The ACM History Committee currently has three oral history projects underway. These are the A.M.Turing Oral History project, the ACM Key Award Winners Video Series, and the India Industry Leaders Video project.

The fall 2020 status of each of these projects is detailed below.

Turing Oral History Project

A 3-year project to develop video oral-histories for all non-interviewed Turing Award winners (project awarded $210K in ACM Development Funding June 2015). Only one interview is currently pending, and that is for Joseph Sifakis. It will be held in Athens, Greece on September 6, 2020.

Responsible Person: Roy Levin, Chair of Turing Website subcommittee; David Jefferson contractor, Tom Haigh, contractor

Start Date: FY 2016

Status: The work defined in the original proposal is essentially completed.

ACM Key Award Winners Video Series

Three-year project to conduct, edit, and do post-production of  interviews with winners of Key ACM Awards. Interviews are nominally one hour, conducted and recorded using a video conferencing system such as Zoom.  Goal is to complete and post 72 interviews by the end of the project.

Responsible Person: Carol Hutchins (subcommittee chair); Chuck House, contractor

Start Date: FY2018-2019

Status: Chuck House hired to lead project; at the end of June 2020, 41 interviews had been completed. Virtually all are Zoom Video interviews.   While not studio quality, 85% have been quite good, and the rest are adequate.   The video interview material will be stored next quarter at the Babbage Institute, along with much ACM archived material.

India Industry Leaders Video Project

This new oral history project is being piloted with three key figures in India’s computing field. The Computer History Museum will archive the interviews, with copies at CBI. The copyright will be held by ACM.

Responsible Person: Sachin Maheshwari (subcommittee chair)

Start date: June 2019

Status: Planning phase; ACM India will supply some funding. The first interview should be completed summer 2020.