Interactivity: Call for Participation

Quick Facts

• Submission: 8 October 2010 22 October 2010 (5:00pm PDT) using the PCS submission system
  • see PCS Submission FAQ for new procedures.
• Notification: 26 November 2010
• Camera Ready: 21 January 2010
• Submission Format: Unanonymized extended abstracts of up to 6 pages in Extended Abstract format describing the work, a supplement describing the demonstration, and a mandatory video.
• At the Conference: 1. Overview presented in a single technical program session, 2. interactive demonstration at the CHI Interactivity Zone and 3. video played in composite promotion of Interactivity Zone.
• Archives: Extended abstracts on DVD and ACM Digital Library
• Information for Submitters
  • General Guide for Interactivity
  • Vancouver Convention Centre Guide for Exhibitors
  • Booth Layout Plan (coming soon)

Message from the CHI Interactivity Chairs

Interactivity is your chance to fully engage CHI attendees at a personal level by letting them see, touch, squeeze, hear or even smell your interactive visions for the future. Interactivity at CHI is a high-visibility, high-impact forum of the Technical Program, which combines both a hands-on demonstration during the entire conference, a presentation in the technical program and a video that plays regularly in the CHI common area.

CHI 2011 Interactivity is where the CHI community can experience the year's most exciting interactive works. If you've got a working prototype, device, or system to bring to Vancouver, we want to know about it.

Jan Borchers, RWTH Aachen University
Lyn Bartram, Simon Fraser University
Sid Fels, University of British Columbia
Contact us: interactivity@chi2011.org

What is CHI Interactivity?

CHI Interactivity provides a venue to demonstrate and interact with the latest prototypes and systems from cutting edge research and commercial institutions.

We are looking for the most innovative examples of interaction from all the CHI communities. If for instance you have designed an MP3 player for athletes, found a new way to get gestural control out of an accelerometer, come up with a great new way to educate cognitively challenged students, just made a breakthrough in direct brain-computer interfaces, constructed a new ergonomically designed input device, devised a new way to organize scheduling based on physical-digital artifact, or if you have come up with anything else that would be interesting for CHI 2011 attendees to interact with - then we want you to submit it to Interactivity! Getting people hands-on with your interface is often the best way to communicate what you have created.

Performances

Following last year's success, CHI will again accept submissions for suggested Performances. Performances are presented in to a seated audience. Technical support is limited to basic audiovisual equipment and equipment you are able to provide yourself, and the stage dimensions for your performance may be limited. If your work exceeds 10 minutes in duration, CHI may ask you to present an excerpt of your work if it is selected for the conference. Please indicate the total duration of your performance in your demonstration supplement.

Although Performance submissions will be handled through the Interactivity committee and in the Interactivity venue on PCS, Performances will be judged separately from other Interactivity submissions. Performances will also be listed in the program as a separate venue. Depending on the number of submissions, Performances may become a separate venue with a separate committee in future years.

Preparing and Submitting your CHI Interactivity Proposal

The requirements for originality are less strict for Interactivity than for papers and notes - therefore it is possible to submit work that has already been published elsewhere, as long as you make this clear in the submission. In particular, we encourage Interactivity submissions that complement a current CHI Paper or Note submission, so that attendees can get a direct experience of your work in addition to the technical presentation.

The Interactivity submission must be submitted via the PCS submission system by 8 Oct 2010 (5:00PM PDT).

The submission should have the following distinct components:

Part 1: Extended Abstract

The abstract is a camera-ready 6-page short paper in the Extended Abstract format. If your submission is accepted, this abstract will be published in the CHI 2011 Extended Abstracts publication and included in the ACM Digital Library. Therefore it should be self-contained and clearly describe the novelty and distinguishing ideas of your project, even for readers who were not able to view your demonstration at the conference or will have seen your video.

To give the reviewers and readers a comprehensive picture of your project, your abstract should include:

• a description of the system and the problem it addresses
• a description of the audience the work intends to serve
• a description of the relevance of the work to both the community to which you are submitting this and to the broader CHI community, emphasizing its novelty, uniqueness, and rationale
• a statement about the commercial status of the technology
• a statement on the context in which the work has been performed (e.g. as research, art, education etc.)

Part 2: Demonstration Supplement

The supplement describes how you wish to present your project in the CHI 2011 Interactivity Studio in Vancouver. It should contain details on how the demonstration will be executed in practice, and how visitors will interact with your work during the conference. The interaction can be described in the form of a short usage scenario, storyboard sketch, screenshots, illustrations, photos, and/or video documentation. The demonstration supplement should also include technical requirements such as preferred setting, space, power, networking, lighting, acoustics, and any necessary special equipment. Demonstration supplement materials are for the purposes of review and planning only and will not be published. There is no limit on the number of pages in your supplement. A template for demonstration supplements is provided here. It is also helpful if you can provide a minimal configuration if different than your preferred configuration as we have limited space and resources, so we want to accommodate as many as are accepted by the review committee.

