I had so much fun presenting the closing ITiCSE 2023 keynote “Chat Overflow: Artificially Intelligent Models for Computing Education – renAIssance or apocAlypse?” with Paul Denny, Juho Leinonen and James Prather. Rather than ramble on here, I’ll just provide links to the video and slides 🙂 Thanks to Mikko-Jussi Laakso and the ITiCSE 2023 team for inviting us!
In 2006 Renzo Davoli chaired the ACM SIGCSE Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference (ITiCSE 2006) in Bologna Italy. Renzo purchased a brass bell (pictured below). At the conference he would walk through the coffee break area ringing the bell encouraging folks to return to sessions. The bell then went “missing” but it is believed that it sat in Bologna for over a decade until ITiCSE 2017 which conveniently for the bell, was also in Bologna, chaired by Renzo and Mikey Goldweber. The bell then began a new life of travel. It was given to Irene Polycarpou and Janet Reed who chaired ITiCSE 2018 in Larnaca, Cyprus. The bell then traveled by itself via post to Aberdeen Scotland for ITiCSE 2019 where Bruce Scharlau and Roger McDermott rang the bell.
Then the bell, aided by a pandemic, sat again for years. In 2022 the bell traveled all on its own by post to Dublin, Ireland where myself and Keith Quille spent some time ringing the bell at ITiCSE 2022. It then sat in Dublin on my desk for a year until this week when – the bell was happy to hear – was escorted by hand on a Finnair flight to Turku, Finland. This morning I handed it to Mikko-Jussi Laakso who just a few minutes ago rang the bell to open ITiCSE 2023. The bell will later this week travel – accompanied again – this time by Mattia Monga, to its ancestral home of Italy where Mattia will, in one year, ring the bell for ITiCSE 2024 in Milan.
Where the bell will go from there is not yet known. However, given that ITiCSE 2023 is the first physical attendance only conference since 2019 and has around 250 people in attendance, the bell has a long healthy future of European travel ahead at many future ACM ITiCSE conferences.
Thanks to Mikey Goldweber and Bruce Scharlau for helping me piece together the history of the ITiCSE bell which I am happy to pass on to the community.
Registration for ITiCSE 2022 is now open at iticse.acm.org/2022 and Early-Bird registration closes May 31 so now is the time to register!
This year ITiCSE is being held in Dublin, Ireland at University College Dublin.
Conference dates are July 11th to July 13th, 2022. There is a reception on Sunday evening, July 10, along with the traditional ITiCSE excursion and banquet on Tuesday afternoon and evening.
Held annually in Europe, the ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education is the second-oldest and second-largest computer science education conference.Â
ITiCSE 2021, the 26th annual conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, is being held virtually in Paderborn, Germany. The main conference is June 28 – July 1. More information and registration is on the website https://ITiCSE.acm.org.
The term of the current Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) (https://dl.acm.org/journal/toce) is coming to an end, and the ACM Publications Board has set up a nominating committee to assist the Board in selecting the next EiC. TOCE was established in 2001 and is a premier journal for computing education, publishing over 30 papers annually.
Nominations, including self-nominations, are invited for a three-year term as TOCE EiC, beginning on September 1, 2021. The EiC appointment may be renewed at most one time. This is an entirely voluntary position, but ACM will provide appropriate administrative support.
Appointed by the ACM Publications Board, Editors-in-Chief (EiCs) of ACM journals are delegated full responsibility for the editorial management of the journal consistent with the journal’s charter and general ACM policies. The Board relies on EiCs to ensure that the content of the journal is of high quality and that the editorial review process is both timely and fair. He/she has the final say on acceptance of papers, size of the Editorial Board, and appointment of Associate Editors. A complete list of responsibilities is found in the ACM Volunteer Editors Position Descriptions (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/position_descriptions).
Additional information can be found in the following documents:
Nominations should include a vita along with a brief statement of why the nominee should be considered. Self-nominations are encouraged. Nominations should include a statement of the candidate’s vision for the future development of TOCE. The deadline for submitting nominations is July 21, 2021, although nominations will continue to be accepted until the position is filled.
Please send all nominations to the nominating committee chairs, Mark Guzdial (mjguz AT umich DOT edu) and Betsy DiSalvo (bdisalvo AT cc.gatech DOT edu).
The search committee members are:
Louiqa Raschid (University of Maryland) will serve as the ACM Publications Board Liaison