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Vol.27 No.2, April 1995
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If you have browsed the back cover of this Bulletin recently you might have noticed the slow but steady growth in local SIGCHI groups. There are now 25 local SIGs in various stages of formation. Three of them are in Europe and four of them are in Canada. Given the number, diversity and geographical spread of these groups it seems a good time to reflect on what it means to be a local group. By way of emphasizing the international flavor of local groups, the featured SIG in this issue is CHISIG (Australia). Although still in the process of determining whether to join CHI, CHISIG is representative of many of the issues facing local groups - distance from other groups and from a central organization, importance of retaining a local culture yet remaining part of an international group, attracting and keeping members.
Physical distance is no longer a serious barrier to communication or collaboration. One of the technologies helping to bring groups together is the World Wide Web. In the "News and Views" section you will see that some local SIGs have begun publishing their own World Wide Web home pages. The addresses of these home pages will henceforth be included with the other contact information on the inside back cover.
For me, the notion of what it means to be a local group was brought home (literally and figuratively) during a recent trip to Melbourne, Australia where I attended the OZCHI conference. Having grown up in Melbourne I was familiar with the surroundings and culture. On the other hand, now that I reside on the east coast of the U.S. I was reminded of how far away Australia is and how little that distance matters. Even within Australia the distances between major cities are great and the population relatively small. Australians have therefore become practiced at being self-sufficient. What struck me, however, was the way they were able to balance this local self-sufficiency and local culture with a rich network of connections across Australia and the world.
What does it mean to be local? Local groups have their own culture which is reflected in their communications style (email, WWW home pages, postal mailings, word of mouth), membership profiles (e.g. training in computer science, psychology or social sciences; academic or commercial professions), and type of activities (e.g. frequency and format of monthly meetings). There is a certain level of comfort and familiarity that comes with a local group as well as the opportunity to attend meetings and get together with other people in the field on a regular basis.
Yet, self-sufficiency should not turn into parochialism. Members of local groups have an opportunity to develop new insights and innovative ideas which become especially valuable when shared with others. Local groups should reach across to other groups as well as to the larger professional community through publications, conferences and personal contacts.
CHISIG was formed over 10 years ago as an offshoot of the local Ergonomics Society. In addition to the national group, there are local groups in every state except Tasmania, Northern Territory and (currently) Victoria.
Gitte Lindgaard, working with other Human Factors/cognitive scientists at the Telecom Research Labs in Melbourne recognized the need to form a community of Human Factors/cognitive scientists especially since this group was a small minority amongst the engineers.
A group got formed in 1987 primarily to run an all day seminar at Monash University in Melbourne. About 40 people attended. The next year, still as a 1 day seminar 55 people came. In 1989, it grew into a 2-day conference with invited papers, workshops and demos. In 1990, for the first time the keynote talks were delivered by people outside Australia. Because it was not possible to have the people come to Australia, the keynote presenters, Brian Shackel and Tom Landauer videotaped their talks. A phone connection was set up for people to ask questions directly of the presenters.
In 1991 the conference left the Melbourne area for the first time and also expanded to 2 days of talks plus an additional day of workshops. The conference was now large enough to be run by its own group of volunteers, letting CHISIG grow independent of the conference.
The most recent conference held in November 1994 in Melbourne had over 200 people from 8 different countries. It offered 7 tutorials, 3 days of technical sessions, a very lively interactive experience track, posters and even site visits.
The approximately 130 members of CHISIG come from diverse backgrounds, experiences and nationalities. Most of the members are academics and other researchers, followed by consultants, a few product people and graduate students. One consulting group in particular, Hiser, started by Sarah Bloomer has been very active in both the conference and CHISIG as well as becoming a major employer. The majority of members are trained as computer scientists or psychologists but there are also anthropologists, technical communicators, town planners, communication specialists, trainers, cognitive scientists, linguists, physiotherapists and architects.
Because Australia is far away from both North America and Europe, CHISIG members actively keep track of developments not just in SIGCHI and the CHI conference but also British HCI, Interact, East-West HCI, CSCW etc.
