Improving global participation in the sigcse technical symposium

SIGCSE is a global organization with members from well over 100 countries, but attendance at SIGCSE conferences is not always reflective of membership as a whole [5]. Attendance at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium (called the Symposium here) is overwhelmingly from the United States, with more than 92% of all attendees in recent years having a U.S. affiliation. Roughly half of the remaining 8% of attendees come from Canada with only 4% of attendees from the rest of the world, as shown in Figure 1. Researchers from the U.S. co-author 86.80% of all Symposium contributions, which includes 79.10% of all Symposium papers and 92.90% of all other Symposium contributions. This is well above what one would expect from SIGCSE membership which is on average 80% American. There is reason to be concerned with geographic representation at SIGCSE conferences. Conferences are the most common outlet for research in the computing education community, and if participation is geographically limited the research will not include or reach everyone it should. One of the benefits of conference attendance is networking, and the absence of SIGCSE members from certain countries may be impeding innovation for the community as a whole. SIGCSE conferences are also a driver for membership, which is crucial for the health and future of the organization.