Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM

ACM Annual Report For Fy04

By CACM Staff
Communications of the ACM, December 2004, Vol. 47 No. 12, Pages 63-69
10.1145/1035134.1035135
Comments

ACM's global influence as a professional society to which the IT community turns for vital scientific information and professional leadership and guidance was never more evident than in FY04. And as I reflect on my two years as ACM's president, I find the manner in which the Association has consistently and conscientiously responded to the professional needs and expectations of its members a source of particularly pride.

For instance, it became increasingly clear this year that the issue of IT outsourcing was of serious concern to our membership. As a result, ACM Council promptly established a task force to take an in-depth look at the job migration resulting from offshoring IT jobs. The all-encompassing efforts of the Job Migration Task Force will be as significant as they will be challenging, for as an international association we must look at all the issues from a global perspective.

To address the significant problems regarding the health of computer science in high schools, the framework of a new association within ACM was established for high school and middle school teachers of computer science. The mission of the Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA) is to support and promote the teaching of computer science and computer science concepts by providing opportunities for teachers and students to better understand the discipline and to more successfully prepare them to teach and to learn.

One of the greatest political and technological hot buttons in FY04 was certainly the escalating concerns and confusion over electronic voting systems. Once again, ACM's U.S Public Policy Committee (USACM) was at the forefront of this debate. Indeed, the superb efforts of this committee and others in the computing community in alerting members and policymakers to the weaknesses of current e-voting systems led many states and organizations to rethink their e-voting policies.

ACM's International Collegiate Programming Competition remains a centerpiece of ACM's efforts to influence the computer science community by challenging the brightest programming students from around the world to test their skills and present their talents on a global scale. The annual event always draws industry interest and plentiful media coverage worldwide.

I am also pleased to announce ACM recorded a second year of a significant membership increase. In fact, it has been 18 years since there has been a two-year increase on par with this jump. By the end of FYO4, ACM professional membership increased 3.3%, making for a combined increase of 9.6% over the last two years.

As you read the following pages you will note the year was filled with initiatives and projects designed to increase the professional value of being a member of ACM. And you can expect much more in the year ahead. As always, we are indebted to the countless volunteers, members, and growing industry partnerships for keeping ACM's roots ever strong and its branches always reaching upward.

It was a pleasure and an honor to serve as your president.

Maria M. Klawe
ACM President

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's stellar online service—the Digital Library/Guide—continues to flourish in content, usage, and prestige. The Guide to Computing Literature bibliographic database increased to over 800,000 citations in FY04 and the number of full-text articles in the DL rose to 138,500. Moreover, evolving enhancements to the Portal's performance, integration, and user interface capabilities have met with great membership satisfaction.

ACM Queue completed its first full year of publication and has established both its voice and its reputation as a unique magazine for the serious practitioner/software engineer. Queue's Web component has also proven a successful venture, hosting popular online discussions of its published material.

Two new journals were launched in FY04 and proposals for four more were vetted and approved. The new publications were Computers in Entertainment, and Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization.

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Education

The K–12 Task Force led a successful effort to establish a grassroots organization of educators focused on improving the K–12 state of affairs in the U.S. and Canada. With timely and critical support from ACM, the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) was formed with the purpose of spiriting substantive education across a range of computing disciplines. ACM's start-up funding will be enhanced by a significant financial commitment from Microsoft.

The Java Engagement for Teacher Training (JETT) workshops continue to provide much-needed professional development workshops and networking opportunities for high school teachers. Over 50 JETT workshops have been held nationwide serving nearly 300 high school CS educators. Every JETT Workshop offers a unique perspective from leaders in the field always working to find new ways of attracting female students and underrepresented minorities to computer science.

ACM's K–12 Task Force Curriculum Committee produced The ACM Model Curriculum for K–12 Computer Science. The document integrates education in computing fluency and CS competency, targets a wider mainstream audience, and includes courses for both primary and secondary schools.

SIGKDD launched three new programs to further technical advances in the KDD field. The ultimate objective of the chapters, curriculum, and standards programs is to strengthen and standardize the training of students in KDD and related subjects.

The SIGART/AAAI/IJCAI Doctoral Consortium held in Acapulco this year offered 15 Ph.D. students the opportunity to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives with a panel of established AI researchers.

SIGMETRICS is exploring approaches to improve services offered to its members; one being the PE Grad Student Database on its Web page, which includes a database of students who are graduating and looking for academic and industrial jobs.

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Professional Development

The great majority of ACM's members have been touched in some way by the practice of outsourcing IT jobs. Council was quick to respond to this matter by creating the Job Migration Task Force, the purpose of which is to examine the ramifications of offshoring and to produce its findings in a white paper that will be widely disseminated and referenced.

