[ACM-Slovenija] Fwd: Short summary of ACM Europe Chapter Workshop

[Matija Pretnar]

Spoštovani,

za vse zainteresirane člane posredujem poročilo prve delavnice evropskih sekcij ACM.


Z lepimi pozdravi,
Matija Pretnar


Begin forwarded message:

From: Marc Shapiro -- at work <marc.shapiro at ACM.ORG>
Subject: Short summary of ACM Europe Chapter Workshop
Date: 27. januar 2012 15:57:49 GMT+01:00
To: CH-EUROPE at LISTSERV.ACM.ORG
Reply-To: Marc Shapiro -- at work <marc.shapiro at ACM.ORG>

The ACM Europe Chapters Workshop (1) took place in Paris on 12–13 January 2012.  This was the first time in the history of the ACM that chapters, professional and student, met independently of country and/or technical area.  The goals include fighting the fragmentation of the European CS/informatics community, galvanising the ACM members who are working in the field, recognizing the good work done, and encouraging new vocations.  It provided an opportunity to network with colleagues that one might otherwise never meet, to exchange information and learn from each other, and to visit issues and express ideas for how ACM could better facilitate their activities.  

Demand to attend far exceeded our expectations: in the space of a few days, we had to close registration because our agreed capacity was exceeded.  Clearly, chapters are eager to get together and to meet with ACM officials.  Registrants came from a diverse set of 18 countries, with significant participation from Eastern Europe. Two pan-European chapters also took part.  33 participants were officers from from professional chapters, and 26 from student ones.

Discussions were lively, and the attendees highly engaged.  Among the chapter best practice discussions: What is the relation between chapters and ACM? How does a chapter fund itself?  What kind of activities?  How to train and retain future leaders? Chapters were hungry for support, e.g., administrative, financial, dealing with the EU, approaching industry and commerce, job search etc.

The participants expressed a high demand for a strong presence of the ACM in Europe.  Ideas included publications in national languages, a European legal personality for ACM, advice to members on EU opportunities, etc.  The audience wants ACM to consider the European perspective on policy issues (such as informatics in secondary education, electronic voting, or policing of the Internet), and for ACM Europe to establish itself as an authority on EU scientific policy.

The slides of the formal presentations are available from the agenda page (2).  Some people, unable to attend, submitted a written contribution, available on the web site (3).  Up to 10 simultaneous people also followed events remotely via a live video stream. We plan to publish a complete summary of the discussions, based to the notes taken by the voluntary scribes.  Its conclusions will be submitted for discussion to the ACM Europe Council (4).   We expect them to significantly contribute to shaping the future of ACM in Europe and world-wide.

Photos of the event are available online (5). The workshop was approved by the ACM Europe Council, and organized by its Chapters subcommittee (Mashhuda Glencross, Avi Mendelson, Gerhard Schimpf [chair], Marc Shapiro [workshop chair]).  It was entirely funded by ACM, with generous sponsorship from Google (6) and LIP6 (7).  Special thanks to Thierry Frey for organising the scribes, to Annette Bieniusa for attending to the video stream, to the LIP6 administration for hosting us and for logistic help.  Many thanks to the student volunteers, Annette Bieniusa, Pierpaolo Cincilla, Masoud Saeida-Ardekani, Pierre Sutra and Marek Zawirski, for making sure that everything ran smoothly. 

							Marc Shapiro

----- Links:

1. Workshop: http://lip6.fr/Marc.Shapiro/acmWorkshop/
2. Agenda + slides: http://lip6.fr/Marc.Shapiro/acmWorkshop/detailed_agenda.html
3. Contributions: http://lip6.fr/Marc.Shapiro/acmWorkshop/lastMinute.html
4. ACM Europe Council: http://acm.europe.org/
5. Photos (attendees may upload their own photos by using the buttons at the bottom of the photo gallery page): http://lip6.fr/Marc.Shapiro/acmWorkshop/album/ (login: ChapterWorkshop, password: ACM!Europe
password-protected)
6. Google: http://www.google.com/
7. LIP6: http://www.lip6.fr/

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