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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: 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: 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 (ACM 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. Fellows The ACM Fellows Program was established by Council of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1993 "to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM." There are presently about 500 Fellows out of about 60,000 professional members. Special Interest Groups Conferences The ACM sponsors numerous conferences listed below. Most of the special interest groups also have an annual conference. ACM conferences are often very popular publishing venues and are therefore very competitive. For example, the 2006 WWW conference only accepted 14% of the long papers that were submitted, and CIKM only accepted 15% in 2005. 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: ACMs 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. See also | ||||||||
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