From the Editor: Social Interaction: its Rewards and Retributions

Steven Pemberton

April is the cruellest month. With the deadline for material of April 1st, it's no joke trying to produce this issue in just over half the time usually allocated for production, before I fly off to the CHI conference, with its whirl of tutorials, papers, meetings, and social events. That air ticket to Boston is what we can call a real, hard, deadline.

So, as you sit there with your cup of coffee, feet up on the table, reading the Bulletin (or floating in your swimming pool, or however it is you are when reading the Bulletin), think of me here sweating over a keyboard and piles of paper, praying that the computers don't go down again before I've sent everything to the phototypesetter (as they just went down this week for two whole unplanned days).

A New Column...

This issue features a new column: Local SIGs, edited by the SIGCHI Local SIGs chair, Kate Ehrlich. While a lot of attention is paid to the international SIGCHI events, a lot also happens at the local level, and this column is an attempt to keep us all in touch with it. I'm looking forward to see how it develops.

...and an Experiment

Amongst my colleagues we have an agreement: if you are caught talking about your work at a party or other social event, you get fined one guilder (around half the cost of a cup of coffee in a city-centre café). This rule was originally introduced to inhibit the further development of nerdiness amongst some colleagues, and an attempt to inhibit alienation amongst our non-computer friends, who might otherwise be inclined not to come to our parties any more. The fact that we go out together once a year on some social event on the proceeds (and usually in the process earning some more money for the next year) demonstrates that it is sorely needed.

Now, this issue of the Bulletin features an experiment for me: an Education Special. The Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht runs a very innovative degree course in Interaction Design, combining design and HCI in one course.

Originally, they had planned to write a small piece for the Education column for an issue of the Bulletin, but by chance I happened to meet someone at a party who had been shown round the faculty there. Braving the risk of being fined a guilder (and of course the consequent embarrassment of having being caught), I looked around to check that none of my colleagues was in hearing range and dared to ask to be told more. My informant was very enthusiastic about what he had seen, and indeed, what I heard sounded to me very interesting for the wider CHI community.

Consequently, I got in contact with the people at the HKU and suggested that they might like to expand their planned submission with a couple of extra articles on some of the teaching methods they use and other features of the course. They accepted, went away and wrote, and then looking at the results decided to combine the various articles into a whole in order to emphasise the themes running through the various parts.

Then, in a final display of enthusiasm and recklessness in the face of the looming deadlines I mentioned above, they even volunteered to design and layout the pages, combining the work of staff and students.

I agreed willingly. HCI, as their course well demonstrates, is a strongly design-oriented field, and one of my aims as still relatively new editor of the Bulletin is to introduce more design and visual elements into the Bulletin.

I have been very impressed with the enthusiasm and energy of the people at the HKU and what they are doing. I like very much what they have done for this issue and I hope you do too.

Steven Pemberton.

Email: Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl
World wide web: http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/

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Vol.26 No.3, July 1994
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