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Vol.28 No.1, January 1996
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Vol.28 No.1, January 1996 |
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There have been to date 12 conferences bearing the CHI name, and there are 2 now in preparation. Along with the pre-CHI conference at Gaithersburg in 1982, their chairs were or are:
82 Bill Curtis, replaced by Jean Nichols
83 Raoul Smith
84 (No CHI -- CHI 83 was in December, and CHI 85 was in April)
85 Lorraine Borman and Austin Henderson
86 Marilyn Mantei and Raoul Smith
87 Ronald Baeker and William Buxton
88 John O'Hare
89 Bill Curtis
90 Gene Lynch and Jon Meads
91 Keith Butler and John Thomas
92 Scooter Morris and Jim Miller
93 Gerrit van der Veer, Bert Arnold and Ted White
94 Wendy Kellogg and Tom Hewett
95 Scott Robertson and Terry Roberts
96 Kevin Schofield and Michael Tauber
97 Alan Edwards and Steven Pemberton
I contacted as many as I could, and asked them about the experience and the developments.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
Ben Shneiderman, Michael Schneider, and I came up with the idea for a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems at a meeting of the Software Psychology Society -- Potomac Chapter in late 1979. However, not much happened until the Washington DC Chapter of the ACM asked me if we had any conference ideas they could support with some of their surplus funds (as a non-profit they did not want to show a profit). I went down to the World Bank in the spring of 1980 and described our ideas for a conference that we estimated would attract about 250 people, probably most from the DC area. They provided us $2000 with the proviso that while they did not want any money back, they did not want us to get them in debt. Armed with this seed money we went to the National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, MD. and got their support for facilities and mailing. I was the General Chair and Michael Schneider was the Program Chair. Ben, as always, was an eminence behind the scenes. In the summer of 1980 I took a job in Connecticut with ITT and had to step down as Chair. Jean Nichols accepted the position and carried the conference from there to its commencement. Jean and Michael spent an arduous 1.5 years organizing all the people and functions that would have to come together to form a conference.
What was the state of things when you started?
At ACM'79 in DC several members of the GE and University of Maryland research groups held a special session on human factors and a couple of hundred people came. We were very surprised at the interest and suspected that maybe it was time to branch out on our own. There had also been an earlier gathering of researchers at the University of Michigan that had augured well for the birth of CHI. SIGCHI had just been formed and was looking for a mission.
What was your vision for the conference?
We just wanted to provide a forum, try get everyone together, and see what would happen. We hoped to attract some of the better researchers from around the US.
What was your experience as a whole?
When so many people showed up everyone realized we were participating in the birth of a new discipline. There was an elation that this community could now stand its own as a discipline and not have to tag along with the rest of computer science. The 80's were ours.
How many people came?
907 people came from all over North America and many from Europe. Never in our wildest estimates did we anticipate so many people attending. The lunch line at the National Bureau of Standards was 200 yards long. So many of the meeting rooms ran out of standing room that some sessions had to be shown on remote TV. Ultimately the conference committee double-crossed the Washington DC Chapter of the ACM. The chapter had wanted to reduce their $10,000 cash surplus. The conference returned somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 and now they really had a surplus problem. The newly formed SIGCHI realized that this new ACM conference was the motherlode that would fund its growth.
What would you have done differently?
There is nothing that done differently could improve the elation and sense of mission that this new field found in Gaithersburg.
What did you do when it was all over?
At the end of 1983, I left ITT and returned to Texas to help found the Human Interface Laboratory at MCC, the new 5th generation computer research consortium in Austin. Just as I was leaving Tom Moran and Austin Henderson asked me to be the Program Chair for CHI'85, and this time I would not be allowed to back out because I had taken a new job.
During the Gaithersburg conference or shortly thereafter, the SIGCHI organizers, including myself, decided in effect to keep the Conference on Human Factors going, i.e. continuing the work of the local Washington, DC chapter of the ACM. Lorraine Borman, the Chair of SIGCHI, called me up one day and asked me if I wanted to chair the first SIGCHI conference. I had had no experience chairing a conference, so of course I said yes! (Just the thing for a control freak -- I'd be in charge of everything!!) Anyway, Dick Pew volunteered to be Program Chair, Deborah Mayhew and Arlene Aucella said they would do Local Arrangements, Dick Rubinstein served as Treasurer, Ben Somberg did Publicity, Ann Janda and Randy Ford were in charge of Publications, Sara Bly did Film and Videotape, Celeste Magers was in charge of Registration, and Lorraine Borman handled tutorials.
We had regular meetings at my house where my wife and I cooked dinner for the committee and then we'd talk about the conference. Dick Pew also had meetings at his home.
Being financially insecure, I was terrified we would lose money. This made me budget very conservatively and I watched every penny. Since Boston hotels get booked years in advance for the popular times of the year, we could only get dates in December. So during the whole time, up to the very day of the conference, I worried about a snowstorm blanketing the city and making it impossible for participants to attend. (Talk about worrying about things you have no control over!)
One incident in particular about the conference that I will probably never forget was when someone who had arrived the day before the conference asked me where the registration packets were. And I said they weren't ready yet. I thought it wouldn't take much time to put them together. It must have been Sara Bly, who had a lot of experience with the SIGGRAPH conference. So she convinced me that these had to be given top priority so she, Susan Dray, Lorraine and I and I'm sure other people who I must thank but have forgotten, set up an assembly line to get the packets done.
One thing that I learned but still don't do well was to ask for help. But it was always at the last minute and usually in a state of panic. I took the whole responsibility on my shoulders (or so I thought) and ploughed ahead. Talk about grandiosity.
