Peter Denning (chair) Naval Postgraduate School
Tim Bell University of Canterbury, NZ
Vint Cerf Google
Robb Cutler CSTA President
John Dunnion University College Dublin, IRL
Susanne Hambrusch Purdue University
Sue Higgins Naval Postgraduate School
Alan Kay Squeakland
Len Kleinrock UCLA
Josh Kroll Harvard Student
Craig Martell Naval Postgraduate School
Andrew McGettrick Strathclyde University, Scotland
Jeff Moser Interactive Intelligence
Peter Neumann SRI
Rick Snodgrass University of Arizona
Larry Snyder University of Washington
It is a time of challenges for the computing field. We are tired of hearing that a computing professional is little more than a program coder or a system administrator; or that a college or graduate education is unnecessary; or that entering the computing field is a social death. We are dismayed that K-12 students, especially girls, have such a negative perception of computing. We are alarmed by reports that the innovation rate in our field has been declining and that enrollments in our degree programs have dropped 50% since 2001. Instead of the solo voice of the programmer, we would like to hear from the choir of mathematicians, engineers, and scientists who make up the bulk of our field.
It is also a time of great opportunities. Big, important ideas and major innovations await discovery by those who decipher information processes in biology, medicine, physics, life science, engineering, economics, social science, and more. We are poised to find cures for intractable diseases, breach computational barriers with quantum computing, secure communications with quantum cryptography, compute with world-scale networks, and manage our natural resources wisely.
We are men and women: educators, researchers, industrialists, seasoned professionals, acolytes, recent graduates, students, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and hardware and software developers. We share a fervent belief in the vitality and future of our field. We believe we can, by working together in new ways, recover the magic and beauty of computer science.
Join Us
We are organizing an invitational summit of 200 visionary leaders from all sectors touched by computing, including science, engineering, industry, business, education, journalism, policymaking, and government. We will inquire into the reasons each of us has been fired up about our profession and into how we can ignite similar fires in others. We will create projects and form teams that will seed, nurture, and cultivate new ideas in the community. We will cross international borders. We will aggressively publicize the message of the wonder of our field and the hope for the future.
This is not a paper-presentation or inspiring-orations summit. This is a get-it-done summit. We will roll up our sleeves and work for three days to bring each of our most creative ideas forward and let them loose to innovate in our community. We are not trying to achieve a consensus around any one idea: we want to unleash many ideas. Using the Appreciative Inquiry process, professional facilitators will guide us to this outcome.
If you have not already received an invitation and would like one, send an email to Peter Denning (pjd@nps.edu). Describe briefly your network and an idea you’d like to see become a project after the summit.
