Write procedures in advance and follow them. Selection of Topics and Instructors Suggestions for PDS topics can come from many sources. Committee members will have their own ideas. The chapter membership can be surveyed by asking them to rank order a list of topics and to write their own. Frequently-seen articles in trade publications are good candidates, and the list of ACM national lecturers, available from headquarters, is a good source of topics and instructors.
Many chapter believe it is important for the instructor to be a nationally known figure.
But they might also discover that members of their own chapter are doing very good work, worth sharing with others. There is much appeal in a home-grown PD seminar. If an outside instructor is desired, the ACM national lecturers are people with proven topics and speaking ability. Sometimes more than one speaker is used, for example, in a PDS comparing data base management systems. And if the PDS can be combined with a chapter meeting, ACM will subsidize travel expenses for an ACM lecturer.