Asia is rising. While Japan has been dominant economically for decades, China and India are growing at a phenomenal rate, and the four Asian tigers, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan are still strongly on the prowl. Asian governments are pumping billions of dollars into digital media technology research and development, and Asian contributions in this field have increased tremendously.
SIGGRAPH conference figures show that while the number of papers from Asia has more than doubled in the new millennium, Asian attendance at the conference has fallen by about a third, due partly to cost and visa problems. These form the background to a meeting between Scott Owen and Alyn Rockwood, the President and Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH, and a group of Asian delegates during SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston. The meeting explored the possibility of having some form of the SIGGRAPH conference in Asia, which would also include Australia and New Zealand which lead to the first ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia opens in Singapore on 10th December 2008.
My opinion on all this? It is a great idea to extend what is the best computer graphics conference to a new research and industrial market as long as the quality remains intact. Now how about remembering Europe and perhaps setting up something similar over here as well (although I am sure this argument has already been discussed many many times before!)?
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