Complete Lack of Reaction to my Campaign Posts (so far)

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[update as of 2/2/2016.  We now have two very impressive comments by friends telling me that this endeavor is hopeless and to do something better with my time.  While I do not think that they completely understand my vision (ahem) I am probably going to take their advice. This is bitter tea for me as I have invested a lot into this already. A total waste of my time?]

So based on the reaction I have received so far to my posts on the SIGGRAPH EC, there is absolutely no interest among my friends to support my campaign or to think that this is a good idea shared by many people.

That is actually what I suspected, and what I have thought for a long time.  It fits several potential models of human behavior and while disappointing, none of this is a surprise.  Either people do not give a fuck about the misery of their fellows and what SIGGRAPH does or does not do about it, or people care as long as they do not have to do any work, including commenting on it in any way.

So far I have one friend who encourages me, and one former SIGGRAPH big wig who is very nice and encouraging and who grubs up information for me that is otherwise hidden by the mysterious SIGGRAPH cartel.

The problem is, without support I am not going to do this.  I am tired of being the abused tool of people who want change but dont want to inconvenience themselves to get it.  There are more important things to do in this world.

But this is an early response.  Maybe there are people who are reading my blog who need time to get the word out and generate a response.  If so, do it now, please.

I could not be more cynical about the computer animation community, however.

How could I have fallen in with such a selfish, anti-intellectual and amoral group?

What the fuck was I thinking?

PS You will note that the formatting of this post is different from all other posts, mostly, on this blog.  This is because of an ancient bug in Blogspot which has never been fixed and never will be fixed. I do not have the energy to try and get around it any more.  You will just have to read my blog for its content, if anyone reads my blog at all, and not for the formatting consistency.  I like Blogspot, its free and its useful, but it is far from perfect and issues like this are part and parcel of using it.

Notes on my Write-in Campaign for the EC of ACM SIGGRAPH as of January 31, 2016

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As many of you know, I have been trying to influence the Executive Committee (the EC) of ACM SIGGRAPH for many years, and as you may also know, I have been a complete failure in doing so. Apparently SIGGRAPH at the national level is a tightly-held cartel of “right thinking” individuals and no one else is welcome.

I have written many posts on my blog (www.globalwahrman.com) about what the issues are and what I would do, and if you would like that background the two most relevant posts can be found here where I discuss my campaign platform and here which is the first post from 2012 that started this effort.

As SIGGRAPH has ignored my request for information such that I could try a write-in campaign for the EC for this year, why we simply push it off to next year and see if they ignore me as well for next year. They can do this indefinitely, and I will still be here, trying to be a voice and being ignored and abused (or at least, that is my point of view, I bet that the EC might have another view of the same events).

But one thing has changed, I no longer feel that I have the resources to do this on my own. Choosing computer graphics & animation as a career has without doubt destroyed my life and impoverished me, and if I am going to do “the right thing” and basically do more charity work, then I need to be minimally funded.

I was originally planning to use the referendum of getting appropriate write-in signatures as indication of support, but I now think that I will see if I have support for this by seeing if people want to fund me. If insufficient people want to fund me, then that is a clear statement that I do not have such support and I will drop it. Believe me, if I had the money I would do this on my own, but I dont.

So I will review and assess what I think the minimum budget of this not-for-profit charity endeavor will be, see if it needs to be registered as a charitable organization or whether it can be done informally (and thus save quite a few legal fees) and then put it up as a www.kickstarter.com project or via another service if one appears more correct for the kind of project this is.

You could do me a favor by reading the background on this effort and forwarding off a link to this to as many people as you think might be interested. And do the same thing again when/if the Kickstarter/whatever project is initiated.

Is this worth our time and money? I am not sure, but it might be. We will let people vote on how worthwhile they think it is with their comments, if any, and with their wallets on Kickstarter when/if that project is initiated.

Thank you.

