last byte

DOI: 10.1145/1498765.1498792

Q&A
our Dame commander

Wendy Hall discusses her plans to increase ACM’s membership and to create task forces in China, India, and Europe.

 

a ProfeSSor of
computer science at the

University of Southampton and the winner of numerous awards and honors, such as her recent appointment as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Wendy Hall was elected president of ACM in July 2008.

 

You’re the third female president of Acm, and the first non-north American president. how does that feel? For me, it’s more exciting that I’m the first non-North American president. A lot of times you don’t like to do things just because you’re a woman—you want to do stuff because you’re the best person to do it, in the whole competitive field.

 

What are your plans for Acm? ACM is in a good position, with 92,000 members and counting, and we had a fantastic year last year. But we mustn’t be complacent. Broadly speaking, I want more people to join ACM, I want more women to join ACM. ACM is a U.S.-based organization, but it reaches out to the whole world through its publications and conferences.

 

What will you be doing to support those international members? We’re developing a series of task forces to explore what ACM can do in particular areas of the world—China, India, Europe. We need to ask: What can we do to support each of these cultures in their own context?

how will the task forces operate?

The task forces are geographically

based, and [ACM CEO] John White is working very hard to get a good quality, diverse membership. The idea is that we start off with a task force, and as it matures, it will become a council in that region. We also want the task force chairs to come to New York and be a part of our discussions. It would be hopeless if it were always done at a distance.

 

What’s been accomplished thus far? In November, we held a summit largely aimed at Chinese educators. It was very

 

112 communicAtionS of the Acm | APriL 2009 | voL. 52 | no. 4

Leah Hoffmann

successful, but we want to build on it. There’s a huge amount of computing activity in China. At the moment our work is in Beijing—and we’ll arrange a meeting of the ACM China Council later in the year—but we must expand it to Shanghai and Hong Kong and other regions. We also have an embryonic task force in India, which held its first meeting in early February.

Photogra Ph by jon banfielD

And in europe?

We, too, held [continued on P. 111]