Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is currently around 78,000. Its headquarters are in New York City.

Activities

ACM is organized into over 170 local chapters and 34 special interest groups (SIGs), through which it conducts most of its activities. Additionally, there are over 500 college and university chapters. The first student chapter was founded in 1961 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Many of the SIGs, like SIGGRAPH, SIGPLAN and SIGCOMM, sponsor regular conferences which have become famous as the dominant venue for presenting new innovations in certain fields. The groups also publish a large number of specialized journals, magazines, and newsletters.

ACM also sponsors other computer science related events such as the worldwide ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), and has sponsored some other events such as the chess match between Garry Kasparov and the IBM Deep Blue computer.

Services

ACM Press publishes a prestigious academic journal,

Journal of the ACM, and general magazines for computer professionals, Communications of the ACM (also known as Communications or CACM) and Queue. Other publications of the ACM include:

ACM Crossroads, the most popular student computing journal in USA
A number of journals, specific to subfields of computer science, titled ACM Transactions. Some of the more prominent transactions include:
- ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
- ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
- ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)
- ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)

Although Communications no longer publishes primary research, and is not considered a prestigious venue, many of the great debates and results in computing history have been published in its pages. Examples include:

Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous letter inveighing against the use of GOTO ("Go To statement considered harmful", CACM 11(3):147-148, March 1968).
Dijkstra's original paper on the THE operating system. This paper's appendix, arguably even more influential than its main body, introduced semaphore-based synchronization ("Structure of the 'THE'-Multiprogramming System", CACM 11(5):341-346, May 1968).
The "Revised report on the algorithm language ALGOL 60": A landmark paper in programming language design describing the result of the international Algol committee (CACM 6(1):1-17, January 1963).
Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl's original paper on Simula-68 ("Simula: An ALGOL-based simulation language", CACM 9(9):671-678).
the issue of what to call the then-fledgling field of computer science.
the issue of changing ACM's name, since the "machinery" in question is no longer the size of a house and is now measured in micrometres (all three attempts at changing ACM's name have failed).

ACM has made almost all of its publications available online at its Digital Library and also has a Guide to Computing Literature. It also offers insurance and other services to its members.

Digital Library

ACM has created a digital library where it has made all of its publications available. ACM’s digital library is the world’s largest collection of information on computing machinery and contains an archive of journals, magazines, conference proceedings online, and the recent issues of ACM’s publications. Online services include a forum called Ubiquity and Tech News digest, both containing the latest information about the IT world.

Competition

ACM's primary competitor is the IEEE Computer Society. It is difficult to generalize accurately about the distinction between the two, but ACM focuses on theoretical computer science and end-user applications while IEEE focuses more on hardware and standardization issues. Another blunt way to state the difference is that ACM is for computer scientists and IEEE is for electrical engineers, although the largest IEEE subgroup is its Computer Society. Of course, there is significant overlap between the two organizations, and they occasionally cooperate on projects like developing computer science curricula.

Special Interest Groups

SIGACCESS: Accessibility and Computing
SIGACT: Algorithms and Computation Theory
SIGAda: Ada Programming Language
SIGAPL: APL Programming Language
SIGAPP: Applied Computing
SIGARCH: Computer Architecture
SIGART: Artificial Intelligence
SIGBED: Embedded Systems
SIGCAS: Computers and Society
SIGCHI: Computer-Human Interaction
SIGCOMM: Data Communication
SIGCSE: Computer Science Education
SICDA: Design Automation
SIGDOC: Design of Communication
SIGecom: Electronic Commerce
SIGEVO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
SIGGRAPH: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
SIGIR: Information Retrievel
SIGITE: Information Technology Education
SIGKDD: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
SIGMETRICS: Measurement and Evaluation
SIGMICRO: Microarchitecture
SIGMIS: Management Information Systems
SIGMM: Multimedia
SIGMOBILE: Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing
SIGMOD: Management of Data
SIGOPS: Operating Systems
SIGPLAN: Programming Languages
SIGSAC: Security, Audit, and Control
SIGSAM: Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation
SIGSIM: Simulation and Modeling
SIGSOFT: Software Engineering
SIGUCCS: University and College Computing Services
SIGWEB: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

Leadership

The President of the ACM for 2004–2006 is David A. Patterson of the University of California, Berkeley.

ACM is led by a Council consisting of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Past President, SIG Governing Board Chair, Publications Board Chair, three representatives of the SIG Governing Board, and seven Members-At-Large. This institution is often referred to simply as "Council" in Communications of the ACM.

Infrastructure

ACM has five “Boards” that make up various committees and subgroups, to help Headquarters staff maintain quality services and products. These boards are as follows:

Publications Board
SIG Governing Board
Education Board
Membership Services Board
Professions Board

ACM's Committee on Women in Computing

ACM's committee on women in computing is set up to support, inform, celebrate, and work with women in computing. Dr. Anita Borg was a great supporter of ACM-W. ACM-W provides various resources for women in computing as well as high school girls interested in the field. ACM-W also reaches out internationally to those women who are involved and interested in computing.

External links

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