Imperial College goes to Europe

Participants of the 2nd ACM Europe Chapter Workshop

After having won the 2013/14 Student Chapter Excellence Award for Outstanding School Services, the Imperial College London ACM Student Chapter was invited to send two representatives to the 2nd ACM Europe Chapter Workshop held in September 2014 in Athens, Greece. Bringing together Student Chapters, SIGs (Special Interest Groups), and National Chapters, this workshop provided a platform for networking, discussing best-practice with respect to chapter management, and learning more about ACM and its valuable resources used to support chapters.

Financially supported by the Corporate Partnership Program of the Department of Computing at Imperial College, the current chair (Claudia Schulz) and finance officer (Silvia Vinyes Mora) of the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter were able to attend the workshop in Athens, returning to Imperial College with a lot of new motivation and energy to get more students involved in the Student Chapter. This motivation and energy is now spreading to the other members of the Student Chapter, leading to improved organisation, involvement, and recruitment.

In addition to representing the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter in front of other chapters, thus enhancing its prominence in Europe, the two representatives of the Student Chapter also got a chance to network with people such as the former ACM presidents Wendy Hall and Alain Chesnais, the ACM Europe Chair Fabrizio Gagliardi, and the ACM-W Europe Chair Reyyan Ayfer. As a result, the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter has now established itself as a well-known member of an international network of excellent and influential Computer Scientists.

The workshop sessions were split into two parts. One part, comprising talks by ACM-Europe officers including organisational topics like “Managing your ACM Chapter” and “What is ACM-W” as well as technical talks on social computing and concurrency; the other part, comprising smaller working groups for discussing chapter-related issues such as what activities to run, how to find new committee members, and how to establish collaborations between chapters. Both types of sessions provided the two representatives of the Student Chapter with many new ideas for improving the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter.

Presenting the Imperial College London ACM Student Workshop to ACM-Europe

In summary, the 2nd ACM Europe Chapter Workshop was a valuable experience for the two representatives of the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter, providing them with many new ideas and a lot of motivation, both of which they are now spreading in the Student Chapter.

Creating new ideas during a working group session