We did end up with about a $90,000. surplus which helped the second conference get going.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I contributed to CHI'83, was approached by Lorraine Borman and Tom Moran who wanted a conference co-chair (to partner with Lorraine) for CHI'85 who was local to the San Francisco Bay Area. I agreed.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
CHI'85 was the first conference on the April yearly time-frame. We set the timing for the conference that has been followed ever since. (It's sort of inevitable.) We were still working on the model of a big reviewing meeting in November, which was itself a small mini-conference; it was at MCC in Austin, Texas where Bill Curtis (program chair) worked. The research symposium is an echo of the good times had at that mini-conference. But the field is too big for that now.
What was your vision for the conference?
Try to expand beyond papers, panels and video. To provide for people to confer informally.
What changes if any did you bring about?
We added demonstrations. We made long coffee breaks and lunches. We held the whole conference in the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, including the conference banquet (we just fit into the atrium). Because of the single venue for everything, the conference felt very contained, and people felt that they were part of it all. We added a social event (Afterglow) late in the evening to add to the sense of the conference being round-the-clock.
What was your experience as a whole?
I learned a huge amount about running a conference. Things were less complex in 1985. The local team was 5 people (each with small support teams), and we ran it all by meeting weekly at the hotel. Once the conference was going, I had little to do. I met a lot of CHI and ACM folk and as a result, I found a professional home in ACM/SIGCHI.
How many people came?
Around 1500.
What would you have done differently?
Financial control was not very advanced on CHI'85, so it was hard to make decisions. Things have gotten much better very recently.
What are you doing now?
Job: Manager, User Experience Laboratory, Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer, Inc.
CHI Conference: reviewing papers and design reviews for CHI'96.
SIGCHI: Nothing formal. Just finished as Past Chair of SIGCHI, after 4 years as SIGCHI Co-Chair and 1 year as SIGCHI Vice-Chair.
Since the conference was coming to Boston again, I was asked to chair it again. But this time there would be a co-chair, Marilyn Mantei. We agreed on a division of labor where she would handle program issues and I would take care of the physical and fiscal matters.
This time the conference was to be held in May and at the Marriott. I was more nonchalant this time and went to China to teach for the summer and lecture in Korea and Japan a few months preceding the conference. The conference did well financially and we ended up with a healthy surplus again.
One outcome of the conference that I was particularly pleased with, although I don't know if it was ever used, was a rather extensive local arrangements handbook that I wrote. It detailed a lot of the small problems to anticipate, some that were generic and others that were peculiar to the conference.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
In 1986, Lorraine Borman, the Chair of SIGCHI, sent out a message to those of us on the SIGCHI Advisory Board and asked where SIGCHI should hold CHI'89. I replied that all previous and future CHIs seem to always be held on the East or West Coast of the US. I thought she should bring CHI to the heartland, and consider Minneapolis, Chicago, or Denver -- and if she would consider Austin I could probably arrange for some people to form a committee. She visited Austin, cut a deal with Stouffer Austin to host CHI'89, and sent me package that contained a small Texas flag and congratulations on being the Conference Chair for CHI'89.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
By the late 1980s, CHI was a roaring success. We were gaining about 100 new attendees each year. However, I overheard a few of the CHI luminaries in the hall at CHI'88 say that they thought they might skip a year and doubted that they would miss anything. Things seemed to have gotten in a stable and predictable pattern. Some of the early excitement had worn off. Gavriel Salvendy had recently started another conference that competed with CHI and was going to be held 3 months after CHI'89 in Boston. Although SIGCHI was growing, I was terrified. I didn't want to be the first CHI chair to oversee a downturn. We needed to renew the excitement.
What was your vision for the conference?
I wanted to get as many new ideas and systems displayed at the CHI'89 as possible and make it exciting. I hit on the theme of `Wings for the Mind' and my conference administrator was also a talented artist and she took these ideas and made them visible. I wanted to increase our efforts to reach out to practitioners and I wanted to get more attendance from Asia, especially Japan. I wanted to try some new things and asked Clayton Lewis to be the Program Chair because he is a naturally creative guy who is always willing to venture into new areas. I also wanted to ensure that people would want to come to CHI'89 and have one hell of a good time. So much so that they would never think about missing a year again.
What changes if any did you bring about?
To make sure we did not lose any of the CHI regulars and that everyone would want to come back to CHI'90, I decided that this had to be the `Wildest CHI ever'. The best, I dunno -- but the wildest, guaranteed. No other conference any of these folks would ever attend would teach them the Texas 2 Step and set them on top of a live Brahma Bull. I put a premium on people getting as much out of the their personal experience as from the technical program.
We invited exhibitors for the first time. We offered research labs a chance to come present their overall research program rather than just presenting a few isolated papers. Joy Mountford and her colleagues at Apple produced a set of information kiosks that involved everyone in entering information about who they were and where they could be reached, in addition to providing information about the conference and Austin. Since the hotel was not big enough for all of the attendees, we constructed CHI's first busing program. I clustered keynotes at the beginning of the conference. This was done from necessity since we required a larger space for plenary sessions than available in the hotel, and I could only get the Bass Concert Hall at The University of Texas for 2 nights at the beginning of the week. We integrated plenaries, posters, and the receptions, of which we had two, one Mexican and one Western.
To create the liveliness I wanted at CHI'89 I spent considerable time developing the plenary sessions. We had one of the founders of the field (Larry Tesler of Apple), CHI's wildest speaker (Elliot Soloway), the interface in space (NASA's Michael McGreevy and astronaut Byron Lichtenberg), and a debate among several lawyers litigating user interface look-and-feel cases using a mock-up courtroom on stage. We paid a lot of attention to how people would feel at the conference. We created conference programs that would fit in a coat pocket or purse, and whose inside front jacket had a layout of all the information that was needed to find any event or session at CHI'89.
