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 =

The [http://www.acm.org/ ACM] is organized into over 170 local chapters and 34 special interest groups (SIGs), through which it conducts most of its activities.

Many of the SIGs, like ACM SIGGRAPH, SIGPLAN and SIGCOMM, sponsor regular conferences which have become famous as the dominant venue for presenting new innovations in certain fields. The SIGs 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 very mentionable 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 and ACM Queue . Many of the great debates in the history of computing have taken place in the pages of Communications. Examples include the famous GOTO considered harmful letter, the issue of what to call the then-fledgling field of computer science, and 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 [http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm Digital Library] and also has a [http://portal.acm.org/guide.cfm 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. ACMs digital library is the worlds largest collection of information on computing machinery and contains an archive of journals, magazines, conference proceedings online, and the recent issues of ACMs 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 science and IEEE is for electrical engineering, 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.

= Leadership =

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

= Infrastructure =

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

# Publications # SIG Governing Board # Education # Membership Services 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.

= See also =

= External links =