Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM

ACM Annual Report For Fy03

By CACM Staff
Communications of the ACM, January 2004, Vol. 47 No. 1, Pages 23-29
10.1145/962081.962082
Comments

We ushered in FY03 with a series of priorities and projects in place and a determination to set ACM on a course to expand and enhance member satisfaction and improve its financial outlook. Now, as we usher in this new calendar year, I am most pleased to announce the Association not only realized many of those significant goals, some even went beyond our own expectations.

Indeed, FY03 marked the most substantial growth in professional membership at ACM in over 15 years with a recorded increase of 6.1%—a noteworthy achievement at a time when the IT industry is still reeling. Much of this success can be traced to a number of factors deeply connected to membership, including the launch of new products and services for today's practitioners. The opening of the Professional Development Centre and the debut of ACM's Queue magazine contributed appreciably to our goal of offering more membership value to practitioners and young professionals. We also set out to improve the value of some of ACM's major products, like the Digital Library, and worked fervently to gain greater visibility for the Association.

Several of the new projects introduced in FY03 reflected ACM's role as a scientific educational leader. One of our most ambitious efforts came to the aid of high school computing teachers faced with making the transition from C++ to Java. The ACM's K–12 Task Force initiative—Java Engagement for Teacher Training (JETT)—offered a series of successful workshops for high school teachers across the U.S. to guide them through this conversion process.

I was also extremely pleased to see ACM's relationship with the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology (recently renamed in honor of the trailblazing spirit and founder of the IWT) intensify by working more closely with the Institute on a number of professional issues. The Association will co-present the Grace Murray Hopper Celebration in Computing each year and we will also work with the new ACM-W leadership to ensure the success of ACM programs to foster greater participation by women in our field.

It was an excellent year financially for most of the Association though some of the larger ACM conferences faced significant challenges. We pledge to make such financial performance a top priority as it allows our professional products and service to flourish.

In the coming year ACM will take great strides in raising the awareness and visibility of ACM. Indeed, increasing membership and sustaining solid financial performance depend on it. And, as always, we look to our many devoted volunteers, members, and industry partnerships to keep us on this path, constantly moving forward.

Maria M. Klawe
ACM President

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ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences, and applications of information technology.

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Publications

ACM Queue magazine made its debut in March and continues to draw a steady growth in subscriptions. The monthly publication focuses on the technical problems and challenges likely to emerge in the coming months—critical information for today's software developers, engineers, and IT professionals.

ACM's Digital Library/Portal received significant attention in terms of the depth of its coverage and level of performance. The Guide to Computing Literature doubled in size in FY03, to a database of over 750,000 bibliographic citations. Findings from an in-depth professional usability study resulted in a major redesign of the Portal's user interface capabilities. A reimplementation of portions of the system was also completed, giving the Portal a new level of integration and performance.

The ACM Publications Board gave the green light to five new journals: Computers in Entertainment; Transactions on Speech and Language Processing; Transactions on Applied Perception; Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization; and Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (in partnership with the IEEE).

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Conferences

The 2003 Federated Computing Research Conference drew over 2,400 attendees to its San Diego event. Not only did this once-every-four-years meeting break all attendance records, it was standing-room-only for the Turing Award lectures, which accompanied the FCRC activities. The conference featured several first-time events with attendance exceeding expectations.

SIGGRAPH celebrated its 30th birthday in San Antonio, where plans were made to spotlight its membership, its global projects, and enhance its Web site in the coming year.

A new SIGCOMM workshop called HOTNETS, designed to generate new concepts in networking, was an outstanding success in drawing attendees to share and discuss new work and ideas in the field.

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Professional Development

The Professional Development Centre has proven a significant success story for ACM. The PDC site (pd.acm.org) offers professional and student members over 200 free Web-training courses as well as discounts for more than 500 other courses; it's been a major attraction for new and renewing members. The program, in partnership with Sun Educational Services, helps members advance their technical knowledge in their current specialties, learn new skills in related fields, and enhance their prospects for a lasting career in IT.

ACM's Career Resource Centre (CRC)—a unique career site for professionals and students—introduced a new set of tools for members to help them achieve long-term and ongoing career success. An interactive Career Self-Assessment tool takes users through a detailed questionnaire to benchmark their current level of career fitness, helping them create a plan to guide them toward greater career satisfaction.