We sent out more advertising than had been sent out before. Motei Suwa in Japan offered to send CHI'89 advance programs out to his mailing list of CHI people in Japan. Unfortunately we ran out of advance programs and only had half as many as he needed and it was not clear that we had anyone attending from Japan whose name started above the letter `M'.
What was your experience as a whole?
The custom at CHI is to have Conference Co-Chairs. Lorraine trusted me to handle it by myself -- for what reason I will never know. It ends up that if I had a co-chair I would have probably passed the whole thing off to him or her and gone on about the research at MCC. This time there would be no passing it on to someone else as I had done with Jean Nichols in 1980. I had a look and feel I wanted to establish for CHI'89. Everything I felt crucial to that I kept locally controlled in Austin. Everything else was administered somewhere else by someone with the right experience. We put inordinate hours into thinking through how things would flow and how to present CHI'89 to the world. This was one of the most satisfying efforts of my career. One of the greatest compliments I have received was paid by Don Norman during the closing plenary panel when he said, "This conference was designed."
How many people came?
We had between 1700 and 1800. This was a dramatic acceleration of attendance over the trends we had observed through the 1980s.
What would you have done differently?
I will never again answer an email from Lorraine Borman. CHI has grown so that it is now run by co-chairs and a professional conference management staff. CHI is brilliantly managed, but if you want to pull off `the Wildest CHI ever', you have to be allowed a little unfettered spirit.
What are you doing now?
Six months after CHI'89 I went from MCC's Software Technology Program back to try to help save the Human Interface Laboratory from some serious funding shortfalls. Half way through 1990 it was clear that we would not be able to save it and this Lab became the first of MCC's many large research to be shut down. In early 1991 I went to the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to direct the Software Process Program. I led the team that produced the Capability Maturity Model from the maturity framework pioneered by Watts Humphrey. Unfortunately my family was unable to move to Pittsburgh, so in 1993 I returned to Austin. I co-founded a company that works with software development organizations to mature their capability for developing software. I also still work part-time with the SEI.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
When SIGCHI first formed, I was very active with ACM. I had served as a chair of SIGGRAPH (back when it was a "SIC"), was a co-founder of the SIGGRAPH Conference (first Program Chair), had spent several years on the SIGBOARD, had chaired the ACM Finance Committee and was then on the ACM Council.
Having had a strong interest in HCI for a number of years, I decided to attend the first SIGCHI Conference in Boston (1983) even though I had to take vacation time and pay my own way. (I was not able to make the Gaithersburg Conference. My employer at the time, then an active vendor of office systems -- now defunct, saw no need for anyone to attend.)
While there, I was asked by Lorraine Borman, who decided to take advantage of my ACM experience, to serve on SIGCHI's Board of Advisors. It was during an Advisory Board meeting in 1987, that I was talked into being a co-chair for the 1990 Conference as we were not finding any ready candidates to take on the responsibility.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
The state of the conference in 1993 was fairly basic. I believe there were some exhibits -- most likely all publishers. And there was already an active tutorial program and informal video presentations. The technical program was limited to plenaries, papers, and panels. Organizationally, the conference was relatively small -- the total organizing committee was 29 people (not counting paper referees).
By 1989, the conference had grown to include workshops and SIGs, laboratory reviews, posters, demonstrations, videos, doctoral consortium, local industry showcase, and an expanded exhibits. Some informal hands-on demonstrations were also available. It was also the year that Apple provided the Information Kiosks for the Conference. By then the organizing committee had grown to about 100 people.
What was your vision for the conference?
There were actually several visions for the conference. Our primary interest was to highlight how good HCI design would improve the capability and value of systems and products -- empowering people in being able to do things they could not have done otherwise.
We also wanted to send the message to system and software developers that usability would be critical to product success.
We also had a vision for the attendees. We believed one of the primary values of attending the conference was to meet and interact with people -- to expand ones circle of acquaintances and, hopefully, friends. As such, we paid particular attention to the social aspects of the conference -- how we could design the conference to encourage personal interaction and to make individuals accessible to each other.
Finally, we realized that the committee members were contributing a large amount of time and effort to the conference. Our vision included ensuring that their participation would be recognized and would be a positive event in their personal and professional lives.
What changes if any did you bring about?
We introduced the Interactive Experience as a formal conference event and had the first Interactive Performance. Logistically, we were the first CHI conference to provide computers as standard support to presenters. We introduced an afternoon off in the middle of the conference so attendees would have chance to enjoy the locale (but it seems like most of the attendees used the time to attend informal meetings). We were the first conference to appoint students to chair the student volunteers.
We were also the first conference to have a major influence on the local weather -- by handing out umbrellas as part of the conference registration package, we were singularly effective in keeping the Northwest rain away for the entire duration of the conference.
The change that involved the most risk was moving the conference out of a hotel into a convention center. We also introduced cost-centered budgeting which caused a small panic among the approval authorities as they were not familiar with the concept. There was some concern that between moving into the convention center and using strange budgeting and accounting methods, we'd end up bankrupting SIGCHI. However, it provided us with better financial forecasting and control than would have otherwise been available.
What was your experience as a whole?
It was a grand experience but one that could never have been done without a truly excellent Conference Committee. As Co-Chair, you receive the focus of attention but the real success of the conference is entirely due to the Conference Committee. They are the ones who really make a conference what it is.