The Professional Development Centre offers members a wealth of resources for keeping abreast of new developments in the evolving technology field. The online courses available from the PDC increased to over 350 by the end of FY04. These popular courses, hosted by the Sun Learning Center, now include additional options in some of the most popular content areas including Java technology, project management, and networking. The PDC also offers expanded business-building opportunities in such areas as finance, effective business writing, and working on global teams.

ACM's Career Resource Centre remains a significant online service, offering members an array of options and information for enhancing professional opportunities. The services are designed to help professionals and students alike prepare for the ever-changing IT terrain by offering ways to assess current talents and knowledge and embrace new career-building skills and prospects.

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Public Policy

ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee celebrated its 10^th year of service by organizing a number of meetings and initiatives relevant to the Association's emerging policy agenda. USACM played an instrumental role this year in raising greater awareness among the public and policymakers regarding the risks and vulnerabilities of computer-based electronic voting systems. The committee held a pioneering workshop marking the first time election officials, computer scientists and technologists, and voting systems vendors congregated to review and debate the vulnerabilities of computerized voting systems. For more information of USACM activities, see www.acm.org/usacm.

USACM also continued its efforts to restore a balance to copyright and intellectual property laws by making courts and policymakers aware of laws and legislation that may limit the freedom to publish and to engage in analysis and research.

ACM conducted its first membershipwide policy survey to elicit feedback on a potential ACM position opposing the expansion of U.S. legal protections that govern the access and use of data collections. Over 90% of the respondents agreed with the statement, which Council approved as an official ACM position in January. (See www.acm.org/usacm/Issues/ dbasefinal.pdf for the full statement.)

ACM's Committee on Computers and Public Policy assists the ACM in a variety of internationally relevant issues pertaining to computers and public policy and helps make the association more visible worldwide. Risks Forum, the monthly "Inside Risks" column in Communications of the ACM, and Illustrative Risks have successfully achieved their intended goal to share and discuss the potential and serious computer-related risks with a global audience.

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Students

ACM's 28^th International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) hosted a total of 3,150 teams from 75 countries. The world finals, sponsored by IBM, were held last March in Prague with 73 teams from 31 countries participating. The team from St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics & Optics was named the 2004 world champions.

The ACM Student Research Competition, sponsored by Microsoft Research, offers both undergraduate and graduate student members the chance to present their original computing research in a conference setting. The competition raises the profile of computing research within the IT community and provides valuable recognition to individual competitors for their contributions.

SIGPLAN, SIGSOFT, SIGCSE, SIGCHI, and SIGGRAPH funded $26,000 to send 25 students to the first Grad Cohort Workshop designed to provide women with the survival skills essential to make it through graduate school. The meeting also works to encourage research careers and mentoring programs, help students plot career paths, and offer the support of a peer community.

ACM was one of several scientific associations bestowing student awards at the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair—the world's largest pre-college science fair. More than 1,200 of the brightest young scientists from 38 countries competed for $3 million in awards and scholarships.

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Conferences

ACM agreed to become a hub of the National Center for Women in Information Technology. Along with the Association's commitment to co-present the Grace Hopper Celebration—the largest gathering of female computing professionals and students—ACM's Committee on Women in Technology (ACM-W) established a new program of regional Celebrations of Women in Computing to offer female students the opportunity to meet with industry leaders in local settings.

SC03—one of the most distinguished annual gatherings of the supercomputing industry—drew a record audience in Phoenix last November. The conference attracted over 7,500 attendees.

SIGCOMM revised its 2003 conference to a five-day format—with workshops and tutorials scattered throughout the event—and attendance soared. The workshops not only enhanced and broadened audience participation, they also helped the community focus on new directions, assess past efforts, explore emerging technical areas, and consider how to teach the next generation of networking students.

SIGGRAPH 2003 drew over 24,000 attendees, with a technical attendance of over 6,200 and had 240 exhibitors. SIGUCCS' 31^st Computer Services Management Symposium (CSMS) attracted the largest participation since the mid-1990s, with registration up 20%.

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Local Activities

The Membership Services Board chartered 56 new chapters in FY04. Of the 17 new professional and SIG chapters, 8 were internationally based, as were 13 of the 46 new student chapters.

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International

In February 2004, an ACM SIGGRAPH-Eurographics delegation visited six countries in Southeast Asia. Given the vastness of the territory involved, a second delegation followed, focusing on Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. These trips were essential to ascertain a fuller extent of computer graphics activity in the region and extend these findings to include parts of the Indian subcontinent, including India and Bhutan.

SIGMOD is focusing its international efforts on a number of initiatives by establishing close relationships with societies in Europe and the Far East. There are efforts to build similar linkages with Latin American countries as well as continuing an ongoing library donation program that is international in scope.