My Platform Should I Run for the Executive Committee of SIGGRAPH

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For many years I have attended the national conference of SIGGRAPH and been amazed that as far as I can tell the conference is totally unaware that there is vast unemployment in this field and that those who have managed to continue working have had to move overseas to do so. Yet SIGGRAPH keeps on pushing the field as a sensible one to go into without knowing or caring whether or not these new people will be able support themselves or their families by doing so.

I happen to also believe that computer animation is unusually blessed or cursed with the intangible glamour of the various entertainment industries which acts as a lure to the unwary. (1)  I can tell you that when I made the choices to go into this field I had no idea, no one told me and I did not understand, that I was going into a niche industry and very likely would experience long periods of unemployment.  Had I realized that, I would not have gone into this field. Such a choice would have been completely irresponsible on my part.

And yet we keep on encouraging young people to go into this field without a hint of caution even though we do not even know the size of the disaster that has already occurred.  I believe that this is both irresponsible and morally wrong.

After years of complaining and trying to figure out how to change things I came to the conclusion that the only way to be heard was to become a member of the Executive Commitee of ACM SIGGRAPH (the EC).  Although the EC is nominally elected by the membership of SIGGRAPH, in reality to be allowed to run for the EC one must be approved by the Nominating Committee and the Committee lost no time making it clear to me that they had no interest in my contribution.

There is however in the By Laws of ACM SIGGRAPH a provision for write-in candidates to be nominated and were I to wish to persevere it would be through this mechanism. Unfortunately, the details of this mechanism are undocumented as far as I can tell, but a friend has done a lot of work and seems to be able to extract the needed information from the relevant people.

Were I to run a write-in campaign for nomination, I would need approximately 70 signatures of people who were both current members of ACM and of SIGGRAPH. Those signatures would have to be on a form that is of yet undefined and whose original is provided on paper, as I currently understand it.

The number of signatures would not have been a problem "back in the day", but now most of the people I know who work or have worked in computer animation are not, to the best of my knowledge, members of SIGGRAPH as SIGGRAPH has worked very hard to make itself completely irrelevant to the production community. It may be one of the ironies of this campaign that I am able to get a dozen or two "new" members for SIGGRAPH as most of the people I know who would support me in this foolish endeavor would have to become members to do so.

Why should you bother to go through this trouble merely to make me eligible to run for a “position at large” on the Executive Committee?  In other words, even if the write-in campaign is successful, I would still have to run for election.  The best answer I can give is to itemize what my platform would be should I run for office and let you decide for yourself.

Let me preface these platform notes by saying that many people I have talked to who are more knowledgeable than I am about how SIGGRAPH at the national level actually works believe that there is either (a) nothing SIGGRAPH can do in any of these areas and/or (b) SIGGRAPH should not even try.

Let me also note that apparently the EC of SIGGRAPH thinks that it is not important that several thousand people (the number is unknown) who were undoubtedly encouraged by SIGGRAPH to make the questionable choice to go into this field. I would be a minority of one on the EC and likely have very little or no influence.

I would however be a voice for the disenfranchised and be certain that their plight was at least discussed at least to some small extent.

So were I to run, I would run on the following platform (certain to be revised).

1. To the extent possible, see to it that the program and events of SIGGRAPH do not encourage people to go into this field without a good understanding of what the possibility of employment in this field is.

2. To the extent possible, attempt to understand what the real employment in the fields associated with SIGGRAPH actually are and what the current unemployment is.

3. To the extent possible, make it possible for those who have dedicated a substantial portion of their career to this field are enabled to attend the national conference. The current rules and procedures do not in any way go far enough to permit this.

4. To the extent possible, make allowances for those who are unemployed or economically challenged have access to the full body of SIGGRAPH publications without fee or at a reduced rate.

5. To the extent possible, address the issues of ageism in computer animation, at least by having reminders at relevant conference events of the illegality of ageism as it applies to employment.