How many people came?
2264 people attended -- a 40% increase over the previous year. If we had remained in the hotel, we would not have had sufficient capacity for all the attendees.
What would you have done differently?
Never would have left the excess wine on the loading dock without a guard. :-)
What are you doing now?
I've moved back to the Pacific Northwest and am President and Principal Consultant for Usability Engineering Services, Inc., a Seattle area firm.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I became interested in CHI without knowing it. During the data analysis for my Ph.D. dissertation the frustration at dealing with JCL in the computing center at Tufts University I realized how much more attention I was paying to making the program work than I was to understanding what the data meant. At some point I made the shift from a complaining consumer to someone who took responsibility to try to improve the situation. My first effort to change the focus of application development to human or organizational performance improvements was at Bell Labs. It was and continues to be cathartic.
When the first CHI meeting was held at Gaithersburg I heard about it by chance and barely got there. It was a much bigger meeting than I or most anyone else expected. I was very intimidating. The work was mostly research. It was also very gratifying to see that such talented people also felt that this problem was important and were making some headway with it. At the same time the scope of the field was daunting and there was no structure to help break it into bite-sized pieces.
The first "posts" I had were at CHI'85. I screwed up my courage and submitted a paper on usability engineering and a SIG on user interface architecture. It was the first time I felt I had anything worth saying to such accomplished people. It's still very clear how much it meant that John Gould and Clayton Lewis were very encouraging afterwards. Their being accepting and supporting lead me to organize a tutorial on a systematic approach to achieving usability with John Bennett and John Whiteside. It ran for a few years and Bennett called it usability engineering.
The experience of organizing something that seemed to work at CHI lead to being recruited to serve as workshops chair by Bill Curtis for CHI'89. I was really impressed at how influential the conference had become. I served as both local arrangements chair and industry liaison chair for CHI'90 in Seattle. I recruited a team to help with each and that gave me the hang of how to get bigger things done.
What was your vision for the conference?
John Thomas and I talked a lot about specific goals -- and still find it useful as well as amusing. I actually gave a presentation on these goals to the conference committee to get the job of CHI'91 co-chair. They were to:
John and I used buy-in to the goals as a way of recruiting talented, dedicated people to join us in producing the CHI'91 conference. That was important because none of us lived in New Orleans where the conference took place and the team members were from all over. The goals also helped us all keep our ambitions manageable.
What changes if any did you bring about?
During the CHI'91 program selection meeting Austin Henderson told us the conference would never be the same again and I think it was a complement since Gary and Judy Olson had just lead their team through a collaborative effort that integrated the various forums of technical program. It was especially important that the researchers who lead the foundation of CHI as a field felt the program was valid technically when engineering work became integrated. I think we made good progress on all the other goals, too. I'm also certain that I had fun.
What was your experience as a whole?
Serving as co-chair of CHI'91 was probably the most satisfying experience in my professional career. Attendees seemed to feel both welcome and stimulated. We were a great team.
How many people came?
About 2,130 satisfied customers came to CHI'91.
What would you have done differently?
Personally, I would find a way to make my family a part of the experience somehow. It took me a long way from my home in Seattle a lot. And since the conference was scheduled out of town during final exams none of my kids or wife, Carol, shared any of this important occasion firsthand.
Financially, we would probably lower the prices to attendees. We cleared about a quarter million. But that's hindsight and plans for the conference are made years in advance and depend on how businesses will be feeling in the last few months before it's actually held.
What are you doing now?
I've been at Boeing for nearly fifteen years. I became a senior principal scientist in 1992. In the past two years user-centered software has become very important and demanding and it was time to give someone else a chance to help run SIGCHI.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
The roots of history, of course, go deep into pre-history. And, the rope of history is at least related to the strands of many individuals. Similarly, for me, with a psychology background in graduate school that focussed on the differences between AI and human intelligence as well as lots of opportunity to interact with computers, the general theme of HCI was a natural. I recall, for instance, being struck by the fact that while the computer was supposed to be a tool for human beings, a lot of us actually had to rotate our lives around the schedule of the mainframe at the University of Michigan. All along my programming career I was struck by how much the intrinsic complexity of whatever task I was engaged in was further confounded by the seemingly arbitrary complexity of computing systems and programming languages.
After my Ph.D. in 1971, I left Michigan to run a research project on the psychology of aging at Harvard Medical School. I also ran the computer system which provided more opportunities to reflect on HCI. I also became disillusioned with traditional experimental psychology. It seemed that I could design experiments and stories to come out however I wanted; a better question than whether the "locus" of the age-related memory effects were "in" short or long term memory or whether they were "in" the "storage" or the "retrieval" was this: How could you use technology to improve memory? To do so, the interaction between the human and the technology would have to reach a new level of smoothness.
In 1973, IBM was coming to the realization that the limiting factor to revenue growth was the ease of use of computers. It should be noted that IBM had already had traditional human factors testing labs in place for some time. But typically, such groups, acting late, were only able to make surface, though often useful, changes. I was hired to join an existing small group of psychologists at T. J. Watson Research Center. We were attempting to create new paradigms of Human Computer Interaction. It didn't take long to realize that such a small group could only have a relatively limited impact on a company as large as IBM. I explained to management my strategy to multiply our effectiveness by establishing what we would now call a "Community of Practice." It was one of those times when management just stared at me in disbelief.
Indeed, at this time though, there were a number of cognitive psychologists who were beginning to show an interest in HCI. We had special sessions at several conferences including the National Computing Conference in 1975 where I met Ben Shneiderman and Ruven Brooks. After one such meeting, (organized, I believe, by Bill Curtis) in Washington on software metrics, several of the speakers got together for a meal and decided to hold an entire conference devoted to HCI.
