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2025 Q2 - April, May, June

2025 Q2 - April, May, June

09 April 2025

Attendees: Carol Payne, Stephanie Doppler, Lori Smallwood, Jennifer Cremer, Adelie Creek, Alexander Schwank, Kaitlin Pollock, Karen Ruggles (notes)

Agenda

  • Working Group Charter updates (Carol Payne)

  • SLP Updates (Karen Ruggles)

  • Dev Days Update (Olga)

Working Group Charter Notes:

  • Reasons: coming down from the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), changing out leadership

  • Leadership change: Karen Ruggles will serve as Co-Chair with Carol Payne, Rachel Rose to step down

  • TAC (landing page) help in adoption of Projects to ASWF and advising technical progress. Some members get votes such as Adopted Projects, Premier Member from member companies, industry representative

  • anyone can attend TAC meeting

  • TAC recently changed the process for Working Group to be absorbed into a Long Term Working Group (CI working group, USD working group, and D&I working group) or get absorbed into Project.

    • Working Groups that have “Long Term Working Group” status will now get a vote in the TAC

  • Question about voting: if a voting rep missing the TAC meeting can they send a proxy?
    As it is practiced now, no, they would miss the vote because they missed the meeting.

SLP Updates Notes:

Dev Days Update

  • Dev Days is a 24-hour virtual hackathon welcoming new contributors to any of our 15 open source projects. A great, easy way to get involved!

  • Due to demand, Dev Days is expanding with two events this year! Sign up to join on May 15 and/or September 25.

  • Sign up and bring a friend!

Action Items

14 May 2025

Agenda

  • Charter Update Review

  • SLP Update

  • Open Source Days & SIGGRAPH Discussion

11 June 2025

Attendees: Karen Ruggles, Rachel Rose, Carol Payne, Bill Ballew, Kaitlin Pollock, Adelie Creek, Jennifer “Ferby” Cramer, Olga Avramenko, Stephen Mackenzie, Lori Smallwood, Montana Adlington, Stephanie Doppler, Katelyn Itano

Agenda

  • SLP Updates (Adelie Creek)

  • Working Group Charter Updates (Carol Payne)

  • 2 upcoming community-facing events:

    • Town Hall (Carol Payne)

    • SIGGRAPH BOF (Jennifer Cramer)

  • Teaser of academic integration initiative (Karen Ruggles, Olga Avramenko)

ASWF D&I Vision & Plans

  • Mission statement

  • 3 focus areas:

    • Increase D&I representation within ASWF

    • External outreach and education

    • Member guidance

  • Working group 2025 plans

  • Plans for next quarter:

    • More outreach for SLP

    • Reinvigorating push on D&I framework discussion

    • Diving deeper into TAC diversity

SLP Updates

  • Hosted first successful speaker (Rachel Rose) for our keynote kickoff, Fireside Chat (Soft Skills & Networking workshop), and Coffee Hours (this year’s version of Office Hours)

  • More intentional focus this year on guiding mentees toward ASWF project contributions by promoting DevDays, hosting a Fireside Chat with guest speaker Carol Payne to introduce the ASWF projects, and encouraging mentees to join working group meetings and Slack channels for projects of interest

  • 2 SLP Alumni panels are planned, featuring 6 alumni sharing their internship experiences at companies like NASA, Disney, Pixar, and more

Charter Updates

  • Great feedback on wording has been integrated over the last few weeks.

  • The charter will serve as an evergreen reference, requiring minimal updates, and will apply broadly to the working groups.

  • Notable change from the previous charter:

    • The Governance section now goes beyond listing the chairs. It outlines the general responsibilities of co-chairs, identifies which chair serves as the TAC representative, and introduces a new Initiative Lead section, which explains how initiatives are formed, what Initiative Leads are responsible for, and how they contribute to the overall governance and functioning of the group.

  • This final draft of the charter received a thumbs-up consensus during the meeting, with any last-minute feedback welcomed.

SIGGRAPH BOF

  • Ferby is working on putting together a Birds of a Feather session, which will be in-person only without the possibility of streaming virtually nor recording.

  • Ideas on presentation structure:

    • Begin with the usual introductory slides presented during D&I meetings to introduce audience to ASWF’s mission and initiatives

    • Set clear goals for the BOF, such as:

      • Engaging the wider community

      • Exploring D&I topics that the working group is focusing on

      • Expanding awareness and participation in ASWF

    • Include a panel-style component with SLP participants and/or working group members sharing their experiences

    • Q&A discussion, driven by carefully framed questions that reflect ASWF D&I values

    • Encourage to join the Slack at the end of the session, e.g., “If you resonate with this, you belong here!”

  • Rachel and Carol will explore working with LF to ensure accurate and appropriate presentation of diversity-related data

Upcoming Virtual Town Hall

  • The virtual town hall will take place 1 week before SIGGRAPH

  • Rachel and Carol plan to sketch out a 5-year retrospective

  • Interest in hearing from people in the D&I group who would like to speak on their work and D&I involvement

    • Montana would like to talk about DevDays

  • Additionally, interest in identifying current SLPs and SLP alumni who might want to participate and share about their SLP experiences

  • A presentation rehearsal will be planned before the event

Academia Integration (Teaser)

  • Karen and Olga are exploring how D&I efforts can integrate more deeply with academia and how academic partnerships could boost participation in both DevDays, the SLP, and ASWF project contributions.

  • Karen is currently drafting a proposal for what more formal involvement from higher education institutions might look like.

  • The overarching goal is to educate students in the art + tech space and support the pipeline of young people entering the field, aligning with the original mission of the SLP.

  • This could eventually create new on-ramps, such as engaging self-taught coders who may not have followed an academic route and involving high school students.

  • Olga emphasized the importance of making this a sustainable initiative, one that won’t require ongoing maintenance from the D&I group.

  • Karen plans to share more details in future meetings!

Action Items

  • Please leave any last-minute feedback on the charter draft in the form of a comment.

  • If you would like to participate in the virtual town hall, please reach out to Carol and/or Rachel.

  • Reach out to Karen if you want to hear more about her academia integration proposal before the next meeting!