6. To the extent possible, attempt to assess the amount of hardship caused by the off-shoring of computer animation production to other countries and what remedies there may exist for this.

7. In the likely event that no suitable remedies exist for the problem of 6, to the extent possible see what can be done to train members of SIGGRAPH for other fields where employment is possible.

8. To the extent possible, encourage and try to organize outreach programs to try and encourage industry to create jobs that need the skills that computer graphics and animation provides.

A few more points and then we will wrap this up. It is not clear to me that I can afford to be a member of the Executive Committee should I be elected since I am so chronically un- and under-employed. However, we can probably cross that bridge when and if we get there, and something can probably be worked out.

It is equally unclear to me whether my efforts would result in any tangible benefit to anyone and whether or not it would be a good use of my time.

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1. One year SIGGRAPH has a panel celebrating 25 years of Rhythm and Hues.  The next year R&H is out of business, 1000 people are dumped on the street, and SIGGRAPH says nothing. Dreamworks lays off all of their Nothern California studio, but SIGGRAPH does not notice or mention it. Last year, SIGGRAPH had a presentation about 30 years of ILM. Not a word about all the people ILM has laid off as they downsized. A young person attending SIGGRAPH might draw the conclusion that this was a glamourous and rewarding field to be in and that unemployment was not an issue. Pixar is huge, right? It never lays off people, right?

A Little Personal Democracy and a Write In Campaign for SIGGRAPH in 2015

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I am now asking Siggraph for the details and deadlines associated with the process of getting write-in votes to be allowed to run for the Executive Committee of Siggraph.

I am certain that I have missed the deadline for the next election, so any signatures that I gather at Siggraph next week will presumably be for the election after this one.

I plan to run on a very specific platform and if I get elected, I will consider that a mandate to research the state of non-academic employment in computer graphics and animation in order to determine, or attempt to determine, how many are employed and where, what the categories of employment are, what the stability and projected future of these positions are, to what extent are these positions overseas, and to what extent unemployment has affected the field. And other issues along the same lines as well. The general idea here is, what should we tell young people if they express a desire to go into this field?  What should we tell them about the likelihood of employment and what terms and conditions come with that employment.  Let me give you two examples: first everyone who comes into this field should understand that it is considered a niche field and no experience in it will qualify you for anything else and second, on the entertainment side of things, people are never hired for more than a project no matter what they are told.

These are very large issues and one person without resources is not likely to get definitive answers to these and related questions. However, I can use the position on the committee to get what information people are willing to share with me and write up whatever I learn.

I also plan to report back to the membership the ideas, concerns, and perceived limitations on the part of members of the committee, many of whom have told me that there is nothing that Siggraph is empowered to do on these issues. Although I may not agree with them, I can certainly admit that they have much more experience than I do at that level of the organization and I can, I think, be of help by reporting to the membership what the concerns are and what people believe. I would hope to do this in a professional and collaborative manner that causes no concerns or offense to anyone to the best I can manage.

I doubt that my efforts would result in any sort of official statement or report from Siggraph on these topics, but maybe we can achieve some lesser goals. At the least I would hope I could convince the EC, or most of the EC, that we can not just encourage people to bet their careers on this field without significant warnings and statements of concern. It should not be all rah rah rah the future is bright, which has been the story from Siggraph to date.

There seem to be a lot of miserable and unemployed people out there. This is guesswork on my part because no official or unofficial statistics exist to the best of my knowledge. Yes there are many people who are gainfully employed and doing good work, but I am also aware of many who are constantly moving from project to project in a way that is disruptive to their lives, and others who are not employed and have not been for a while and wonder what they are going to do. No doubt I have sampling error, how could I not? Yes maybe this is normal, or the “new normal” and that could be the case. But if so, we should make sure people know that.

