Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!emory!athena.cs.uga.edu!greg
From: greg@athena.cs.uga.edu (Greg Whitlock)
Newsgroups: comp.org.acm
Subject: membership/ideas  >sigh<
Message-ID: <1991Apr29.003148.7270@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Date: 29 Apr 91 00:31:48 GMT
Sender: greg@athena.cs.uga.edu (Greg Whitlock)
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens
Lines: 43

I am a member of our ACM club here at the University of Georgia and
I was really shocked when I attended my first ACM meeting here.
The turn out (so I thought) was awful.  Maybe ten to fifteen people
showed up.  I now know that that was a pretty good turn out.
When I attended Gainesville College (Oakwood, Georgia not Fla.),
we started a new ACM chapter and our membership was over twenty.
Think about it.  20 ACM members to 2800 students compared with
10-15 ACM members to 28,000 students!  What gives?  We can't seem
to get support around here.  We are about to start a membership
drive but we aren't sure who to focus on.
Of course, the obvious choices are CS students but what can we
do to make the ACM appealing to NON-CS students?

Last year our current head-honcho revived a dormant club with hopes
of making it active, alive, and backed with support.  He created
the Classic City Computing Conference which received great support
from local businesses but failed to attract the needed public.
Putting on a conference of the magnitude of the last one isn't an
easy task with such little support.  So, if anyone out there has
a brain storm on how to draw in just a few (say 10 to 30) more
members, PLEASE let me know.

We are about to put on a campus wide programming contest, we are
starting to plan the next conference, and have a few more ideas in
the works....

Also, if anyone's group puts out a newsletter or contributes a
weekly article in a local paper, email me so I can ask a few
questions about getting started.  We are trying to start a 
weekly or bi-weekly article in one of our two campus newspapers...

Thanks!

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Greg Whitlock                          | "Chivalry is not dead...
University of Georgia, Athens          |  it just got left holding the door."
Department of Computer Science         |
E-mail: greg@athena.cs.uga.edu         |                           -Greg (me)
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