publishing. The idea of bringing select research articles back into CACM was quite popular, but the participants felt strongly that such articles should be rewritten and well edited to address CACM’s broad readership. At the same time, there was strong consensus that CACM should continue to publish submitted, peer-reviewed articles, although with other new content to be included in the magazine, the space available for submitted articles would be more limited and thus the articles published would need to be of the highest quality.

As far as content addressing the interests of practitioners, the general feeling was that Queue provides high-quality content, focusing on software practice, and CACM should not attempt to compete with Queue. In addition, the participants uniformly expressed a desire to see a strong news section and an “edgier” opinions section (as put by one focus group attendee: “Let us see some blood on the opinion pages of CACM”). There was a general agreement that CACM does not have the look and feel of a high-tech publication and that a graphic redesign is long overdue. Finally, there was a lively debate, and no agreement, on the issue of possibly renaming the publication. Many felt that 50-year- old name “Communications of the ACM” is a valuable brand; others felt a new name is needed to send a strong message that CACM is being “rebooted.”

One of my main conclusions from these conversations was that the practical content offered by Queue is of the highest quality and likely of interest to a broad cross-section of ACM members,

not just “young practitioners” for which it was originally intended. Thus, if we want CACM to serve the broad interests of the ACM membership, then it should offer the core content available in Queue. Thus, the Practice section of CACM should become the print outlet for Queue. The Queue editorial board should continue to produce high-quality content and develop further the Queue brand through an enhanced presence on the ACM Web site to serve practitioners.

With the decision to bring Queue articles into CACMto address the needs of practitioners, the content model for the new CACM fell into place. The focus will be on cutting-edge material, organized in five sections: News, Practice, Breakthrough Research, Refereed Articles, and Opinions and Views.

News: The news section will have a very distinct “voice,” covering research and practice in computing on a global scale. There will be an increased emphasis on research from a news perspective. As a monthly publication, CACM will not compete with more timely news services, but rather analyze the latest news in greater depth for computing professionals and interpret its potential impact. ACM news of broad interests will also be covered.

Practice: CACM will offer coverage of cutting-edge, emerging technology issues. Such material would be of interest to both academics and practitioners. To obtain this material, the Queue editorial board, led by Stephen Bourne, will continue to function as it has in the past—

providing articles, columns, and interviews.

Breakthrough Research: The goal is to bring research articles, covering the broad spectrum of computing research, back to CACM. This will be a combined effort of conference and program chairs (ACM as well as non-ACM) and the CACM editorial board to select the best research material coming out of conferences and share that information with the wide readership of CACM. Each selected research paper will be adapted to the broad CACM readership and will be preceded by a short “Technical Perspective,” giving readers an overview of the important points and significance of the research. These perspectives will be written by noted experts in the field. (This issue of CACM contains two sample research articles beginning on page 104 that span the spectrum of computing research: an article on MapReduce, with perspective by David Patterson, and an article on locally sensitive hashing, with perspective by Bernard Chazelle.)

Refereed Articles: CACM will continue to publish, as it has since its early days, peer-reviewed articles. Such articles must be of the highest quality and of interest to a broad sector of the ACM membership. We will seek both solicited and unsolicited submissions. In particular, the CACM editorial board will solicit survey and review articles in topics of broad interest.

Opinions and Views: The final component in the content model of the new CACM is a section dedicated to opinions