ACM-SE

The ACM Southeast Conference began in 1962 as the Annual Meeting of the ACM Southeast Region. In the ACM organization at that time the US was partitioned into regions, with one representative from each region on the ACM Council. The first regional meeting/conference was organized by Charles Bradshaw, the Southeast Regional Representative at the time, and was held in Ft. Walton Beach, FL. There were several local ACM chapters in the region in 1962, and for the first several years the annual regional meeting/conference was hosted by one of the region's local chapters. The ACM Southeast Region Representative coordinated, and sometimes organized each conference.

There were few academic programs, or even computing courses, in 1962, and local ACM meetings were attended by both practitioners and academics. Likewise the annual conferences in the early years were attended by both practitioners and academics, and although there were some theoretical papers, many were oriented toward current application issues.

The exact date isn't clear, but eventually the "annual meeting" designation was replaced by "annual conference". The early conferences were hosted mostly by local chapters, but since 1987 each conference has been hosted by an academic institution. For some years after 1987, many conferences continued to be held in hotels, but for the past 15 years or so conferences have been held on a college or university campus. Practitioner attendance has declined to the point where all, or almost all, conference attendees are from academic institutions or research labs.