Something I've been wanting to talk about is an interesting organization on campus called the Association for Computing Machinery. The WPI ACM is a group of computer enthusiasts which meets several times throughout the academic year, and organizes many contests and events with a computing theme. You've probably seen some of the members on campus proudly sporting their ultra-hip ACM T-shirts, bearing geeky messages. I've been an active member of the ACM for some time now, and I thought I'd take this week's column to let everyone know some of the stuff they've been doing and how you can join.
This term, the ACM is presenting tutorials on several computer-related topics. The ACM gives tutorials on things which are useful to learn, but generally don't get covered in computer science classes here. This Sunday at 1p, ACM Prez. Tom Seidenberg will give a two-hour workshop on Beginning Perl programming, followed by an Intermediate Perl session from 3:30 - 6. Next weekend there will be a GNU Emacs tutorial (not by me), followed by one on using Emacs Lisp; check out the wpi.acm newsgroup for schedules. Pizza will be provided for all.
The ACM sponsors a weekly programming contest, in which members are invited to submit solutions to a tricky programming problem via email. There's a cash prize at the end of each term for the person who accumulates the most points. There will also be an afternoon-long Programming Contest later this semester, complete with pizza. The winners of the weekly and semester contests will get to be on WPI's programming team when they compete against other schools next year.
Other stuff: the ACM and CS department hold a joint Bar-B-Queue twice a year, in the winter and in the spring. The ACM also holds help sessions for many undergraduate CS classes. This term there are ACM people in the Zoo lab several days a week to help with CS 1005, CS 2011, and CS 2135 assignments.
Right now ACM members are busy working on designs for this year's ACM t-shirts. Past designs have featured snippets of k00l k0de and Unix-isms. All members are welcome to submit a design; voting is scheduled to take place on the Web. The winner will receive (you guessed it) - a free T-Shirt! T-shirts from previous years can still be purchased from the ACM for $10. No word yet on whether the "ACM T-Shirt Design Contest" will be followed by a "Wet ACM T-Shirt Contest," but I'll keep you posted.
Membership in the WPI ACM is open to students of all disciplines with an interest in computers; computer science and computer engineering are especially encouraged to join. Dues are $5 a year. You can find out more about the ACM by looking at the National ACM homepage, http://info.acm.org, and the WPI chapter's page, http://www.wpi.edu/~acm. Also check out the ACM Club Corner (hopefully) in this week's paper. Email acm@wpi if you have any questions.
Give feedback: newspeak@wpi.wpi.edu