Last August, a meeting was held amongst highly dedicated and talented members of our chapter of ACM. The focus of this meeting was to enhance our outdated website, and provide a better Internet experience for officers and members alike. The members devoted their summer to working on the website, and as a result, have turned our previous site(1) into what is, by far, the best revision of our site yet(2).

The site is written on top of a content management system, with key applications implemented with Django, a Python framework. Our resident designer worked hard on keeping the design simple, yet pleasing to the eye. He also redesigned our chapter logo, working it into the rest of the website. This latest revision brings Northeastern's ACM chapter into the world of web 2.0 with many features commonly found on other professional websites.

One of the problems with managing an organization is getting information out to members. We have a wide range of events for everyone, and getting the word out is a challenge. Our site has implemented features that use existing technologies to address this problem. We now have an RSS feed that can be updated with the touch of a button. We also re-designed our calendar(3), supporting both iCal and Google Calendar integration. No matter what our members prefer, they can have a direct feed to nuACM's events, and so far, it has been very successful.

The framework our site uses makes it easy for members or officers to write internet applications to add to our available features. One member wrote an election app(4) that allows ACM members to vote electronically in officer elections. This solved the problem that we had when certain officers were on co-op during elections, or perhaps some students were abroad when the actual elections were taking place.

Another web application (and probably the most impressive) is the library app(5). If you remember, last year our library was a static html page that showed our users the 1000+ book selection they could borrow as a member of our ACM chapter. Now, we have our most impressive accomplishment: a fully functional, student written, web app that deals with searching for books, requests, checkouts, and bi-weekly reminders. Now students can browse books from their own computers, put in requests, and pick up the book later that day.

These key improvements, along with other website adjustments, have allowed us to effectively interact with the members of our chapter, and give them, along with prospective members, incentive to be a part of ACM. This new website has facilitated many services that were unavailable before. Now, you can be a part of our organization from anywhere. One could register for a course, check out a book, look when our next BBQ is being held, and watch the latest speaker series lecture all from their own location. We hope you enjoy our website as much as we did building it!

Urls:

1 http://graham.ccs.neu.edu
2 http://acm.ccs.neu.edu
3 http://acm.ccs.neu.edu/?q=event/2008/04/01/month/all/all/1
4 http://acm.ccs.neu.edu/election
5 http://acm.ccs.neu.edu/library