candidates for
seCRetARy/tReAsuReR
(7/1/12 – 6/30/14)

GEORGE V. NEVILLE-NEIL
neville-neil consulting
new york, ny, USa

Biography

George Neville-Neil is a computer scientist, author, and practicing software engineer who currently builds high-speed, low latency systems for customers in the financial services sector.

Neville-Neil is the co-author of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, the only university quality textbook to cover a broadly deployed, open source operating system, used daily by software engineers around the world.

He has been a member of ACM since his undergraduate days at Northeastern University, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science.

For the last 10 years Neville-Neil has been an integral part of ACM’s Queue magazine editorial board, joining it before the first edition of the magazine was published and helping to find, select, and bring to publication the best writing from practitioners in our field.

While working with the Queue editorial board, Neville-Neil developed the column, Kode Vicious, which has been a staple of both Queue and the recently revamped Communications of the ACM for the last eight years.

More recently Neville-Neil has been an active member of the ACM Practitioner Board, which is a key component of ACM’s program to broaden its membership.

From 2004 until 2008 Neville-Neil lived and worked in Japan, developing a set of courses dubbed “The Paranoid University” teaching safe and secure programming to thousands of engineers at Yahoo Inc. at all of their offices in Asia, Europe, and North America. While on assignment in Japan, Neville-Neil became fluent in Japanese.

statement

For the past 25 years I have been associated with the ACM. During that time I have felt that the organization did its best work when it was reaching out beyond its academic focus. It has always been clear that ACM is the preeminent professional organization for computer scientists and researchers, publishing the best papers and organizing the most respected conferences in the field.

When I began working on Queue I saw that ACM was serious about the need to bridge the gap between research and the daily practice of programming. The last 10 years have been an exhilarating experience helping people take the best research and turn it into something that software engineers can use every day. It was through my work on Queue, and the Practitioner Board, that I saw how ACM could evolve into an even broader professional society.

Being nominated for Secretary/ Treasurer showed me that there was another way to help ACM grow and to serve the global community.

Living and working in Asia gave me a unique perspective on ACM’s challenges in addressing the coming wave of people in our field.

ACM’s ability to help improve computer science education globally is without question, but it is just as important to understand how we can continue our relationship with the people who are building our technological world, throughout their careers.

My experience building systems for the global financial markets has given me insight into how money is managed in large organizations.

Working as the Secretary/Treasurer for ACM carries the same challenges and responsibilities as building systems that exchange millions of dollars every day.

It has always been a pleasure to be an ACM volunteer. I hope that as Secretary/ Treasurer I can do even more for the ACM, and help them to do more for others.