This resulted in the so-called "Gaithersburg Conference" held at the National Bureau of Standards and co-sponsored by the Washington Chapter of the ACM. In our initial planning, we assumed that we would probably be able to get about 100 attendees. When the program committee met, however, we found that we had over 150 submissions! As March 1992 drew near, it was clear that we may well have 500 attendees. In actuality, over 900 people came.
I did not attend CHI again until 1986 and have attended all of them since in various roles. I was on a panel with Jon Meads and Austin Henderson at NCC '87 and I was asked by Jon Meads to chair workshops for CHI 90. Meanwhile, at CHI 89, Keith Butler approached me and asked whether I would consider being a candidate for CHI 91 co-chair. We had many long discussions about the challenges of holding a CHI conference and what we wanted to do with this one in particular.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
Personally, I had greatly enjoyed every CHI I had attended and learned a lot. There were, however, complaints both about its becoming too applied and about its being too theoretical. I guess the one thing both "sides" would agree to was that not enough of the theory was making a real difference in practice.
What was your vision for the conference?
One of our chief goals, based upon the above observation was to try to structure the conference and the experience to enhance the flow of information among practitioners and theoreticians.
A second goal was to provide a challenging, fun, growth experience for the volunteers as well as the attendees.
What changes if any did you bring about?
We instituted overall technical program co-chairs to provide some coherence and a focus on "technology transfer" to the program. We wanted the technical program to work as a team and used both technology and the excellent skills of our technical co-chairs to provide this. We also chose a technical committee based on our judgement that they could be a valuable team player as well as their expertise.
After getting a generally excellent group of people, we believed strongly in delegation. Keith and I were both strongly committed to manage the conference in such a way that we could still do our "day jobs" competently.
During the "tenure" of Keith (CHI '89) and I (CHI '90) as workshop chairs and continuing at CHI '91, the workshop portion of CHI expanded tremendously. It is personally my favorite part of the program.
What was your experience as a whole?
My experience, on the whole, was very positive, mainly because of having such an able and interesting team. Of course, when the whole thing was over, I felt as though the walls of Camelot had suddenly fallen.
How many people came?
This, of course, is the big "crap shoot" of CHI; how many people will pay what fees. Most of the expenses must be committed before one really knows the answer to that question. At one point in the life of our conference, the state of Louisiana passed some kind of anti-abortion law and suddenly there was a world-wide move to boycott the conference unless it were moved. Well...moving a conference a few months out might barely be possible provided one were willing to choose a site in the desert somewhere and 10-20 of the volunteers were willing to give up their paying jobs. Luckily, this law did not go into effect. Another unforeseen danger was that many companies, during the Gulf war, were strongly urging employees not to fly. Finally, this was the first time CHI had been held without a strong local community of interest.
I would say, basically, we "lucked out" and about 2100 people came. From a financial standpoint, however, this is not the most important thing! See below.
What would you have done differently?
Based on both my experience as CHI 91 Co-chair and conference advisor for CHI 94, I would strongly recommend:
What are you doing now?
Executive Director, Human Computer Interaction for NYNEX. In my area, there is some "traditional" HCI work as well as a small research group developing advanced tools for software development based on improving communication among the stakeholders. I also have responsibility for the internal computing systems support at Science and Technology, venture capital investments in high technology, and the network testing centers in New York City and Framingham Mass. Also of interest, Mike Atwood, another member of the small program committee for the Gaithersburg conference, works for me, and is in charge of our rather massive effort to move NYNEX Science and Technology further along the developmental curve of the Capability Maturity Model. Bill Curtis, another member of that program committee is one of the consultants helping us.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I became involved with SIGCHI during the preparations for CHI'85. A friend of mine, Dave Shewmake was local arrangements chair and asked me to take some of his responsibilities, specifically A/V, which until that point had been part of local arrangements.
CHI'85 was a very different conference than later CHI's. It was much smaller (the core operations committee was only 5 people!) and had far fewer tracks. Demonstrations, for example, were first introduced in CHI'85.
After CHI'85, I was on the panels committee for CHI'90, and on the papers committee for CHI'91. I attended CHI'85, '87-'95. I became the co-chair of CHI'92 after attending a Conference Planning Committee (CPC) meeting in Monterey to present a concern regarding INTERCHI. During the meeting, some discussion was devoted to the lack of a co-chair for CHI'92. During the lunch I discussed the possibility with Jim Miller, and it was done!
What was your vision for the conference?
Jim and I had a couple of central goals for CHI'92. First, we wanted to maintain the confluence of both academic and industrial theory and practice. We felt very strongly that HCI, as a field, would benefit from both theory and practice being represented at the conference, and that researchers could benefit from hearing about the problems and techniques being faced and employed in practice while practitioners would benefit from hearing about the latest directions in research. Second, we really wanted to utilize the best principles of HCI in the development of the conference itself. This included a consistent design, professional-looking graphics, doing walk-throughs and at least some usability testing of the various conference products. And finally, we recognized that networking with colleagues was a key part of the CHI experience and we attempted to provide venues to support it.
What changes if any did you bring about?
What was your experience as a whole?
Fantastic! We had an incredible team, and it was an honor and a pleasure to be able to work with them. Monterey was a great place to hold a CHI conference, and we really enjoyed being a "big fish in a little pond". It was fun seeing colleagues throughout the town.
How many people came?
About 2400, but I don't have very exact numbers
What would you have done differently?
