Dear colleague, dear member of the Eurographics Association,

Following my previous letters, I would like to continue informing you about some of the services and activities that we are offering and planning for the members of the Association. Apart from the Conference, the Computer Graphics Forum Journal and the Eurographics Workshops in specific areas, Eurographics is introducing new on-line sevices including the Digital library and many others, to address the needs of our community.

For your calendar, please don't forget to mark  EG'2002 in Saarbruecken next September 2-6, 2002 ( http://www.eg.org/EG2002 ). The Conference programme is very attractive, including a technical program with refereed papers and keynote invited speakers together with tutorials, state of the art reports, short paper sessions, industrial seminars and many other activities. We look forward to meeting you there. In 2003, we will have our Conference in Granada, Spain on September 1-6th. For the future, to help candidates to prepare their bids for the organization of future Conferences, a version of the EG Conference Guide has been prepared and is publically available in the web pages of the Association http://www.eg.org/ .

The Computer Graphics Forum Journal is in a good production and delivery schedule, having a healthy number of papers in the reviewing pipeline. I would like to thank our CGF managers (the Editors and the production team at Blackwell) for their effort and efficiency. You can also access the Digital material, the retroactive digitization of CGF, the Conference and Workshop Proceedings and the Computer Graphics Forum with multimedia attachments (both published and accepted papers in advance of publication on paper) if you visit the Digital Library  at   http://diglib.eg.org/  where you will also find a Bibliography Database with the BibTeX database of papers. Computer Graphics Forum volumes 12 to 22 are now in the EG Digital library. Preparation of camera ready copies for the Conference Proceedings has being handled entirely by Eurographics this year, using new production tools at the Braunschweig University. Continuing with Publications, please note that EG has discontinued the printed list of bookshop items and replaced it by the online publications list. The online list is updated as soon as new publications appear.

Eurographics is organizing a number of relevant and successful Workshops in specific areas. A new workshop on Geometry Processing has been approved and will start next year. Details of current events together with announcements of upcoming EG Workshops can be found at the online pages of the Workshop Working Groups  http://www.eg.org/EG/Docs/Workshops.html .

Eurographics workshop proceedings are being published by ACM press starting in 2002. Three workshop proceedings have already been produced and distributed at the workshops: Data Visualization, Virtual Environments and Rendering. The proceedings will change format, the new format being the present format of the Computer Graphics Forum and Conference proceedings. The electronic version of the papers together with additional material will be available to members through the EG Digital Library, whilst the table of contents and some sample material will be made generally available.

Apart from the publication of workshop proceedings, our relationship with Siggraph has continued and becomes stronger. Two Campfires have been held in 2001 and three are being held in 2002 (visual learning, augmented reality and disabilities). An Eurographics - Siggraph agreement for the exchange of representatives between the two Executive Committees was finalized, and the exchange has started with the Eurographics March 2002 meeting and the Siggraph May 2002 EC.

One of the Eurographics goals is to offer new innovative services, together with good quality events and the journal. Thanks to our local contacts in different countries, we can detect new interests and needs from our members, being able to promote country-based events and to support local activities through the Eurographics promotions board. Local chapters have a central role in these initiatives. It should be noted that two new EG chapters have been created since 2001, in Italy and Ireland. Very successful meetings (the meeting of the Italian Chapter and the inaugural meeting of the Irish chapter) have been held in 2002. Some other chapters are on the way. With regard to membership options, the all-inclusive Organizational Membership (for 1290 SFr per year) offers all services and benefits previously known as ?Institutional Membership? with all options taken as well as other benefit packages that are designed to appeal different kinds of organizations. We encourage you to have a look at the details at   http://www.eg.org/EG/Organization/member.html  . The Educational Package (for 250 SFr per year) offers all students, faculty and staff at one institution electronic access to STARs, Tutorials, the full ?Best Paper Award? contributions from the Annual event and CGF?s content pages. ( http://www.eg.org/EG/organization/edu_member.pdf ).

Last November, the Executive Board decided to create a new Educators Board to approach the needs of Computer Graphics educators and offer specific services in this particular domain. Educational workshops and diffusion of curriculum support materials are some of the planned actions. The new chair of the board is Steve Cunningham. My warmest welcome to him and many thanks for his help and for the time and effort he will certainly devote to this new task.

The Association has two new members of the Executive Board. Charles Wuetrich has taken over from Joaquim Jorge as chair of our On-line board, and Aderito Martos has becomed the new Assistant Treasurer taking over from Wolfgang Felger. I would like to sincerely thank the two past officers, J. Jorge and W. Felger for their help, dedication and time spent to the Eurographics tasks. My thanks, appreciation and encouragement to the new EXB members for their new duties.

The Eurographics Executive Committee has decided to implement a call for Strategic Projects. A number of Strategic projects will be announced in each call, in specific areas that are relevant for the Eurographics goals. Projects will be funded by EG after an evaluation of the proposals presented by EG members. The first call will be issued in the next two months.

Concerning the forthcoming Executive Committee elections, the nominating committee will be appointed during the EG 2002 Conference by the Eurographics Executive Committee and the General Assembly. I would like to invite you to suggest who might serve on the nominating committee and/or to suggest possible candidate names for the elections. In both cases, you can send your suggestions by e-mail either to me or to the secretary. Please also remember that there is an existing mechanism for members to make nominations (independently of the nominating committee) for the Executive Committee elections (article 16.7). An electronic balloting system has been implemented and accepted. It will be operational for the next elections in 2003.

The on-line board is working on a new design and structure of the Web site, that will be presented during Eurographics 2002. The needs of EG members, visitors and board members are being identified. Secure credit card processing is now working. A mechanism for members to retrieve forgotten passwords is now in place.

Following a request from the German Chapter, Eurographics will provide a section in the Digital Library for German Ph.D. thesis. Other chapters will probably join the initiative. Only Eurographics members will have the right to upload material into this section, but access will be open to the general community.

I would not like to finish without thanking the EG vice-chairs, the officers, the members of the Executive Board and Executive Committee and all volunteers for the time and effort they devote to the Association. Their time and work has resulted on an improvement of the overall services to members and on the introduction of attractive new services to face the challenges of the oncoming years.

I do hope that you will use the new services offered by EG and you find them helpful. Please visit our organization pages for more information.If you have any queries or suggestions please feel free to contact the Association?s officer you feel most appropriate, or myself
 

With my best wishes,
Yours faithfully
 

Pere Brunet
Chairman (pere@lsi.upc.es)