from the president

DOI:10.1145/3377932 Cherri M. Pancake

Start Small, Then Achieve Big Impact

A
CM HAS AN amazing cadre happens in the workplace or classroom,
of volunteers around the we can address behavior at all ACM Ev Repro
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accomplishes. It’s not just ACM members noted that sometimes a

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that volunteers are the ones who come speaker or attendee engages in be-
up with innovative ideas. They also in- havior that is demeaning or offensive
vest their personal time to make those to other participants. Concerned vol-
ideas come to life. ACM owes its success unteers began trying to codify what gained momentum, with some confer-
to volunteers’ collective efforts to “start behavior is/isn’t acceptable and what ences even awarding prizes for cases
small, but with a big vision in mind.” the consequences of poor behavior where independent teams succeeded
Let’s look at some recent examples. should be. What started as statements in reproducing the results. The ACM
Taking a stand on harassment. It’s by specific conferences culminated in our Digital Library now has a series of
hard to work in computing these days formal Policy Against Harassment at “badges” reflecting what supporting
and not be aware that people who are ACM Activities (http://bit.ly/2PXiz98). materials are available and the extent
“different” feel excluded from many This was followed by a Policy on Coer- to which they have been evaluated or
technical conversations and opportu- cion and Abuse in the ACM Publica- replicated by others (www.acm.org/
nities. Studies have shown that’s one tions Process (http://bit.ly/2PWyvbY). publications/artifacts). The badges are
reason young women and people from There is more work to be done, but indicators of skill and quality, recog-
underrepresented groups don’t choose these policies address the most com- nizing the extra effort required to make
computing as a career. ACM is not di- mon ACM contexts. computing processes more transparent.
rectly involved in hiring or educating the Recognizing the need for reproduc- Expanding the reach of computing.
future workforce, but as a professional ible computing. Technology has be- Some of the most exciting work happens
society we can and should speak out come essential to everyday life, which at the intersection of computing with
about the importance of encouraging means society collectively places a lot of other disciplines, or in areas still emerg-
representation from all backgrounds, trust in technology. Since software and ing within mainstream computer sci-
perspectives, and ideas. This is reflected data reliability is key to that trust, it ence. Each year, ACM’s Special Interest
in the ACM Code of Ethics and Profes- must be possible to independently veri- Groups and regional councils host sum-
sional Conduct (ethics.acm.org), partic- fy the results of algorithms and soft- mer schools where students and re-
ularly sections 1.4 and 1.5. ware. Recently, volunteers working searchers explore new challenges and
What I’d like to recognize here is how with a couple of ACM journals and con- experiment with new techniques. The
the work of many volunteers contributed ferences began to encourage authors table shows some of the summer/winter
to what has become an ACM-wide stance to include their data, code, intermedi- schools around the globe in 2019. These
on what constitutes acceptable behavior. ate results, and so on as part of the events create opportunities to start
Although we have no authority over what publication process. These efforts building a community that may result in
a future publication, conference, or SIG.
A sampling of the summer/winter schools offered by ACM groups in 2019. These are just some of the many
ways small groups within ACM share
Topic Location ACM Group ideas that end up taking on a life of
Detection and Analysis of Malware Pune, India ACM India Council their own. Special thanks to all of you
HPC for AI and Dedicated Applications Barcelona, Spain ACM Europe Council who contributed to them. And I chal-
Data Science Athens, Greece SIGMOD+SIGIR+SIGKDD lenge other members to reach out to
Cybersecurity and Data Analytics Delhi, India ACM India Council your colleagues and consider develop-
Projects Based on UN’s Sustainability Goals Prague, Czech Rep. SIGEVO ing your own grassroots effort. What’s
Hybrid Cloud Bangalore, India ACM India Council small today could be a global initiative
Machine Learning for Data Mining Cape Town, S. Africa SIGIR+SIGKDD within just a few years.
and Search

Cherri M. Pancake, ACM PRESIDENT

F E B R UA RY 2 0 2 0 | VO L. 6 3 | N O. 2 | C OM M U N IC AT ION S OF THE ACM 5