We budgeted CHI'92 very closely, and as a result were unable to do some of the things we might have wanted. If I could do it over again, I would have raised our fees slightly (~$5/person). This would have returned a little bit more to the organization and allowed us to sleep better as the conference got close.
What are you doing now?
I'm currently the CMC Liaison for CHI'97 and a member of the Conference Management Committee. I'm still employed at Genentech as a Principal Systems Architect.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
Being a researcher and lecturer in HCI, membership of SIGCHI was quite "natural". Going to a conference without having a paper accepted was somewhat more difficult, but in 89 my then-new boss was cooperative. So, I went to CHI 89 and immediately embarked in a discussion about whether CHI could go outside N.America. Well, I was put on a list, and discussions continued at different levels. In the Dutch HCI group (a child of both the Dutch computer society and of the Dutch Ergonomics society) I started to work with my colleague members of the executive committee of this group. Two of them at an early moment had contact with SIGCHI and were considered to be general co-chairs. I proposed to join them, and they accepted. INTERCHI '93 was complex in that there were 3 parents: SIGCHI, IFIP (the interact branch, i.e. IFIP TC 13) and the Dutch HCI group. Being a member of all 3 of these, it seemed natural for me to try to play a role in this joint enterprise.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
Once I was officially accepted to be one of the co-chairs, I found out that not only the location had been selected, but there was some kind of preliminary contract with the conference center, that included contracts with the hotels at terms that have not been very useful for the participants, I found out there was some unclear contract with a local conference organisation firm that was not able to collaborate in the way CHI conference traditions had been up to now, and I found out the relation to the Dutch Computer Society was unclear and could be interpreted in different ways. So, this was both a big challenge and a pain in the neck.
What was your vision for the conference?
My vision was that CHI should be much more international, that IFIP and SIGCHI should really collaborate on the topic of international conferences, and that we should enable the meeting of "cultures" in HCI, which points not only to geographically distinct cultures, but also to academia and industry, to different types of focus in HCI work, and to theory and practice. This vision was referred to in the INTERCHI theme "bridges between worlds".
What changes if any did you bring about?
I managed to change some of the informal contracts and expectations that were in place when I joined the group. I believe this made the final arrangement workable, at the same time allowing both professionals and volunteers, and also completely different organisational cultures, to work together in a way that lead to a goal and made people feel good about it.
On a quite different level, I think the whole enterprise of INTERCHI made the CHI conference indeed really more international. It failed, however, for the Interact conferences: the next one was again much more a national or regional meeting, where the region may change between subsequent conferences. CHI and CHI participants are now much more aware of what is going on in different "cultures", and SIGCHI and ACM are being more and more really international. I understand quite well this is not because of INTERCHI, but I pretend it helped a little, and showed what can be done and what can be expected as outcomes.
What was your experience as a whole?
I liked most of it, it was much more work than I ever expected, I made a lot of friends, I know a lot of friends much better now, I learned a lot about the value of volunteer leadership in professional organisations, and I received the best education in management that one can dream of: learning by doing. There was not even a minimal manual or any training wheels!
How many people came?
1579 participants (up to now the record for HCI conferences in Europe) from 32 different countries (up to now the world record for HCI conferences).
What would you have done differently?
Setting tasks from the start; for the conference chairs, for the committee, for the professionals (we were too late and too event driven).
Basing the budget (and the fees) on our own prediction model, not on SIGCHI's pessimistic views of who would ever come to a non-North American event: in '93 we asked far too high fees, offered far to little in simple nice things for the participants, and ended up with a hugh amount of surplus money, and we certainly prevented several hundreds of colleagues from attending the conference.
What are you doing now?
Being technical program co-chair for CHI 96, much more focussing on the content and the HCI parts of the conference than in 93. I love it!
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I heard about SIGCHI and the CHI conferences for the first time in December 1988. Ted White, Gerrit van der Veer and I had organized a two-day conference in the Netherlands on Human-Computer Interaction as board members of the Dutch Human-Computer Interaction Working Group (MCI). At this conference we were approached by our invited speakers Brian Shackel and Bill Buxton who asked us how we would feel about organizing a joint international conference between SIGCHI and IFIP TC 13 Human-Computer Interaction (responsible for the INTERACT conferences) and hosted by the Dutch Computer Society (NGI). A couple of months later it was decided during CHI'89 in Austin (Texas) to hold an international conference in Amsterdam in 1993. Ted came up with a very proper name: INTERCHI'93.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
When we started to work on INTERCHI'93 we had to start from scratch. It took quite a long time with many meetings to get our act together. Our problem was that `it wasn't just another CHI conference'. The negotiations between all the parties involved started right after CHI'89. Important issues involved were for example the differences in culture, the low number of conference visitors anticipated and the fact that the CHI conferences were run by an organization of volunteers. Among other things the travel budget was killing us. However, with the help of many people we had a very successful conference in sunny Amsterdam.
What was your vision for the conference?
The co-chairs of INTERCHI'93 (Ted White, Gerrit van der Veer and I) wanted to bring about more awareness and co-operation between the various part of the world where HCI is practiced. Also, we wanted to bring together industry and academia. Our intentions were adequately formulated in our theme "Bridges between worlds". And INTERCHI'93 was the first truly international conference in the field.
What changes if any did you bring about?
During the organization of INTERCHI'93 there was a growing awareness in the SIGCHI community of the rest of the world. SIGCHI grew in that period from a national oriented organization to a real international organization. INTERCHI'93 played an important role in this transition.
What was your experience as a whole?
