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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998
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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998 |
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Clare-Marie Karat:
I first became involved in SIGCHI in 1988. John Karat and I had just moved to the East Coast and I had started a new job as a Human Factors engineer at IBM. Over the next few years, I served on a number of paper review committees, taught tutorials at CHI conferences, and was Co-Chair of Workshops and SIGs (with Tom Dayton) for CHI94. From 1993-7 I also served as SIGCHI's Vice Chair for Finance, and during this time I learned a lot about SIGCHI and the needs of the membership.In the fall of 1996, Gene Lynch, who was then the Vice Chair for Conferences, asked me if I would Chair CHI98. It was a large commitment to consider making. SIGCHI is and will continue to be the heart of my professional network and my home. SIGCHI members and the CHI conferences have helped me in many ways over the years, and I wanted to give back to SIGCHI and help the organization to become stronger, so after thinking it over and consulting friends and family, I said yes.
At the time that I accepted the request, I had about one month to recruit the CHI98 team. I asked friends and colleagues to recommend people for the various positions on the team. I met Arnie Lund over the telephone, and we had several conversations about the conference and got to know each other a bit. To my delight, he accepted the position of Co-Chair of CHI98. In the first few weeks, we worked together in teleconferences over the phone, to recruit members of the CHI98 team. We met face-to-face at the CHI98 Creative Development meeting in December of 1996.
Arnie Lund:
I have been involved with the CHI conference as an attendee and as a volunteer since it was held in Gaithersburg. It has always been my conference of choice in the HCI area, and I have to confess to being in awe of the organizers of those early conferences. I was approached about the conference by my co-chair Clare-Marie Karat in late 1996. It is important to point out that I was aware both of the immense amount of effort it takes to organize the conference and the toll it often takes on personal and work life during the planning period. But I also saw it as a unique opportunity to contribute to and help advance my field. As a result, the commitment was made only with the full support of my family and after much soul-searching.
Arnie Lund:
When I joined the conference, the milestones marking the launch of the conference (especially the kickoff meeting and the Call) were fast approaching, and we had to pull together a committee in an incredibly short amount of time (as Clare-Marie noted). We were fortunate, however, in that we had a wealth of talent from which to choose. There was a large amount of overlap in the names that Clare-Marie had pulled together and those that I had on my short list. With such a rich list of names, we were able to assemble a tremendous team and accomplish everything that needed to be done before the public launch at CHI 97.
Clare-Marie Karat:
Arnie and I started working on CHI98 in December of 1996. Normally, Co-Chairs have about two years lead time before their conference. So one of our first challenges, was to complete nine months' work in about a month. We assembled the CHI98 team quickly, and were very fortunate to have an energetic group of talented, pro-active, and creative people to work with. When we got the team together at the CHI98 Kickoff meeting, and completed the work for a Call for Participation that would be mailed out to the SIGCHI members and included in the CHI97 bags, it was an exhilarating milestone to achieve! Then we worked with members of the team to get ready for our introduction to CHI98 at the closing plenary for CHI97.
Clare-Marie:
Arnie and I chose "Making the Impossible Possible" as the theme of the CHI98 conference. In selecting this theme, we were concentrating on the idea that research and practice can come together to create solutions to some of the critical problems facing our communities and the world. We wanted to focus on a few key application areas, and selected the domains of Education, Health Care, and Entertainment.
A complementary goal in selecting these three domains as focus areas for the conference was to reach out to new potential participants. This vision influenced our technical program as well as our marketing of the conference, as we invited practitioners and researchers in these fields to the conference to enrich the discussion of these topics. A goal of the conference was to enable multi-disciplinary teams to form in these areas by providing the opportunity for people to meet each other, identify mutual interests, and set up plans for the future.
Arnie Lund:
It was the two parts to the vision that Clare-Marie describes in the theme and goals that convinced me to sign onto the conference and that kept the energy high throughout the planning process. First, the idea of a focus on application domains. This brought in people who wouldn't normally attend the conference, many of whom are using technology in very innovative ways. The hope was that the diversity of the conference would increase and people would find both challenging problems to solve and solutions to their challenging problems. Computing is moving in directions that don't just involve keyboards, mice, and desktop tubes; and our field needs to be out in front influencing its evolution. I am also committed to increasing the transfer of information between research and practice, and enhancing the focus on domains seemed like it should stimulate that dialogue. The second part of the vision that was exciting was the belief that we can make a difference. The domains selected represent key areas of people's lives, and I believe we can make the world a little better through our efforts. Trying to inspire action through this part of the vision was a challenge, but a challenge that was worth attempting.
Arnie Lund:
My experience as a whole was wonderful. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime events that you can look back on with satisfaction, and that influences you as you move forward to new experiences. It was, of course, even more work than I had imagined when signing on, with challenges that truly made it feel like we were making the impossible possible at several points during the planning. Clare-Marie and I both hope that many of the process and tool innovations introduced for CHI 98 will help reduce the work load for future chairs In addition, when you are working with a team as great as the one we had, and with a vision that was as motivating, it is amazing what can be accomplished.
