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Vol.30 No.1, January 1998
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What's the best way for SIGCHI members to keep up to date on what SIGCHI is doing, what the elected officers are up to, or what SIGCHI activities are coming up that you would like to work with? This is not a trick question! Actually, if you even read this question the answer is right in your hands (or on your monitor). The SIGCHI Bulletin is far and away the single best source of information on SIGCHI's doings. And, within the Bulletin, we recommend that you look at the "SIGCHI News" column. The minutes of Executive Committee meetings appear in this column and things that affect SIGCHI and activities of SIGCHI all pass, at one time or another and in one way or another, through the Executive Committee and all are documented in the minutes. So, reviewing these minutes is the best way for you to keep up to date on SIGCHI activities.
Always trying to focus on ease of use and the user experience, we want to use this column to highlight three things that you will find in the current, past, and future minutes. First, we want to highlight the goals of the current Executive Committee. These suggest what activities you should expect this Executive Committee to initiate and how the Executive Committee might evaluate proposals that you raise. Second, we highlight activities funded through the SIGCHI Development fund. This is the third anniversary of the Development Fund. We hope you are as pleased as we are with the activities funded through the Development Fund and want to see your ideas for other activities. Third, we want to give you an update on efforts to initiate changes within the ACM infrastructure for technical interest areas to accommodate "societies" as well as "special interest groups." SIGCHI officers and members have been working for over a year to initiate these changes and we believe that some changes in the infrastructure would enable SIGCHI to better support the memberships and the discipline of HCI.
The outgoing and incoming Executive Committees met last August for the biennial hand-off meeting. The outgoing officers gave an account of what they accomplished during the past two years and what activities they initiated that should be carried on by the new Executive Committee. However, we refer you to the minutes of this meeting for more on this part of the hand-off meeting and will focus here on the goals of the new Executive Committee. These goals will give you insight into what activities this Executive Committee is likely to initiate and how they would view proposals that you bring forward. We ask that you consider these goals carefully for they will be used to guide decisions during the next two years. If you believe that other goals should also be addressed, please let us and the other members of the Executive Committee know (contact information is on the inside of the Bulletin cover).
The current Executive Committee goals fall into three broad areas: world-wide with the goal to continue supporting a global HCI presence by actively supporting and nurturing regional and national groups, and by further developing awareness and education of cultural differences and similarities; membership retention and volunteerism with the overarching goal to attract new members and retain current members by providing value to the membership, and conferences with the goal to advance HCI in the world through the facilitation of conferences and information dissemination to promote HCI on a continual basis.
Work on these goals is a partnership among the SIGCHI members, Executive Committee, members of others committees, and ACM staff. Current work on the world-wide goal involves a task force of about two dozen people led by Guy Boy, SIGCHI's Executive Vice President. This task force meets by phone and has, among other goals, the goal of defining a standing advisory board to advise the Executive Committee on world-wide issues. An article on this task force's work appeared in the last issue of the Bulletin. Work on the conferences goal is led by Gerrit van der Veer who as Vice-Chair for Conferences chairs the Conference Management Committee, a standing advisory board that advises the Executive Committee on conference issues. Current issues addressed include how to incorporate video submissions in the CHI conferences and how to insure that the portfolio of SIGCHI-sponsored conferences continues to represent the HCI spectrum. Work on the membership retention and volunteerism goal is just beginning, but plans are to parallel the work on the other goals by forming broad task forces to involve as many people as practical in defining needed activities.
The SIGCHI Development Fund was created in 1995 to provide support to SIGCHI members who wish to undertake activities that advance the field of HCI and the communication of those advances to SIGCHI members. Information on the Development Fund can be found on the SIGCHI pages at the acm.org web site or obtained from our ACM Liaison (David Riederman).
