case in SIGCSE 1996, SIGCSE cooperated with faculty groups from two-year schools to encourage attendance and involvement.

• A/V costs increased substantially from the past, so conference registration was raised from $115 to $130, and workshop registration from $40 to $45—still quite low for national conferences!

 

For the next seven years the SIGCSE Symposium welcomed, as a co-located conference, the IEEE Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET). After this initial collaboration CSEET followed a different path for its annual event.

Figure 1: Conference Attendance: 1990-2018