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Public Policy

ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) continues to promote the development of national and global policies and frameworks that advance the open interchange of information concerning computing and related disciplines.The voice of USACM is respected and trusted in legislative circles, and its analysis is highly regarded by decision makers.

In FY03, the committee's activities included testifying before a Congressionally mandated review panel regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) impact on computer security research and providing policymakers with information about the problems with shrink-wrap and click-on agreements as proposed in the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). In addition, USACM helped legislators develop a deeper understanding of the technical issues and risks associated with e-voting and the Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness project. The committee also crafted numerous statements and signed legal briefs on issues such as intellectual property, reverse engineering, privacy, and cyber security. To learn more about USACM, visit www.acm.org/usacm.

The efforts of the ACM Committee on Computer and Public Policy strive to make the organization more visible on a global scale with respect to a variety of issues related to computers and policy. The most visible project is the Forum on Risks to the Public in Computer and Related Systems, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of contributors worldwide since its inception in 1985.

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Education

An initiative implemented by the K–12 Task Force (in partnership with the College Board) produced a series of workshops addressing the pressing need for high school computer science teachers to learn Java as a result of the AP language switch from C++ to Java. The Java Engagement for Teacher Training (JETT) Project readies high school computer science teachers for the job of teaching Java to their students. Eight pilot JETT workshops were held in FY03 attracting over 400 teachers.

IS 2002—a revision of the 1997 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems—was introduced last spring and reflects the second collaborative effort by ACM, the Association for Information Systems, and the Association of Information Technology Professionals. Changes to the model illustrate stronger focused learning objectives, highlighting the essential elements that must be integrated in a bachelor's degree program.

SIGCSE initiated a new program of Special Project Grants to help its members investigate and introduce new ideas in the learning and teaching of computing. The grants range in size to a maximum of $5,000 per proposal.

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Students

The contest model for the Student Research Competition was rewritten this year and recharged by financial support from Microsoft. The SRC, a unique forum for student members to present original research, was traditionally held at the annual SIGCSE conference. The additional funding allowed the contest to spread its wings to include more rounds of multiple subject-based events at selected SIG conferences throughout the year. The Grand Final winners, along with their advisors, were presented with awards and cash prizes at the Annual ACM Awards Banquet in San Diego.

Participation in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest increased 30% in FY03, with preliminary and regional competitions drawing a record 23,000 students from 68 countries. Teams from 25 countries advanced to the IBM-sponsored World Finals in Los Angeles, where the team from Warsaw University took first-place title.

Substantial demographic data was collected on student members to better target ACM's services and offerings for this thriving segment of ACM's population. The Student Quick Takes email newsletter has been well received, as has the revamped ACM Student Web site featuring expanded information about membership opportunities and the organization as a whole.

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Local Activities

The Membership Activities Board chartered 71 new chapters—a record number in a given year. Of the 13 new professional and SIG chapters, 7 were internationally based, as were 25 of the 58 new student chapters.

SIGGRAPH reports 12 new chapters this year—six student and six professional chapters—bringing the total number to 69 chapters in 17 countries (53 professional and 16 student chapters). SIGCHI also continues to develop and benefit from its assertive chapters program, today counting over 60 chapters in 30 countries on five continents.

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International

The ACM K–12 Task Force worked with educators to organize and present a two-day symposium on computer science education in South Africa, attracting over 100 educators from across the country.

The Ambassador Program sponsored by the ACM Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W) expanded its international reach, now counting ambassadorships in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, and the U.K.

SIGMOD extended its international presence by establishing close relationships with societies in Europe and the Far East. There are ongoing efforts to make similar connections with Latin America.

SIGACT initiated the Developing Country Travel Awards at this year's Symposium in Theory of Computing (STOC 03). These new awards, of up to $5,000, are targeted for faculty and researchers from developing countries who are STOC authors or who contribute to the conference in some way.

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Electronic Community

ACM's TechNews service, providing members with the latest industry news in an online missive three times per week, remains a membership favorite in ACM's ongoing efforts to advance its electronic services. The success of this news service, in fact, inspired SIGDA to branch out with DA TechNews, a summary of the latest electronic design automation news emailed to SIGDA members twice each month.