Two activities were funded in the past year. A Development Consortium was held at CHI 97 that brought people to the CHI conference who would be unable to attend. At CHI 97, the focus was to fund the attendance of HCI professionals from "soft currency" countries. Because the CHI 97 Development Consortium was an enriching and rewarding event for the participants, the organizers, and the many SIGCHI members who have benefited from the initiatives begun at this meeting, the Development Consortium will be a standing part of the CHI conferences. The focus of all Development Consortia will be on reaching out and bringing new people into the CHI conference community. For CHI 98 the focus is on teachers who are using computers in classes with students in the 9 - 18 year old range.
Also funded in the past year and continued this year was an initiative to identify and disseminate HCI education resources. Led by SIGCHI members Andrew Sears and Julie Jacko, the Educational Development Resource Group involves volunteers who work to identify resources that would be useful to HCI educators and to disseminate that information.
Two other initiatives were funded this year. Susan Wiedenbeck requested help in disseminating the proceedings of ESP7 (Empirical Studies of Programmers) because an unexpected contract renewal problem with the publisher meant that the proceedings would not be disseminated. The Development Fund provided partial funding to enable the ESP7 organizers to disseminate the proceedings through the ACM publications channels. Also funded was a plan to create a SIGCHI web site in Russia. Disseminating SIGCHI publications electronically rather than on paper will make them accessible to many more members. Members of the Russian SIGCHI community will translate articles from the Bulletin into Russian, translate other articles from Russian into English, and post them on the web site.
We thank the people who championed these Development Fund activities. The goal of the SIGCHI Development Fund is to enable members to advance the field of HCI and the communication of information within SIGCHI and these activities are excellent examples of how to achieve that goal. If you would like to propose similar activities we welcome and encourage you to submit a proposal to the Development Fund (see http://www.acm.org/sigchi/documents/devfund.html). If you would like help in doing so, please contact SIGCHI's liaison, David Riederman at ACM headquarters (riederman@acm.org).
One year ago, our Bulletin Column focused on the efforts of many in the SIGCHI community to transition from an ACM Special Interest Group into an ACM Society. As we stated then, the major challenges we face are to provide for our leadership and support and to improve the outside perception of our organization. To quote from our column of January 1997:
"There are two reasons why we need to clearly be identified as a Society of HCI professionals affiliated with ACM rather than as an ACM Special Interest Group:
First, we need to improve our image and put us on a level playing field with our competitors and better formalize our international identity. Within ACM, a SIG is an organizational entity with continuity, common interest areas, and well-defined rules of operation. Within the larger world, however, a Special Interest Group is an informal mechanism for small groups of people to address a specific interest. We are neither informal nor small and our collective interests are expanding, as is apparent in the number and the diversity of the conferences we are involved with. Organizations like the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the IEEE Computer Society, and the Usability Professionals Association clearly identify themselves as societies or associations. We benefited from starting as an ACM Special Interest Group, but we must indicate that we have evolved past that stage if we are to effectively raise the credibility of our organization and our profession to the world at large. The term Special Interest Group, as it is used popularly, no longer describes who we are or what we do.
Second, the Special Interest Group model limits our ability to insure the future of the HCI community. As our society has grown, both the needs and diversity of our members have grown. All of our members identify with the field of HCI; some identify professionally with ACM; others identify with other professional societies. We are an interdisciplinary society with a strong grounding in the core areas of ACM but with strong identification with other professions, as well. We could better continue to provide a common meeting place if we a society of HCI professionals affiliated with ACM rather than an ACM Special Interest Group. CHI has the third position in our name; behind ACM and behind SIG; we need to elevate the position of CHI."
During the past year, the Society initiative has been discussed by the SIG Board and an AdHoc Committee on ACM Societies commissioned by the ACM President. The report from this AdHoc Committee will be presented to the ACM Council (in late October, after the publication deadline for this issue of the Bulletin). To keep you informed on the Society issue, the AdHoc Committee report and a response from the SIGCHI Executive Committee are included in this issue of the Bulletin.
Thanks to the efforts of many, we are making progress on this issue. We will continue to provide you with updates.
Communication is, by its very nature, a two-way street. We can use this column to present our views to you and we encourage you to present your views to us and the other members of the Executive committee.
Happy New Year!
Mike & Guy
chi-chair@acm.org,
chi-executive-vc@acm.org
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