INTERCHI'93 took a dominant place in my life for nearly four years. The process of getting INTERCHI'93 realized was not always that easy. But I learned a lot and most of all it was often good fun, I met many nice and interesting people. In this context, the memories I have of my dear friend Ted White who died unexpectedly in the fall of 1994 are worth mentioning. Ted and I spent many hours together discussing INTERCHI'93 and all kind of other issues. I still miss our contact daily.
What are you doing now?
I am working at Delft University of Technology as senior researcher and consultant. The main activity of our group (Work and Organizational Psychology) is to develop (laboratory-based) interface evaluation tools and techniques and also to render services to the IT industry. Furthermore, I am involved in the development of the software parts (part 10 to 17) of the ergonomic standard ISO 9241 "Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs)".
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I was on the phone one day with a member of the SIGCHI Executive Committee to recruit her as a member for the editorial board of Interacting with Computers prior to start up of that journal.
I had read the most recent SIGCHI Bulletin just the day before. There was mention in the Exec. Committee minutes of an interest in education projects. At the end of the conversation I indicated I might be interested in helping on some project. A few days later I was on the phone with Marilyn Mantei who was describing to me an idea for a project that had been suggested but never acted upon. She and I met at CHI 88 for dinner and further discussion.
Based on those conversations and several additional ideas of my own, I wrote a proposal to the SIGCHI Executive Committee for the funding necessary to create the SIGCHI Curriculum Development Group. The proposal contained cost estimates and a detailed two year plan and goals for a series of working sessions and meetings (We actually took almost three years to produce the report but kept the organizational costs close to budget and I did manage to secure some additional funding from sources other than SIGCHI.)
While I was working on the curriculum project Keith Butler and John Thomas, who knew about the curriculum effort, reasoned that the CHI tutorials program might benefit from the work of the Curriculum Group and asked me to chair the CHI 91 Tutorials program. (I did a repeat as Tutorials Chair for Scooter Morris and Jim Miller at CHI 92.)
About the time the Curriculum Report was in final draft preparation stage the SIGCHI Conference Planning Committee (CPC) was looking for Co-Chairs for CHI 94 and invited me to consider Co-Chairing 94. By that time I had worked on both CHI 91 and CHI 92, had gained experience with several aspects of organizing a CHI conference, and had a sense of what might be required to Chair a CHI Conference.
After a lot of thought I decided I was interested and so volunteered to Co-Chair 94. Since academics don't earn many "points" for conference organizing work my major motivations were the opportunity to work with the kind of people who agree to be part of a CHI Conference Committee and the chance to learn more about my own strengths and limitations.
What was the state of the conference when you started?
By the time CHI 94 planning started, the CHI Conference series was well established as the premier forum for work in Human-Computer Interaction and had a history of being well-organized, well-attended, and well-liked.
What was your vision for the conference?
Have a good technical program. Have a good social program. Continue the process of incrementally improving the conference and its organization based upon feedback from prior years.
What changes if any did you bring about?
At the risk of sounding immodest, the CHI '94 Committee introduced several new things to the conference. CHI 94 was the first CHI Conference: to print all conference publications on recycled paper with non-toxic inks; to offer a Saturday night tutorial to introduce people to the field of HCI and serve as a lead-in for the following two days of tutorials; to have a special category of poster presentations devoted to social action issues; to make the advance program available via the Internet; to stage an on-site conference reception; to offer an Internet access room for attendees; to publish a daily newsletter for attendees; to establish an accompanying persons lounge; and to stage a "What and Why CHI" open forum as an introduction to the conference for newcomers.
In addition CHI '94 introduced some organizational innovations, creating the position of Technology Support Chair (a job which parallels that of the overall Program Chairs but which coordinates the activities of the Committee members who work behind the scenes to make the conference run smoothly); creating the position of Chair for Special Needs and Access Issues; and creating the position of Co-Chairs for Recycling and Environmental Impact Issues.
Incremental improvements were introduced in the area of Child-Care arrangements and in conference publications with the upgrading of the Conference Companion book as a place to include published materials on conference presentation venues other than technical papers.
Finally, CHI '94 made a commitment to health conscious break foods (fruits, unsweetened beverages, etc.) and, because of the size of our food contract with the Hynes Conference Center, CHI '94 was able to accommodate a number of people who had provided advance notice of dietary restrictions or need for special meals.
What was your experience as a whole?
I enjoyed it. I learned some important lessons. I formed some new friendships which I value very much. I deepened some existing friendships which I expect to last for a very long time.
How many people came?
About 2600
What would you have done differently?
My answer to this is conditioned as much by my experience at having been Tutorials Chair twice as it is by having been Conference Co-Chair.
Currently the Tutorials Chair(s) and committee(s) are effectively picked de novo for each Conference and end their activities with that particular conference. This structural pattern creates certain unavoidable losses in "corporate memory" from one year to the next. (This "loss of memory" is also sometimes enhanced by the fact that organizing a conference committee usually begins two years or more before the actual date of the conference, so that people are often in very different stages of the life cycle of their conference during opportunities for meeting with their opposite numbers on other committees.)
In the last few years I have increasingly come to believe that the Conference Tutorial program would benefit from having a standing Committee with a membership and a life span which extends across conferences. I think we are missing an opportunity to create a more coherent continuing education program for the field. Starting over, I would take steps to help create a different organization of the Tutorials Committee for the CHI Conferences.
The other things I can think of I would have done differently are much clearer with the benefits of 20/20 hindsight than they were at the time.
What are you doing now?
