Greetings SISO community. I am writing to encourage you all to become familiar with—and active members of—the ACM Special Interest Group on Simulation.
Founded in 1947, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s oldest and largest educational and scientific computing society. Today, ACM maintains a membership of more than 80,000 computing professionals worldwide. ACM publishes over two dozen magazines and journals in computer science, with Communications of the ACM serving as its flagship publication. The ACM Press Books program also covers a broad spectrum of interests in computer science and engineering. The recently completed ACM Digital Library is one of the world’s premier sources for on-line technical materials with a six-year on-line archive for most ACM publications (magazines, journals and proceedings) and a bibliographical reference database dating to 1985.
The ACM includes a collection of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that bring together clusters of ACM members with shared interests, needs, knowledge and experience. There are currently 36 active SIGs within the ACM. Among these groups is the Special Interest Group on Simulation (SIGSIM). ACM SIGSIM membership currently consists of approximately 500 simulation students and professionals representing 24 countries. SIGSIM is a sponsor of the annual Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) and Parallel and Distributed Simulation Workshop (PADS). SIGSIM members receive discounted conference fees (20%-40%) if they attend sponsored conferences. They also receive conference proceedings as part of their membership (PADS softbound; WSC CD-ROM).
Prior to this year, SIGSIM published a quarterly newsletter, Simulation Digest, which has served as an active forum for the membership. This year, SIGSIM has ceased producing the newsletter and is orienting itself toward providing Web-based services. A notable change has been the introduction of a Web-Based Distinguished Lecture Series in Simulation. The first "speakers" in the series include Phil Kiviat, Paul Fishwick, Richard Nance and Richard Fujimoto.
In an effort to provide a unifying framework for the broader simulation community, SIGSIM and SISO, along with other simulation-oriented societies like the Society for Computer Simulation (SCS), are currently seeking opportunities to forge useful cooperative agreements and partnerships. For example, SIGSIM will be sponsoring a column within this newsletter and one or more sessions at the Simulation Interoperability Workshop (SIW). SISO will be taking an active role within the military applications track of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC). We are hopeful that such unity among simulation organizations will provide a level of cohesion that currently seems to be lacking, and will be useful to the continued growth and nurturing of simulation as a profession.