Most communication inside and outside Australia is by email, most people having access to the Internet at least for mail. This method of communication is seen as an essential part of staying in touch. And in fact because the number of people is relatively small, news tends to spread fast. Many collaborations take place entirely in email. For instance, John Bennett (in California) and Penny Collings (in Canberra) collaborated on a tutorial for OZCHI entirely by email.
People in Australia are very proactive about reading publications, attending conferences and generally keeping up to date with work going on elsewhere. Interestingly, the national CHISIG even supports a lending library. For a small fee members can join the CHISIG library which is affiliated with one of the universities, to borrow books, papers and other materials including borrowing by post.
The other main methods of communication are through the CHISIG newsletter which is published 5 times a year, and, the OZCHI conference. Most of the individual local groups do not run their own monthly meetings, and surprisingly, most people don't travel much within Australia so the annual conference becomes the focal point for direct contact.
For further information on CHISIG contact their chairperson:
Terry Webb, Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering, University of Canberra, PO Box 1, Belconnen, ACT 2616; Tel: +61-6-201 5341; +61-6-201 5231
or Steve Howard (secretary) at Steve@saturn.cs.swin.oz.au
Hilary Vandal, treasurer of the Puget Sound local SIG writes:
Between Microsoft's intensive usability emphasis and the University of Washington's state-of-the-art virtual reality research, Seattle is the perfect place for the 4-year-old Puget Sound SIGCHI chapter. Because of our healthy high-tech industry, our focus is more on sharing the expertise of our 80-plus members than it is on solely providing a forum for outside experts to lecture.
A good example of this emphasis on cooperative education was the Show and Tell program for our December '94 meeting. Members were encouraged to bring a short, entertaining creation for "show-and-tell." The only requirements were that the presentations be fun to watch, and that they should have something to do with computer-human interaction.
Two other popular meetings from this year's program were "Designing Apps for Windows '95," and "Using High-fidelity Prototyping to Facilitate Early Usability Testing." We're looking forward to another great year of information sharing and increased membership in 1995. Feel free to join us if you're ever in Seattle!
Lonestar CHI (Dallas)
The motto of the Dallas chapter (Lonestar CHI) is "meeting locally, reading globally and thinking independently". Mark Shurtleff writes:
Lonestar CHI's latest project -- constructing a World wide web page (http://www.utdallas.edu/orgs/sigchi/LSCHI.html) -- exemplifies the notion of meeting locally, reading globally and thinking independently. The page has "hot spots" to global CHI resources, but it also has our local events, and serves as a bulletin board for information on the latest meeting, and current jobs. The creation of the page was also a team effort, resources and the HTML were provided by David Huff a graduate student at UTD, the material was provided by myself and also Gail McLaughlin at EDS provided editing support.
We are planning a new metaphor for the web page and for our year end bulletin where the reader is invited to explore Lonestar Texas, with our armadillo mascot "GUI Jo". A visit to the Lonestar city hall gives information about the ACM and the local officers, a trip to the Lonestar Gazette lists the editorials, and a run to the general store will give reviews of the latest prototyping tools. At Lonestar we meet locally, read globally, and think independently.
World Wide Web
A few of the local SIGs are starting their own World Wide Web pages. Look for the URLs (Universal Resource Locators) in the address listing on the inside back page of the bulletin. The first ones are: Dallas, ToRCHI and BayCHI.
Over the past several years a tradition has sprung up of a "challenge" between various local groups at the CHI conference. Up to now that challenge has mostly centered on ToRCHI and BayCHI. We hope to see many more local groups participate this year at CHI '95.
Marilyn Mantei of ToRCHI throws out this challenge to all local SIGs:
This year's contest, in the theme of the conference site location, will be a mountain climbing contest. Each SIG is encouraged to bring a climbing belt or a length of rope (20 feet). We will teach you how to "rope in" and how to "belay" your partner. There will be awesome dangers of rockfall, pigeon droppings, sudden showers and the usual "CHI trolls." Of course, the most awesome part of the entire event will be the pictures shown afterwards.
Teams will be judged on "spirit," wetness, number of members, style, artistic interpretation and ability to withstand the elements. Each SIG will be allowed to pick a judge.
There will also be several tables set up at the conference with information about various local SIGs. Please come by and pick up the information or stop by to chat.
Kate Ehrlich, Local SIGs Chair
ehrlich.chi@acm.org
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