Clare-Marie:
I agree with Arnie, it was a wonderful experience! It was also a tremendous amount of work! Arnie and I spent considerable effort in building a reusable infrastructure for future CHI conference Chairs and we believe this will make the job a bit easier for them. There were a number of challenges, both anticipated an unanticipated, that we had to deal with along the way. All in all though, Co-Chairing CHI98 was at peak experience that I will draw on for years to come. I am very grateful to my family, friends, the CHI98 team, and my management at IBM Research for the support they gave me in this activity.
Clare-Marie:
The best part of CHI98 was meeting and working with all of the people! We had the opportunity to meet people with many different skills and perspectives.It was a privilege to work with the CHI98 team, David Riederman as well as John DeLorenzo and Darren Ramdin from ACM, Paul Henning and his staff from the CHI98 Conference Office, and especially my partner Arnie. Arriving on-site and seeing the conference infrastructure go up, the excitement of the opening plenary, participating in animated conversations after technical sessions, having the conference reception outdoors under the stars, visiting CHIkids and sharing in the incredible experiences going on in that program, working with the two student volunteers who helped Arnie and me put together our presentations for the opening and closing plenaries as well as the photo reels, attending the lunch time plenaries and seeing the rooms filled to capacity, being able to share the conference experience with my husband John and our families, and getting through the closing plenary with just enough voice left to finish!
Arnie Lund:
There isn't enough space to list all the highlights. The fact that the conference was successful in achieving the goals we had planned at the outset, that it was a significant contribution to my field in all those dimensions, has to be at the top of the list. Meeting and working closely with Clare-Marie, Paul Henning and his staff, our team of volunteers, and our ACM and SIGCHI staff contacts has been wonderful. It has been an privilege I will cherish. Getting a chance to work with the incredible talent represented by the past-chairs, many of whom were there at many key points throughout the planning with advice and support, has been great. Besides these meta-highlights, there were also the local highlights.Seeing the excitement in the CHIkids room (and seeing it through the experiences of my own CHIkids), overhearing the energy of the conversations around the conference and at the reception, listening to the various plenaries and people's reactions, and sitting in on sessions and coming away with ideas I can use, talking with people one-on-one who found value and fun through the conference, all were highlights.
Arnie and Clare-Marie:
About 2354 people attended the conference from 39 countries around the world! The ACM SIGCHI CHI conferences are really the place to be to learn what's going on and network with the human computer interaction specialists from around the world!
Arnie Lund:
There were circumstances, as there are in most long term projects, that I might wish were different but that were out of our control (e.g., personnel changes, crises in the lives of team members, and so on). There were, of course, challenges that you encounter that you wish could have been predicted and acted on earlier (e.g., deadlines that weren't set quite right during initial planning, the impact of Web registration, and so on), but that you only become aware of as the thousands of decisions made early play themselves out late in the process. I obviously would have made different choices in many of those areas, but I know that knew problems would take their place. Similarly, there were, of course, a few challenges here and there arising as activity, stress, and fatigue increase during the crunch times. I'd like to think some of those would be handled differently. But in all the key areas that make CHI the conference it is known to be, and that made CHI 98 unique, I think the process went well and the conference achieved what we had hoped for the conference. In those major areas, I can't think of anything significant we could have and would have done differently.
Clare-Marie:
The biggest issue is that volunteer time has become a very precious resource, and anything we can continue to do to clear away operational and administrative work from volunteers so that they can focus on technical matters, will be very helpful to a conference's success. We had many unanticipated events occur during the conference development process, so that several times we told each other that we were living "making the impossible possible". Looking back on the goals we had for the conference and what we accomplished, I don't see any major changes that I would make.
Clare-Marie:
John Karat and I took a five-day vacation to go snorkeling and walk on the beaches of the Virgin Islands after CHI98. It was a wonderful and refreshing reward! This summer I am leading a team that is running two different studies in the area of speech recognition. We are looking at many different usability and design issues related to the context of use. I'm excited about the progress we're making and the possibility of making a positive impact. I am also continuing work on the usability of eBusiness sites for the Web, both from the customer and the merchant point of view. I'm interested in being involved in both the Connecticut and New York Local SIGCHI chapters that are forming. And I'm looking forward to working with the SIGCHI Executive Committee in my role as Adjunct Chair for Organizational Design on how to bring the SIGCHI organization forward as a society.
Arnie Lund:
As I mentioned at the closing plenary, I did in fact take my family to Disneyland and we had a wonderful time! On returning from Disneyland, I am concentrating on settling in to my new Director position at U S WEST Advanced Technologies, and I'm hoping to help start a local SIGCHI chapter (with the working title of "Rocky Mountain CHI"). I'm also hoping to jump start my research on the attributes of usability and usability metrics that I set aside during CHI planning, and work on apparent complexity in Web site design. Finally, I am looking forward to lending a hand as SIGCHI and our field continue to evolve (and continuing to work with Clare-Marie and other new friends made while working on the conference).
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