Letter from the chair

First of all, I want to thank all of the SIGART members who have expressed their support and encouragement over the past few months as I've begun to learn the ropes. In particular, I owe a great deal of thanks to Lewis Johnson, whose public and behind-the-scenes efforts over the last six years have greatly increased the stature, visibility, and viability of SIGART. We are happy for his recent efforts to organize an awards program, and I will continue to look to him for guidance over the coming months on many fronts. It is also a great comfort to be able to draw on the extensive experience and abilities of Marie Bienkowski as vice chair and Angel Puerta as secretary-treasurer. I am also grateful for the support and loyalty of Jörg Müller, Bamshad Mobasher, and Robert St. Amant, and am looking forward to engaging their talents as we look for the best ways to continue to improve SIGART. Rosenschein are organizing the Autonomous Agents conference outside the United States for the first time. In the coming years, I expect to see a great increase in international participation in SIGART activities. One of the questions I have been asking myself is: How well is SIGART serving the needs of its members? Lillian Israel, ACM Director of Membership and Marketing, has begun an effort to answer this question through an initial survey whose results we will share in the coming months. In the meantime, I will be looking for ways to continue improvement along some of the fronts that I have already heard mentioned by some of you. We will continue to work for high quality in our electronic and print publications, and look for ways to promote greater involvement with industry and standards organizations. Building on the successful AAAI-co-sponsored doctoral consortia, Marie Bienkowski and I will continue to seek new ways to provide support and encouragement to students, as well as strengthen bridges with our friends at AAAI, IEEE, SIGCHI, SIGKDD, and SIGGRAPH.