The Coalition to Diversify Computing, a joint committee of the ACM, CRA, and IEEE-CS, facilitated the Just Garcia Hill database consisting of minority scientists who use various Web-based technologies to maintain timely information. The JGH project currently concentrates on life sciences, but will be expanded to those minorities in other computer-related science and engineering disciplines.

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Recognition

ACM signed an agreement with Intel last December to help raise the visibility of the A.M. Turing Award. With Intel's funding support, ACM increased the cash award from $25,000 to $100,000; a step that gains greater prominence for the award winners.

The ACM Fellows Program, established in 1993 to honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and IT, inducted 26 new fellows in FY03, bringing the total count to 468.

The first SIGMETRICS Achievement Award was given this year and subsequently every other year in recognition of an individual who has made long-lasting influential contributions to the theory or practice of computer/communication system performance evaluation.

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ACM Council

President	Maria M. Klawe
Vice President	David S. Wise
Secretary/Treasurer	Telle Whitney
Past President	Stephen R. Bourne
SIG Governing Board Chair	Alan Berenbaum
Publications Board Chair	Robert B. Allen
Members-at-Large	Roscoe Giles, Denise Gurer, David S. Johnson, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Edward Lazowska, Barbara Ryder, Gabriel Silberman
SGB Council Representatives	James Cohoon, Stuart Feldman, Mark Scott Johnson
ACM Headquarters
Executive Director/CEO	John R. White
Deputy Executive Director/COO	Patricia M. Ryan

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2002 ACM Award Recipients

A.M. Turing Award	Leonard Adleman, Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir
Software System Award	James Gosling
Grace Murray Hopper Award	Ramakrishnan Srikant
Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award	John Gorgone
Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award	Patricia M. Ryan
Distinguished Service Award	Raymond Miller
Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award	Peter Franaszek
Allen Newell Award	Peter Chen
SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering	John B. Bell, Phillip Colella
Doctoral Dissertation Award	Venkatesan Guruswami
2003 Eckert Mauchly Award	Josh Fisher

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Balance sheet

June 30, 2003 (in thousands)

Assets:
Cash and cash equivalents	$14,004
Investments	28,856
Accounts receivable and other current assets	1,512
Deferred conference expenses and other assets	8,852
Fixed assets, net of accumulated depreciation and amortization	767
TOTAL ASSESTS	$53,991
Liabilities and net assets:
Liabilities:
Accounts payable, accrued expenses, and other liabilities	$ 5,304
Unearned conference, membership, and subscription revenue	20,925
TOTAL LIABILITIES	26,229
Net Assets:
Unrestricted	27,265
Temporarily restricted	497
TOTAL NET ASSETS	27,762
TOTAL LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS	$53,991
Optional contributions fund—program expenses ($000)
Education Board Accreditation	$70
USACM Committee	58
International Federation for Information Processing	21
CCPP Risks Forum	4
TOTAL EXPENSES	$153
ACM Development Fund—program expenses ($000)
New Publications (primarily Queue>)	$617
TOTAL EXPENSES	$617

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Statement of activities

Year ended June 30, 2003 (in thousands)

	Unrestricted Net assets	Temporarily restricted Net assets	Total
REVENUE:
Membership dues	$4, 629		$ 4, 629
Publications	14,198		14,198
Conferences and other meetings	18,614		18,614
Interest and dividends	977		977
Net appreciation of investments	636		636
Contributions and grants	909	305	1,214
Other revenue	446		446
Net assets released from restrictions	207	(207)	-----
TOTAL REVENUE	40,616	98	40,714
EXPENSES:
Program:
Membership processing and services	$826		$826
Publications	9,280		9,280
Conferences and other meetings	19,157		19,157
Volunteer activities	1,032		1,032
Program support and other	3,595		3,595
TOTAL PROGRAM EXPENSES	33,890		33,890
Supporting Services:
General Administration	6,405		6,405
Marketing	1,555		1,555
TOTAL EXPENSES	41,850		41,850
Increase (decrease) in net assets	(1,234)	98	(1,136)
Net assets at the beginning of the year	28,499	399	28,898
Net assets at end of year	27,265 *	497	27,762*

*Includes SIG fund balance of $18,755

The Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2004 ACM, Inc.