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Vol.30 No.3, July 1998
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In order to manage a conference the size of CHI, we need experienced leaders in the field, who, additionally, have experience in managing an event of this size. My advisory committee assists me in identifying potential candidates. In forming a pair of co-chairs (a volunteer job of this size is team work) we try to find a balance of background and insight along different dimensions. Our community is located all over the globe, our members are from academia as well a from industry, the CHI management requires insight in conference logistics as well as in the technical program development process. We succeeded in finding a pair of volunteers who were willing to take the challenge and who showed to be able to start developing a vision for their conference. CHI 2000 will be special because of its location, the new European developments at this time, as well as in relation to a general tendency to view to the next millennium.
We asked the two volunteers to develop their ideas, as well as to be very honest in their possibilities to take the job. The answer was clear and convincing and the SIGCHI Executive Committee accepted the proposal. We appointed Thea Turner and Gerd Szwillus to be the CHI 2000 conference co-chairs. Both of them have extensive experience with CHI and are well known by their colleagues. Their history of Conference work is complementary which enables them to support each other and work together with the professional staff to manage the second CHI outside North America. We are very happy they accepted to start this large project. At this moment their work is in full swing.
The locations of the CHI conference are chosen in different regions for a 3 year cycle. For 2001 we were looking at the West part of North America. After setting out a request for proposals to a long list of locations, 3 finalists cities were visited and judged on a set of criteria, e.g.: level of support from the city and the city professionals, level of service and quality of hotels and venues, meeting space characteristics, technology support and possibilities, financial aspects, and airport accessibility.
The winner is .... Seattle, a location we have been before. Among other good characteristics, Seattle seems to attract a large international audience, and rated highest on almost all criteria.
ACM SIGCHI is related to a growing number of conferences and workshops. Apart from the CHI conference, our "flagship" we are cooperating with many conferences and workshops of varying size. Some of these are "sponsored" which means SIGCHI is financially supporting, others are "in cooperation", indicating our domain strongly overlaps the domain of the conference or workshop and we agree to collaborate on issues like publicity and calendar. As Vice Chair for Conferences, I have the support of the CMC, the Conference Management Committee, that is appointed by me based on individual expertise and experience in the various aspects of conference organisation and management.
The CMC has existed for over 4 years now, and we are currently discussing a revision of the CMC charter. The tasks and the process of work of the CMC will be much clearer in the future, and we intend to be more visible as well as more supporting the needs of the various SIGCHI related conferences and workshops, both large and small. The CMC (CMC@acm.org) currently exists of Austin Henderson, Jim Miller, Kevin Schofield, Michael Tauber, and ACM Program Director David Riederman. Thea Turner decided to leave us, for reasons that will by now be understood from the first section of this SIGCHI news item: CHI 2000 will ask and get all her attention.
Gerrit C. van der Veer
Vice-Chair for Conference Planning
gerrit@acm.org
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