Hi everyone - This message is intended especially for anyone coming to the SIGCIS events this weekend in Philadelphia, the SIGCIS lunch Friday at SHOT, and the SIGCIS conference on Sunday. tl;dr: Please bring cash to support funding for the SIGCIS Travel Awards. Those who have been coming to SIGCIS events for a while know about our 2 different fundraising activities: the book auction and the money cup. I thought I would remind the veterans and alert the newcomers about these rituals and their purpose. 1. The book auction takes place at the Friday lunch: members donate books (so far I have over 2 dozen committed), and we auction them off to bidders in attendance. If you plan to bid, it helps if you bring cash or your checkbook, so that we can collect winning bids on the spot. IOUs are acceptable if all other options fail. 2. The money cup is something that we pass around at the SIGCIS lunch (Friday) and the SIGCIS conference (Sunday). Our requested donation is $20, or so, for those with stable employment. More is great, less is great - as the saying goes, give at the level where you feel comfortable. I hope you are asking: where does this money go? Simple: it goes directly into the SIGCIS fund that SHOT maintains, and is used to support the SIGCIS Travel Awards <http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward>. In fact, the funds mainly go to support two of those awards, the Michael S. Mahoney Travel Awards and the MIT Press Travel Awards. (I’m happy to note, parenthetically, that we have another travel award, the Computer History Museum Travel Award, that exists thanks to the generous support of Len Shustek, who many of you know as the Chairman of the Computer History Museum.) Proceeds from the auction of books donated by MIT Press support the award in its name; the rest of the auction proceeds and money cup proceeds go toward the Mahoney Travel Awards. This year we are awarding nearly $2000 in Mahoney Travel Awards and MIT Press Travel Awards, all to early-career scholars who are presenting their work at the SIGCIS conference on Sunday and who will be recognized at the beginning of the meeting on Sunday morning. In order to maintain awards at this level - and, ideally, increase the amount and number of the awards we give out! - we need to raise at least $2000 this year. Given past trends, I’m optimistic that we can raise a significant sum from the book auction and money cup. I’ll report back after SHOT to tell you all how we did, and to ask for further contributions. Of course, you can donate to SIGCIS at any time via SHOT's online form, at https://shot.press.jhu.edu/membership/contribute <https://shot.press.jhu.edu/membership/contribute>. Thank you all for your support and engagement with SIGCIS, and I look forward to seeing many of you this weekend! Andy Russell SIGCIS Chair