Association for Computing Machinery 
Florida International University 
Student Chapter
 
Next Meeting: February 18th, 12:30pm, ECS 349. See agenda below.
 
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Officers Wanted: An open election will be held before the end of the Spring semester to determine the elected ACM Student Chapter offices of President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. To be considered a candidate you must be a registered ACM student member. For further inquiries please contact Steven Luis at luiss@cs.fiu.edu.


I DEAS by Jorge Besada

It would be great if as soon as students join FIU they have a place to go where they can mingle with other students that have similar interests and at the same time be a part of some large and ongoing project. How about a project to write the software that runs the university?

We can be a part of the many world wide software projects going on like Linux itself. Write Linux device drivers. Set up a linux cluster and learn about distributed processing, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Under Linux one can install top notch database software like offerings from Sybase , Informix, Oracle and IBM. I think that Sybase's DBMS is even free for commercial use under Linux. 

Certain projects can be tailored so that they can be worked on by students at different stages in their education and what they want to do of course.

We could have our own room and administer our own network. Linux can be set up as a router, mail and DNS server, you name it. ... network games!!

We could create web pages for our courses. Some instructors have very useful sites to go hand in hand with their courses. We can add to these sites and create our own for other courses that have little or no information. 

We could learn about Microsoft products and frameworks as well. Things like COM(Component Object Model) and DCOM(Distributed COM) are at the core of everything that Microsoft is doing these days. There are also CORBA Object Request Brokers for Linux.(Have no clue what any of this stuff is?... More reasons to join) 

Besides sharing knowledge we can share books and save bucks. Have our own student taught seminars. A lot of us have part time jobs or even full time jobs and can share valuable experiences with fellow students. Great place to get rid of those public speaking jitters. Many of us have considered Microsoft's, Lotus', Cisco's, or other industry leader's certification programs. Some students could share books and resources. Imagine a club library with sections on various certifications, and up to date books. That sounds like a small project for the FIU CS club already. The Online CS Book club. 


Feb. 18th Meeting Agenda

Linux Demo
ACM Digital Library Demo
Food and Drinks!
 

 ACM Student Membership Benefits includes:

What is the ACM and why should an FIU student Join?

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the professional organization for Computer Science. Since 1946, the ACM has educated hundreds of thousands of programmers, software engineers, analysts, theorist, and educators in the use of computing technologies. By sponsoring a wide variety of technical conferences, publishing journals and conference procedings, and providing forums for students and professionals to meet and exchange ideas the ACM helps its members reach their career goals. Whether your interests lie in computer graphics, operating systems, user interfaces, the ACM and their Special Interest Groups (SIGs) have it covered. By becoming involved as a student you will benefit from the ACM's rich tradition in bringing to you the best practices of the Computer Science field demostrated by over 50 years of state-of-the-art research conducted by its members.

In 1986, FIU started its own student chapter which, through the enthusiastic endeavors of its members, pursued many of its own interests in computer programing, graphics and animation. In 1991, our Student Chapter's programming team won a bearth in the annual ACM International Programming Competition. Although we did not win the International it showed that when we work together, study hard and have FUN, we rank up their with the best of them!

I encourage you to learn more about the ACM at the meeting being held Thursday 18th in ECS 349. Come out and meet your fellow classmates and share in the knowledge of your profession.

Steven Luis
FIU SCS Systems Manager
ACM Member and Co-Advisor