professional society memberships for computer geek types

[red_lynx]

Advice, please?

Poll professional society memberships

Edit: If you have specific special interest groups or societies in mind, listing them would be helpful ...

Comments

[fergusmacairt]

I'll be interested in the results of this for probably exactly the same reason you are.

I know the IEEE has a software subgroup. Lets see if I can find some info about it. Eh...all I can find is the IEEE Computer Society.

Oh...got it. I was thinking of the ACM's SIGSOFT. Might be worth looking into.

[cchan8]

Granted, I am biased towards ACM. Come to our next lecture on December 10!

[red_lynx]

Are you part of a SIG? Where is the lecture described?
The ACM does seem to have a variety of (short?) courses offered free to it's members, if I'm reading the online documentation rightly ...

[cchan8]

I wrote about the lecture last night, including photos of the speaker. I assumed that you read it already, sorry.

Our website is www.dcacm.org

I'm not part of a SIG, I'm a national member. (However I'm more of a tech policy gal than a programmer.) Got dragged into it by my father, who was a computer specialist for the Agricultural Research Service for many years.

[jmax315]

I'm not a fan of professional associations in general, mostly 'cause they've never offered anything I'm greatly interested in; journal subscriptions would be nice, but most of that stuff I can dig up at the various UM libraries, or online. Other than that, why would I bother?

Voted for IEEE, because they have a somewhat better (in my admittedly subjective and biased viewpoint) selection of journals.

[red_lynx]

I _think_ most of the online journals are accessible to me if I log in through the work intranet ... so it'd be more a matter of which is the most appropriate to my interests. Interests which are always evolving ...

seeing as I don't have any experience with any group but the acm

[stormking]

I would say whether or not you want to pick the acm might depend on how many of the special interest groups you are interested in and if you can get work to pay for memberships to the special interest groups. because they cost extra...

ACM SIGs

[frost_knight]

I believe you can join ACM special interest groups directly without being an ACM member. One of our chapter officers is only a member of SIGs.

I've always thought of IEEE as being more for electrical and mechanical engineers, with software kind of tacked on.

[leiacat]

You have a number of friends involved with the local ACM. I don't know if that makes it a plus (because you know people) or a minus (because you want to meet new people).

[red_lynx]

It's orthogonal ... it really depends on which would be (most) useful to me professionally.