Whether we like it or not, Siggraph was part of the movement that created this industry segment, the use of computer animation and synthetic imagery in the creation of film and related media, both full length computer animated films and live action films with visual effects. This movement started in large part by idealists who used Siggraph as a venue through the 1980s, when no one believed us, and the 1990s, when they started to believe, into the next century when things exploded. I was a part of this movement and I contributed and I was there, so I know Siggraph helped. But now that the industry is very large, and yet with so much turmoil, and so much unemployment, that it is our responsibility to do what we can to make things better and at the very least make it clear to those who would bet their lives and their careers on the field what the situation is as we understand it.

If you are attending Siggraph next week and you are a member of Siggraph, I hope you will find me and sign my petition so that I can be considered for election to the EC.

You should also feel free to send comments or concerns, hopefully in a postive and cordial manner, by either leaving a comment here or sending me email at the address below. If you do send email, please put something in the subject field about what it is about so I know to read it.

Thank you.

M. Wahrman

michael.wahrman at gmail.com

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com

Announcing my Write-In Campaign for the Executive Committee of ACM SIGGRAPH

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It is with some nervousness that I announce my candidacy for the Executive Committee of ACM SIGGRAPH as “Member at Large”.

A “member at large” is one who has a vote but has no particular responsibility besides participating int he discussion and voting on the issues. I would not want the responsibility of being Treasurer, for example, or President.

So there are three things to discuss: why I am running, what I would do if elected and finally the mechanics of being allowed to run for office. The third issue, how to get nominated, is the least interesting, but of critical importance. I want to discuss this first, and then get into the more complicated matters of why and what I would I do.

To run for the board of SIGGRAPH, one must stand for election and be voted in by the entire membership. But, in order to stand for election one must either be nominated by a nominating committee or one must run a write-in campaign and get a certain number of signatures from members of national SIGGRAPH. The number of signatures required is 1% of the current national membership which translates to between 90 and 100 people. 100 to be safe as usually in these matters a few signatures will be disallowed for one reason or another.

I first attended national SIGGRAPH in 1980, but I had been attending local SIGGRAPH since 1978 or so

Obviously, running a write-in campaign is a hassle, why not just be nominated by the Committee? Good question. The answer is that I tried but they failed to nominate me. I had a very pleasant and informative meeting with the Committee which I found quite entertaining but it did not result in my nomination. I may have given the Committee some reason to believe that I would work in support of issues that they did not think were appropriate for SIGGRAPH to be concerned about, such as the collapse of computer animation production employment in this country and its failure to be provide substantial employment outside of the Entertainment industries.

But even if it turned out that my ideas were not appropriate and practical, I think it is of great importance that we discuss these issues and see to it that we can do what we are allowed to do. At the very least, SIGGRAPH can acknowledge that there is a problem instead of blissfully ignoring it and enticing people into a field where they will not be able to work. Which has been their policy for over a decade. Archaeology can make it clear what the odds are of a budding archaeologist to work in that field, Computer Animation can as well.

'

There is also some belief out there that SIGGRAPH only wants educators to be on the Executive Committee, which, if true, is a very bad idea on their part and certainly needs to be discussed with the membership. The strength of SIGGRAPH was always interdisciplinary and serving the interests of any one or two groups would be contrary to the spirit that made SIGGRAPH the phenomenon that it once was and which it is not any longer.

Whatever their reasons may be, SIGGRAPH allows for nominations of another sort. In this second path to nomination, one must collect the signatures of 1 percent of the eligible members of national SIGGRAPH. I believe that translates to roughly 90 or 100 signatures. If one gets those signatures in a proper format then one can run for election. One still has to be elected by the general membership of course.  This just gets you on the ballot.  

I will discuss in future posts why I believe I am qualified and why I bring a legitimate point of view to the board of SIGGRAPH. But at the very least, should I be elected, I will write about what decisions SIGGRAPH makes and why in a form that may be of interest to those of us who are not educators per se. Thus, at the very least, I think I will provide a useful service should I be elected.

