[SIGCIS-Members] Year-end drive: please donate to SIGCIS!

[Andrew Russell]

Dear colleagues - 

We’ve had a strong fundraising year for SIGCIS so far, and we would like to finish 2017 on a high note.  Please consider a year-end donation to SIGCIS, so that we can continue to support graduate student travel to SIGCIS meetings <http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward> (follow the link for a list of previous awardees). 

There are two ways you can donate:
1. Online. If you are a SHOT member you can use the online form at https://shot.press.jhu.edu/membership/contribute <https://shot.press.jhu.edu/membership/contribute> to donate directly to SIGCIS. The website has instructions for accessing your login information if you don’t have it on hand.
2. By mail. If you are not a SHOT member, the only way to donate to SIGCIS at the moment is by check/mail.  To do so, please send a check to Richard Hirsh, SHOT Treasurer's Office, 3009 Stradford Ln., Blacksburg, VA 24060.  The check should be made out to “Society for the History of Technology,” and have “SIGCIS” on the memo line. 

Since I’m writing, I’d like to give a quick update on SIGCIS’s financial health and activities for the past year. Community donations in the past have built a solid foundation for the Mahoney Fund <http://www.sigcis.org/mahoney>, which supports the Michael S. Mahoney Graduate Student Travel Awards as well as an endowment for the Mahoney Prize <http://www.sigcis.org/mahoneyprize>, an annual award for the best article in the history of computing. SIGCIS also has a permanent endowment for the Computer History Museum Prize <http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize>, thanks to the generosity of the estate of Paul Baran.  Our continued need, however, is for funds to support graduate travel to our meetings.  We raised nearly $2000 at SIGCIS events at the SHOT annual meeting (our book auction and pass-the-hat fundraiser), but if we raise more money then we can support more graduate students—simple as that.

SIGCIS also had an extraordinarily rich and productive year from intellectual and organizational standpoints.  For the first time we held a meeting detached from the SHOT annual meeting—the Command Lines <http://meetings.sigcis.org/uploads/6/3/6/8/6368912/command_lines_program.pdf> conference generously hosted & sponsored by the Computer History Museum in March 2017.  In October 2017 we held another conference—Mix, Model, Measure <http://meetings.sigcis.org/>—on the Sunday at the end of the SHOT annual meeting.  Taken together, the two meetings had over 100 papers, with a majority presented by graduate students and first-time SIGCIS participants.  This fact alone indicates that SIGCIS is succeeding with our efforts to broaden and diversify the base of scholars and subjects discussed under SIGCIS's expansive umbrella.  To make our commitment to diversity and openness explicit, the SIGCIS Exec approved a Statement of Community Values <http://www.sigcis.org/about_values>, updated the Acceptable Use Policy <http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/14> for our email list, adopted an inclusivity and anti-harassment statement for our conference programs, and worked with our host institutions to provide gender-neutral restrooms for the participants at all of our meetings. 

The key to the continued vitality of SIGCIS is continual renewal: new ideas, new voices, and new perspectives on the history of computing and information technology.  This is where your support plays a crucial role, so that we can help pay the travel and lodging costs for the extremely talented graduate students who keep coming to SIGCIS in record numbers.  On that note: mark your calendars for October 10-14, 2018, which is when SHOT will meet in St. Louis and SIGCIS will host its 10th Sunday meeting on October 14th.   

Please donate!  And, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you’d like more information or have any questions about SIGCIS.

Many thanks,

Andy Russell
SIGCIS Chair


— — — — — — — — — — —

Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Arts & Sciences
SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Donovan Hall - 2123B
100 Seymour Road
Utica, NY 13502

t. 315-792-7317
w. https://sunypoly.edu/ <https://sunypoly.edu/>
e. arussell at arussell.org <mailto:arussell at arussell.org>
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