Professor Emeritus and GVU Founder Reflects on 50 Years of Attending SIGGRAPH

Jim Foley stepped off the train in Los Angeles, ready to receive one of the biggest honors of his career.

A train fanatic since he was a boy, Foley wanted to enjoy the occasion and talked his family into taking the train to travel to the 1997 SIGGRAPH conference. After all, this SIGGRAPH differed from all the others he had attended. He was accepting the Steven Anson Coons Award for lifetime contribution in front of 48,000 people.

But once they arrived at their hotel in Los Angeles, there was a problem. Foley had booked the rooms for the day before he arrived. The hotel, believing he was a no-show, canceled his reservation.

“Fortunately, Scott Owen, a Georgia State professor who was the conference organizer that year and also happened to be from Atlanta and lived about two blocks away from me, heard our plight and pulled some strings,” said Foley, Professor and Fleming Chair Emeritus and founder of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech.

“I don’t think we would have been out in the street, but there were so many people at SIGGRAPH that year all the hotels close to the conference were full.”

Foley has too many memories to count from attending SIGGRAPH over the years. But if there’s anyone who should tell the story of SIGGRAPH from its inception in 1974 to its most recent conference in August, he would be an ideal candidate. SIGGRAPH celebrated its 50th edition this year, and Foley has been to all but one of them.