And so I am asking my friends and colleagues to find me at SIGGRAPH in LA this year and, if you are a member, sign a petition to allow me to run for election. If it were possible to put up some sort of notice at your place of work or anyplace else you think that SIGGRAPH members might be, that would also be helpful. Or if you are not attending this year, but are a member, and you want to help, contact me and we can make arrangements for you to sign a petition without having to track me down on site.

Even if I get the appropriate signatures, and even if I am elected, I am chronically underfunded and I may have to make special arrangements to actually serve on the board. But I won't worry too much about that now nor should you. If I am elected, I am sure I can scrounge something up for airfare and hotel or whatever else this activity will cost.

I want to leave you with the thought that we once believed that SIGGRAPH was very important in creating this revolution and that we owe it to the organization and its history to try and make it as good as it can be in the circumstances of the tragedy of its simultaneous great success and failure which is the situation that we have today.

Thank you.

ACM SIGGRAPH & The Mixed Blessing of a Single World View

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Some must toil in the slave pits of the rich and some must serve on elite committees that stand above the fray, perfect, immutable, and untouched.  But those who serve in those vile yet glamourous positions in industry can not also serve the committees that rule because they do not adhere to the One World View.  It is only this world view that permits the consensus that allows the elite to rise above the unpleasantness that is the world of computer animation.

As my readers know I have been puzzled by the failure on the part of SIGGRAPH to acknowledge certain issues and to make efforts to help their constituency.  It is as if those problems did not exist or that somehow SIGGRAPH was just completely unaware of them.   (1)

And so, since for years I have wondered who runs SIGGRAPH and how it is managed at the national level, it seemed logical that I educate myself as to the processes and people involved.  I have been an attending member of this community since 1980 and of ACM since 1976 and know many of the people in the field, so it seemed to me that it should be straightforward to figure this out.

I think I now understand most of what I set out to know and which I will describe to you below.  It is mostly benign, it is certainly well-intentioned.

The national organization of our community is not secret, but it is elite, and as always with these things they have a sense of who is "of the body of Christ" and who is not by their very nature eligible to be a member.

If one is persistent you will discover that one of the all day meetings of the Executive Committee (EC) of SIGGRAPH is open to the general membership.  This meeting is generally right before or after the national conference. What is odd is that they do not seem to tell anyone about this which is a little inexplicable but probably not intentionally evil.  I have attended SIGGRAPH since 1980 and this is the first I have ever heard of it.   Nevertheless, the minutes of these meetings are published online at a link I provide below.  Also, the annual report by the president is also published online, as well as various policies and bylaws and these altogether  bring a lot of clarity as to what the people who run SIGGRAPH think and worry about.  I am going to presume that like so many other organizations, the picture that is presented is by no means complete, but it is enough for now.

Paul Debevic, formerly of the EC, was also helpful in publishing on Facebook a picture of the EC at work.  I found this picture very entertaining and enlightening.   I don't have a copy of it, but I am emailing Paul for one and I will add it when it arrives.

It seems to me that these people are conscientious and have the well-being of SIGGRAPH at heart.   If I think that they are not aware of a variety of problems and that they have helped contribute to a disaster on the ground, they will not agree with me.  They have a very specific world view, which I will call for want of a better term, an "Educators Point of View", and are probably not aware of the issues that exist in the various production communities even as they glorify and celebrate those industries at their conference.

And that I think is the heart of the problem.  In building a culture and a group of people who can work by consensus, several important communities that are involved in SIGGRAPH are not represented on the EC.  I doubt that this is because of any evil desire to disenfranchise these groups so much as it is a desire to keep the committee centered and effective.  Be that as it may be, the result is that the EC, in my humble opinion, does not acknowledge or address many issues of great importance, at least of importance to some of us.