SIGCHI chapters continue to serve thousands of members in dozens of countries on six continents. Their chapters range from small, local gatherings of students or practitioners to national and regional chapters with hundreds of members and extensive calendars filled with activities.

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Electronic Community

ACM's Membership Services Board is spiriting several programs and initiatives to enhance the ACM experience for every member. One of its most ambitious projects is MyACM, the goal of which is to make the ACM Web site more meaningful and customizable to members' needs. The main focus of the MyACM effort has been to support personalization of the Web site and to provide a centralized and consistent means for members to view and modify their ACM profile.

SIGCHI is in the process of overhauling its online communications by streamlining its overlapping sets of Web sites and mailing lists to create a more comprehensible and better organized Web presence.

SIGDA's Web server (www.sigda.org) has long been a primary source of current and archival information about the SIG's activities and the electronic design automation community as a whole. The server contains links to a significant amount of design automation information including calendars, design automation Web sites, and newsgroups.

SIGGRAPH continues to expand its online information, and ongoing improvements in this area are a very high priority. One of its high-level goals remains to complete a Hub prototype implementation. It currently offers technical presentations online from the SIGGRAPH 2003 Conference as streaming video and synchronized slides through the ACM Digital Library.

SIGMICRO's newsletter resurfaced in online form, including a new feature allowing the organization of live e-seminars (telecom plus softcopy slides). These e-meetings are accessible to the worldwide SIGMICRO community.

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Recognition

The ACM Fellows Program, established in 1993 to honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and IT, inducted 30 new fellows in FY04, bringing the total count to 498.

The SIGMIS CPR Conference was the site of the first "Magid Igbaria Outstanding Conference Paper of the Year Award." The newly established award recognizes the outstanding contributions to MIS and computer personnel research by the late Magid Igbaria, Claremont Graduate School.

Northwestern University received the "Outstanding Chapter Activities" award in the 2003–2004 ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards recognizing stellar ACM student chapters. Michigan State University's ACM Student Chapter won "Outstanding Chapter Web Site."

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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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2003 ACM Award Recipients

A.M. Turing Award	Alan Kay
Software System Award	Stuart Feldman
ACM/AAAI Allen Newel Award	David Haussler, Judea Pearl
Grace Murray Hopper Award	Stephen W. Keckler
Eugene Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics	Patrick Ball
ACM–IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award	Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award	Sartaj Sahni
Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award	Mark Scott Johnson
Distinguished Service Award	Ruzena Bajcsy
Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award	Gary Miller, Michael Rabin, Robert Solovay, Volker Strassen
Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mentions:	AnHai Doan Dina Katabi, Subhash Khot

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Balance sheet

June 30, 2004 (in thousands)

Assets:
Cash and cash equivalents	$11,664
Investments	33,389
Accounts receivable and other current assets	4,777
Deferred conference expenses and other assets	3,324
Fixed assets, net of accumulated depreciation and amortization	388
TOTAL ASSESTS	$53,542
Liabilities and net assets:
Liabilities:
Accounts payable, accrued expenses, and other liabilities	$ 5,622
Unearned conference, membership, and subscription revenue	15,850
TOTAL LIABILITIES	$21,472
Net Assets:
Unrestricted	31,672
Temporarily restricted	398
TOTAL NET ASSETS	32,070
TOTAL LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS	$53,542
Optional contributions fund—program expenses ($000)
Education Board Accreditation	$50
USACM Committee	20
International Federation for Information Processing	20
TOTAL EXPENSES	$90
ACM Development Fund—program expenses ($000)
JETT	$34
New Publications Queue (NET)	335
TOTAL EXPENSES	$369

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Statement of activities

Year ended June 30, 2004 (in thousands)

	Unrestricted Net assets	Temporarily restricted Net assets	Total
REVENUE:
Membership dues	$4, 717		$ 4, 717
Publications	15 ,316		15 ,316
Conferences and other meetings	25,942		25,942
Interest and dividends	1,017		1,017
Net appreciation of investments	2,606		2,606
Contributions and grants	942	170	1,112
Other revenue	336		336
Net assets released from restrictions	269	(269)	-----
TOTAL REVENUE	$51,175	99	$51,076
EXPENSES:
Program:
Membership processing and services	$1,011		$1,011
Publications	9,937		9,937
Conferences and other meetings	23,108		23,108
Volunteer activities	1,247		1,247
Program support and other	3,357		3,357
TOTAL PROGRAM EXPENSES	38,660		38,660
Supporting Services:
General Administration	6,603		6,603
Marketing	1,505		1,505
TOTAL EXPENSES	46,768		46,768
Increase (decrease) in net assets	4,407	(99)	4,308
Net assets at the beginning of the year	27,265	497	27,762
Net assets at end of year	31,672 *	398	32,070

*Includes SIG fund balance of $18,673

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

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