Chair’s Message

Welcome to the October, 2015, issue of ACM-W Connections. There’s a lot going on in ACM-W’s world.

The big news is that the ACM Executive Committee has approved a new charter for ACM-W! I’ll highlight just a few of the changes.

There is no longer an ACM-W Executive Committee.
The ACM-W Council now consists of the chair, vice chair, ACM-W India chair, ACM-W Europe chair, and the committee chairs. This gives us a larger, but not unwieldy, decision making body. More importantly, it brings to the table everyone who is leading the different activities of the organization. Everyone else who is involved with ACM-W will either be a member of a committee or will be on an ad hoc project and will report directly to the chair or vice chair.
We will begin to adhere to the ACM policy on limited terms of office — a limit of two consecutive two-year terms in the same position. This means that we will continually bring new people into ACM-W. We are always on the lookout for new volunteers and hope that many of you reading this will be interested in stepping up to join our efforts. Send me an email and let me know what you want to work on!

I want to thank all of those who have been working hard for ACM-W in the last few years. Their work has led to growth of all of our programs, and we see increased recognition of ACM-W among people in computing, not just among women in computing.

Where’s ACM-W This Month?

While you are reading this, many of us are at the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) in Houston, TX. Stop by the ACM-W booth (#S13) and pick up one of our new Ada Lovelace tech tattoos for your laptop!

Overlapping with GHC is MinkWiC, the Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas Celebration of Women in Computing, October 15-16.

October 28th will be Inspire 2015, organized by the ACM-W UK chapter.

Finally, November 13-15 is SEWiC, the Southeast Celebration of Women in Computing.

~Valerie Barr, ACM-W Chair