My first attempt to be nominated for the EC was very politely considered and declined.   Once nominated, one must then stand for election and must receive a certain number of votes from the general membership in order to be on the Executive Committee. Comparing myself to the current members of the committee,  I think I am completely qualified to be nominated and that my position statement would offer the voting membership a candidate with a clearly different point of view and that this would be well-received.

My choices now are to try again to be nominated, or run a write-in campaign to be nominated outside the normal nomination process.   I hesitate to do the latter because its a lot of work, although I think I would get the required signatures if I organized for it.  Perhaps I will do so next SIGGRAPH if I am still interested.

Because I am frankly discouraged.   I have been informed by a long term colleague and esteemed volunteer of SIGGRAPH as well as an alumni of the EC, that the judgment was made long ago that I was ineligible for participation in SIGGRAPH at some level.

I do not know what this means.  I do not understand it at all.  This has left me very troubled and I had hoped to clear this up somewhat at SIGGRAPH but unfortunately I can not attend SIGGRAPH this year because of resource conflicts.  Maybe it can be cleared up remotely.

I will write another post that clearly describes point by point the changes that SIGGRAPH should make, or at least discuss.   This will basically be a summary and restatement after reconsideration of other posts already written in light of what I have learned since then.  For example, I believe SIGGRAPH should stop glorifying the entertainment industry which they do constantly.   They should make a point of showing the dark side if they must also glorify this industry, so that people who are influenced in their career by SIGGRAPH can see other points of view.

Now that I understand, at least to some extent, how the EC works and who is on it, I understand their failure to act on these issues or even to discuss them.   That is what having a homogeneous world view is all about.  They see what they want to see and everything is beautiful.

I know someone is reading my "Issues" post from 2012 because my web site statistics went crazy there for a few days, and then settled down to its normal pace.  About 1,500 people seemed to read it on those three days, or maybe one person 1,500 times.  Although I do not know who those people are or what they think, I submit that this is evidence that some of what I write about must be of interest to people who attend SIGGRAPH, or why else would they be reading it?

I want to help, but I do not want to force myself and my ideas on people.  Its a lot of trouble, it has very little upside for me, and besides, how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to sincerely want to change.

SIGGRAPH EC Meeting Minutes

http://www.siggraph.org/about/ec-meeting-minutes

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1. Issues include encouraging people to go into computer animation in spite of vast unemployment, having keynote speakers who do not know what a computer is, blind endorsement of many of the worst people of the entertainment industry and so forth.   I will write a more concise description of what exactly I would have SIGGRAPH do to bring more balance to the force but until then you can get a very good idea from reading some of the posts on the right side of this blog listed under SIGGRAPH.   And please do not say that SIGGRAPH can not do this or that.  Be serious, ok?  SIGGRAPH can certainly pick keynote speakers who are from our community.   SIGGRAPH can certainly make it clear to young people what the statistics are about employment and have counter programming.   They could certainly have discussion of the state of employment in computer animation in fiction and non-fiction areas.  They can certainly have representation by non-entertainment users of computer graphics.   There is not the slightest prohibition of any of this in their charter. People need to grow up a little about what they can and can not do.

SIGGRAPH, Suggestions and Misunderstandings

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good:Oh Lord! Please don't let me be misunderstood.  (1)

I have had some useful feedback from two different people with impeccable credentials at the national level of SIGGRAPH and they both had a similar message: many of the things I “propose” (or seem to be proposing) in my writings about SIGGRAPH are just not possible for an educational institution. End of discussion.

I have no doubt that they are in part completely correct (although I do not know the details I am willing to believe that those details are there) but I have also been misunderstood. Terribly misunderstood. You see, I have made no recommendations. None whatsoever.

What I have done, though, is to say that SIGGRAPH needs to consider what, if anything, needs to change to avoid contributing to the disaster which is employment in computer animation in this country and the unthinking boosterism of the entertainment uses of computer animation that I have witnessed over the last few decades and where possible change their behavior and see what can be done to improve the situation. If the answer is “Nothing can be done”, then at least we will have understood the situation and turned over every stone. But I am quite sure that there are things that can be done.