After taking a long overdue academic leave in 94-95 to recharge my intellectual and emotional batteries, I am now settling back into the traditional academic routine of classes, campus politics, and research. I have recently gotten involved in a multi-investigator, multi-institution, multi-year research project on Problem Solving Environments and am looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I'd finished my thesis in HCI in 1979. When the '82 pre-CHI conference came along, my advisor Tom Moran pointed it out to me and suggested that we present my thesis work there. I did. I've been involved in CHI, presenting and reviewing papers and attending, ever since then.
Around 1989, the Conference Planning Committee was deciding to hold CHI'95 in Denver, where I lived. They approached me about chairing it. I put them off for a while, but I pretty much knew that I would do it. To prepare myself, I served as Local Arrangements chair for CHI'91 and Short Papers Co-Chair for INTERCHI'93.
What was your vision for the conference?
My vision for my particular CHI was that it be inclusive. CHI was getting large enough by then, that various subgroups were talking about splitting off. We made an explicit decision that we wanted CHI to be the pan-HCI conference, so attendees could get an overall look at the field, and attendees could broaden themselves.
What changes if any did you bring about?
We added the Design Briefings track, to make the conference more relevant to practitioners. We incorporated the Research Symposium as a full-fledged part of the conference, to appeal explicitly to researchers. We continued a multi-year process of trying to expand the Exhibits, to educate attendees on the state of the art. We completely changed the format of the Call for Participation, to make it easier to use. We added more professional help, to make the conference easier to manage.
What was your experience as a whole?
I enjoyed doing it. I was exhausted during the conference.
How many people came?
2341.
What would you have done differently?
Make the plenary speakers rehearse in front of us. We'd known that the plenary talks have been a high-risk item at CHI. We went to a lot of trouble to get speakers who had high recommendations from people we knew and trusted. But we decided not to ask for a rehearsal because it might be insulting to senior professionals. As it turned out, both talks had problems that could have been improved with rehearsal.
What are you doing now?
I'm taking a year's sabbatical at the University of Colorado's Institute of Cognitive Science. I'm going to be studying the concept of "virtual community" on the internet.
I've submitted a paper to CHI'96, and am a meta-reviewer for papers. I've just joined the Conference Management Committee.
How did you come to get involved with SIGCHI, the conference, and with the post you filled?
I turned my HCI dissertation (my advisor was John Black, then at Yale) into a paper for CHI '83. That was my first exposure to the CHI conference (I wasn't at the 1982 "proto-conference"). It was very small, but there was tremendous excitement about being in at the beginning of a new, interdisciplinary field. There were only papers and (maybe) panels -- and it seemed like everyone went to everything. I think there were no parallel sessions.
I've attended all the subsequent CHI conferences except CHI '86. I also had papers at CHI '88 and CHI '91 (and to dispel any "in crowd" ideas, I have submitted many more!!).
John O'Hare, chair of CHI '88, was the sponsor of a grant I had from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. We knew each other well (I had to send him quarterly reports!) so he asked me to be panels chair for CHI '88.
In CHI '90 I was on the panels committee with, of all people, Terry Roberts.
Gary Olson (who was on my panels committee in '88) and Judy Olson asked me to be Proceedings chair for CHI '91. At that time I met the people at ACM headquarters since I lived in New York and had many reasons to see them about printing and publishing the Proceedings.
At the 1992 papers review committee meeting (which was in Austin, Texas), Terry Roberts asked me to be co-chair of CHI '95. At CHI '92 in Monterey, the conference management committee approved my "co-chairness."
What was your vision for the conference?
We had a primary goal to overcome any feelings of "exclusion" that some prior conference attendees had felt. We also were concerned about a leveling-off of attendance and the impact of smaller, cheaper, and more focused conferences on the CHI conference. We endeavored to expand venues to be more inclusive, publicize more broadly, get new blood onto the committee, create a site that encouraged interaction, and create a mood (both on the committee and at the conference) that was infused with the theme of diversity and the strengths of multiple viewpoints. We took our theme, "Mosaic of Creativity," very seriously and tried to use it as a test when we made decisions.
What changes if any did you bring about?
We did several new things: We added a "Design Briefings" track which provides a design-experience orientation and opens the literature to practitioners, we published all of our conference materials on the Web -- including the Proceedings and Companion, we produced a CD-ROM version of the Proceedings and Companion (complete with hyperlinks and multimedia!), we radically redesigned the Call for Participation, we reached into a new area (telecommunications and interactive entertainment) for one of our plenaries, we tried to expand the Exhibits, we collected most of the venues besides papers and panels into one large area -- with food -- to increase interaction, we had a newcomers orientation. Behind the scenes, we completely redesigned the budget planning and tracking process. By the way, we also wanted to do things that we ultimately couldn't: like an electronic messaging service and video-on-demand for the video program.
What was your experience as a whole?
It was great! I have an unbelievable sense of all the people who make the field happen. It was like having a second job (but since I went through two "real" jobs in the meantime, it was some kind of constant!). I had less "total control" over what happened than I thought I would, but I came to appreciate the importance of choosing the right committee members and setting a theme.
What would you have done differently?
I would have had a more thorough electronic publications plan, and a bigger team, in place. The Web and CD-ROM only worked because of volunteers killing themselves as we stepped through it for the first time. I would have given more professional support to the Exhibits team so they could reach more potential Exhibitors. I would have spent more on decorating the Hall (retrospect is so great!). I would have spent money on an electronic messaging service and expanded the Internet area. Otherwise, there are just small, mostly logistical things.
What are you doing now?
I am a Member of the Technical Staff at U S WEST Advanced Technologies in Boulder, Colorado. I am working on Web-based authoring, collaboration, and annotation tools, studying mobile computing, and looking at Web-based delivery of education.
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Vol.28 No.1, January 1996 |
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