Part 3: Video

A video is by far the best way to communicate interactive projects to the reviewers and provides an archive of the work that you can choose to have included in the ACM Digital Library, if accepted. You must submit a video in addition to your written documentation. The video must be no longer than five minutes, and no bigger than 120 Mb. Please make sure that your video is playable on standard PC and Macintosh computers. We recommend that you encode your video as an MP4 using the H.264 codec. Most video editing software provides an exporting option to MP4/H.264, for example iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and Final Cut Pro. If you prefer to use free software, x264 can encode any video into H.264.

Submitted videos will be used for review purposes only. Accepted submissions will have an opportunity to include revised videos. Accepted works will have their video and extended abstract included in the CHI Extended Abstracts, available on DVD at the conference and on the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to researchers and practitioners worldwide. The videos may also be displayed at the Interactivity Zone and possibly on web sites previewing CHI content (as an example see CHI 2010 Madness videos on youtube). We also plan to use a compilation of all the videos to promote the Interactivity Zone during CHI.

Submission

Final submission PDFs must be no larger than 4 MB large. The video should be submitted as additional material through the PCS submission system (total of pdf and video cannot exceed 125 MB). You must include a notice that you have obtained all rights to any copyrighted material in your videos.

CHI Interactivity Review Process

Review Process

The CHI 2011 Interactivity forum contains “juried” and “curated” content which may be invited directly or selected from submissions. The selection process includes reviews by independent reviewers from the relevant communities, followed by jury selection of projects based on reviews, feasibility, available space at the conference, and other relevant information. This is to make sure that the Interactivity represents a good balance of different types of projects from all CHI communities and that they can be presented in a good way at the conference.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference.

Upon Acceptance of your CHI Interactivity Proposal

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 26 Nov 2011 or shortly after.

Third-party material and copyright

It is very important that you have the rights to use all the material that is contained in your submission, including music, video, images, etc. Attaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference.

Authors retain copyright of the material but accepted submissions will not be published or shown at the conference without a signed form permitting ACM to publish the content. This is standard procedure for ACM publications.

At the Conference

You will be required to install your demonstration in the conference venue on Date TBD and have it packed away by the end of the conference, on Date TBD 2011. Interactivity at CHI 2011 consists of two segments: a booth in the Studio and a presentation at the conference.

For the booth, the conference will provide a space for your demo, table and chairs if you request it, a power connection, and wireless internet connection (as provided by the main conference). Authors of accepted submissions are responsible for bringing and setting up the equipment that is required for their presentation, e.g. laptop computers, displays, projection screens, etc. If you have any special requirements such as furniture, props, etc. please first try to find a way to bring it to Vancouver, or investigate if you can rent or buy it when you arrive. If this is not possible you must notify the Interactivity chairs as soon as possible (preferably already in your Supplement) and we will try to work with you and the CHI 2011 organizers to meet your needs. To ensure that we can plan the demo area properly, make sure to specify all needs in your demonstration supplement.

The Interactivity Zone is the hub for all activities in the Interactivity venue, where attendees can experience your work for themselves. Your presentation in the Zone will consist of a hands-on setup where CHI 2011 attendees can interact with your work. This means that the project must be in such a stage that it is a robust working prototype or demonstration.

There will be a special conference reception where Interactivity projects are showcased, and you are required to have your demonstration up and running during this reception. In addition, we strongly encourage you to have your demo staffed and available throughout the conference, especially during breaks. Since attending to a demo during the whole conference is exhausting, we strongly recommend that at least two people attend the conference to present the project. Note that although student volunteers will be present in the Zone at all times, CHI 2011 will not be able to provide anyone to run your demonstration if you are absent.

After the Conference

Accepted Interactivity extended abstracts and videos will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts DVD. They will also be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.

Instructions for Interactivity Demo Exhibitors

Based on previous Interactivity sessions and instructions from the Vancouver Conference center we have created a General Interactivity Guide that you may find helpful in preparing your trip to Vancouver. All shipments to the Vancouver Conference center are being coordinated by TBD and your items need to be shipped to them. Here is a Vancouver Exposition Services Guide regarding shipment arrangements. We encourage you to contact them directly if you have any questions after reading their materials. As you will see mentioned in the TBD manual, when shipping material, you always need to label them with the submission number and booth number. These can be found in the "Floor Layout document" (coming soon).