But let me for the record reassure everyone of the following points:

1. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a bomb throwing anarchist.

2. I do not expect nor would I encourage SIGGRAPH to do anything that would violate ACM or other rules of behavior and endanger their not-for-profit status or good standing with ACM.

3. Were the membership of SIGGRAPH to agree with my program points (2) and see fit to elect me to the executive committee, they should know that I would be a voice for these points at the committee but would expect to act in consensus with the wishes of the committee and never act unilaterally.

4. I am very confident that very reasonable changes could be made at the national SIGGRAPH level that would address many of the issues I have brought up in other essays to my satisfaction at least. Remember, I am not arguing that SIGGRAPH should stop encouraging people to take risks involving their future employment, I am arguing that SIGGRAPH should stop the unthinking boosterism and temper the rah-rah glamourization (sic) of the entertainment industry with some basic facts about the nature of that industry and the likelihood of serious long-term employment.

5. I am quite aware that organizations such as SIGGRAPH have constraints on them that are different from those on private corporations or individuals, although some of the specific details of the constraints in the case of SIGGRAPH may be a surprise to me. I am however an adult with serious and relevant experience, e.g. running a laboratory at the RAND Corporation, and I know something about these matters.

6. All that we are discussing here is whether I can be allowed to be considered for memebership to the EC, to put my name before the membership of SIGGRAPH and let them decide whether they want someone such as me to represent them.

7. Frankly I am concerned that I might be biting off more than I can chew.  I am one person, unaffiliated, mostly unemployed and without resources.  Perhaps the people on the EC need to have a large corporation or University behind them to support them?   Stranger things have occurred.  No one has mentioned this to me however.

Keep in mind that I have had serious trouble getting in touch with the committee in a way that leads me to believe that they understand the issues and are taking steps to correct them.   Whoever runs national SIGGRAPH seems oddly distant and abstract.  My self-nomination for the EC is in response to that.

I hope that I have addressed any concerns that anyone might have about my suitability for nomination, and that if they need any more details about my qualifications and agenda that by all means they send me an email so that we can address their concerns. (3)

I appreciate very much the time and diligence that people have put into this matter and I am hopeful that they are easily resolved.

For all I know, no one else at SIGGRAPH is concerned about these matters and thus would not be elected to the EC, which would be fine.

Its probably the red hair. I have noticed over the years that it really does seem to freak some people out.

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1. Lyrics for the first stanza are:

Baby, do you understand me now?

Sometimes I seem a little mad.

Dont you know that no one alive can always be an angel?

When things go wrong, I seem a little bad.

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good:

Oh Lord! Please don't let me be misunderstood.

Wrjitten by Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, Sol Marcus

Original cover by Nina Simone

Most famous cover by The Animals.

Live performance of the song by the Animals is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR7h-4yvd-o

Particularly noteworthy here is that the drummer wears a very narrow black tie. Lets return to the days when our rock & roll musicians showed a little respect for their audience by dressing more formally.

2. Program points are: A. Be realistic about the state of employment in computer animation, whether internationally or this country, B. Avoid the boosterism that has occurred regarding the entertainment industry and deal with that industry more realistically (e.g. the industry has no long term employment a priori and does not finance research except in the most extreme circumstances), C. Broaden SIGGRAPH to include other application areas beyond entertainment such as the two session panel on cultural heritiage of a few years ago (I note in passing that cultural heritage has employment issues of its own) and D, See what can be done to increase employment in the areas covered by computer animation and/or see what programs can be developed to help people who have made the commitment to computer animation and are now suffering hardship because of it make a transition to other industries, and finally E. See what can be done to make it easier for people to connect to the formal programs and individuals in computer science at SIGGRAPH, something I have found very difficult to do in the last decade or more.

3. Send email to michael.wahrman at gmail dot com.