Communications of the ACM
To the Members of ACM
Credit: University of Athens
This is an update on the efforts of the ACM Executive Committee and Council to draft a longer-term strategic plan for our organization. At the core of our discussions have been critical and urgent issues raised by members during the Q&A process that ran during the recent ACM General Election, which also covered those I had presented in my candidacy statement. In my answers during that process, I promised to establish several Presidential Task Forces (PTFs) to investigate the issues raised and recommend concrete actions to address them. Considering the needs and priorities of ACM itself, the broader computing community, and society at large, the ACM Council has now endorsed 10 PTFs as the core dimensions of our strategic work. The strategic plan that will result from all PTFs together has been called ACM 4.0, an analogy to ACM entering the fourth quarter-century of its life. The main objectives of the PTFs are briefly described here.
Three PTFs address issues of ACM Membership:
- Membership Model: Exploring new membership models that create the sense of a unified large community but still convey the feeling of "home" to each member, offering different benefits that are meaningful to different constituencies. Identifying membership models that will entice all those who benefit from ACM to become members and will inspire those who are members to become volunteers.
- Globalization: Exploring different pathways toward geographic diversity at all possible levels: election and award candidates, volunteer leaders, board and committee members, and members in general. Investigating the formation of additional regional councils or other forms of governance structures that will collectively cover the world.
- Youthification: Exploring different pathways toward age diversity, with emphasis on the younger generation, at all appropriate levels: board and committee members and members in general. Identifying engaging activities to attract the pre-college generation to computing.
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