Hello everyone, SIGCIS needs some enthusiastic volunteers to assist with special projects and fill a vacant position on our Executive Committee. As you're aware our activities have been growing steadily over the past few years and include this email list, our website at www.sigcis.org, the organization of sessions for the main SHOT conference, an annual one day workshop held in conjunction with SHOT, the Computer History Museum prize for an outstanding book in the history of computing, a guide to resources for the history of computing, the Mahoney fund as a capital reserve (now over $5,000) and our supplemental student travel grants (four made last year) supported primarily by the book auction at our annual meeting. In the near future we should be posting a new set of regional resource guides and expanding our online syllabus repository. Coordinating all this hard, particularly in an environment where pressure on graduate students and untenured faculty limits the amount of time anyone person can devote to the SIG. So to help us push forward with new initiatives and make sure our existing commitments are handled properly we are looking for a couple of volunteers. In the past these have tended to be dissertation writing graduate students and new faculty, but we're open to volunteers of all kinds including those outside academia. You do not need to be based in the US, and there are many opportunities for which it is not necessary to be able to attend the annual meeting. Our current needs are described below. If you have any questions or want to volunteer for something please get in touch. My main priority for the SIG now is to institutionalize its structure and make sure that we have a pipeline of new volunteers so that it will not collapse when the existing cohort needs to move on. Thanks, Tom COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER The main post we need to fill is that of Communications Officer. You may notice that our website is not updated as often as it should be, and our email list sometimes misses important announcements. That's why we need a communications officer. .Monitor relevant email lists and website for news of forthcoming conferences, journal special issues, and other developments of interest to SIGCIS members. Forward relevant material to the list with short introductory summaries. .Post a current selection of interesting news items to the front page of the SIGCIS website. .Create and maintain a set of reminders of forthcoming events and deadlines on the SIGCIS website. .Create and maintain an online repository of history of computing syllabi in Acrobat format. .Create and keep current a page of fellowships sometimes given to history of computing students. We've invested a lot of effort in our Drupal content management system, which makes it easy to update the website, promote items to the front page, and share responsibility for different parts of the site. So you would really be focusing on the content itself rather than being a traditional webmaster. The communications officer is a member of the SIGCIS Executive Committee, which also means taking part in monthly conference calls (we use Skype). These are usually scheduled early afternoon in the Eastern US/early evening for Europeans. Existing terms expire at the next SHOT meeting, so we aim to make a trial appointment for approximately six months, which might be followed by nomination to a full two year term. SPECIAL PROJECTS There are a number of special projects for which we need volunteers for a limited period. This would be a great way to get involved with SIGCIS. * SIGCIS Workshop program coordinator (2010 meeting). Dealing with technical aspects of submissions, corresponding with possible participants, coordinating the review process, drafting a program schedule. * Member contributions area. We have already an area on our site where contributions from members can be posted -- similar to a technical report series. In the near future we aim to expand this and issue a general call for possible material. Having a volunteer to oversee this and work with authors to get material posted would expedite the process. * Other specific aspects of the SIG's activities (see http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/6) including those currently demarcated for its officers. For example someone might volunteer to lead the improvement of the member directory or to develop bylaws. * Anything else you think the SIG needs.