| Sumario: | On behalf of the Board of Governors of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this conference, the first to be sponsored by the Federation rather than the National Joint Computer Committee. In May of this year, the AFIPS was created by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Radio Engineers, to be the unified national voice for the information processing and computer profession in the United States. Since then, there has been an orderly transfer of business from the NJCC to the AFIPS. As a society of societies, the AFIPS differs from the NJCC in that it can accept into membership other professional societies which are interested in information processing, and it is expected that it will grow significantly. As stated in our constitution, the goals of AFIPS "shall be the advancement and diffusion of knowledge of the information processing sciencesâ¦for literary and scientific purposesâ¦To this end, it is part of the purposes of the Federationâ¦to serve the public by making available to journals, newspapers, and other channels of public information reliable communications as to information processing and its progress; to cooperate with local, national, and international organizations or agencies on matters pertaining to information processing; to serve as representative of the United States of America in international organizations with like interests; to promote unity and effectiveness of effort among all those who are devoting themselves to information processing by research, by application of its principles, by teaching or by study; and to foster the relations of the sciences of information processing to other sciences and to the arts and industries." Some of these items we are well started on---others we will inaugurate soon. We represent the United States to the International Federation of Information Processing Societies and contribute financially to IFIPS in behalf of this country. We have assumed sponsorship and financial responsibility of the Joint Computer Conferences. We have accepted applications for membership from other societies. We have made our existence known to other professional societies. We a re an active and growing organization acting to promote the interchange of information among information processing specialists through sponsorship of greater cooperative efforts between their professional societies. The American Federation of Information Processing Societies promises to be an instrument of tremendous utility to American technology in the exciting and dynamic years ahead.
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