We are pleased to announce that the SIGMOD/PODS Conference 2017 will be held in Chicago in the week of May 14, 2017.

We would like to thank all who helped us to find a new venue at such short notice. There were many suggestions, and many people helped investigate possible venues all around the world. It is fantastic to see this support and energy in the community after we had made the difficult decision to relocate SIGMOD/PODS 2017. We would like to particularly thank Aaron Elmore, Jennie Duggan, Mike Franklin, and Nita Yack from the University of Chicago and the Northwestern University for doing all the initial groundwork in Chicago and establishing contacts to hotels in Chicago. Furthermore, we would like to thank Rada Chirkova and Jun Yang, SIGMOD/PODS 2017 general chairs, and Selcuk Candan, conference coordinator, as well as others on the organization team including Chengkai Li, Ashwin Machanavajjhala, and Sudeepa Roy, for ironing out all the details. All these volunteers have worked non-stop in the last four weeks to make this move possible.

In the last weeks, there was an open discussion in our community on how to react to the US travel ban for citizens of seven Muslim countries. The SIGMOD organization fully supports ACM’s statement [1]. There were proposals to relocate SIGMOD/PODS 2017 outside the USA. Unfortunately, that would not have solved the problem. At the moment, the travel ban is suspended as a result of legal actions; however, we cannot predict how this situation will unfold and impact us in the coming months. In the presence of a travel ban, there is no good solution: If we stay in the USA, non-USA residents affected by the travel ban will not be able to attend. If we go outside the USA, members of the community who are affected by the travel ban and currently reside in the USA (in particular, many students) will not be able to attend. After additional consultation with the SIGMOD Advisory Board, we decided to hold SIGMOD/PODS 2017 in the USA (Chicago), and we will do our best to engage the members of the community who cannot travel to the USA in a dynamic (or interactive) conference setting.

We would like to thank everybody for their patience and support and hope to see you in Chicago in May.

SIGMOD Executive Committee

Donald Kossmann
Anastasia Ailamaki
Magdalena Balazinska
K. Selcuk Candan
Yanlei Diao
Curtis Dyreson
Yannis Ioannidis
Christian S. Jensen
Jan Van den Bussche

[1] http://www.acm.org/about-acm/suspension-of-visas