Special Interest Groups: Call for Participation

Quick Facts

Submission: 14 Jan 2011 using the PCS submission system
Notification: 11 Feb 2011
Camera Ready: 18 Feb 2011
Submission Format: Camera-ready, non-anonymized document containing a four-page-maximum extended abstract suitable for publication, as well as supplementary material describing the SIG. The submission must be in Extended Abstract format.
At the Conference: Accepted SIGs will have a scheduled session at the conference.
Archives: Extended abstracts will appear on the Conference Proceedings DVD and in the ACM Digital Library.

Message from the Special Interest Groups Chairs

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) provide an opportunity to attract a group of conference attendees who share a common interest and engage them in face-to-face discussions. Organizing a SIG is a great way to start or extend your involvement in the CHI conference program — several SIGs have evolved into other successful venues at subsequent conferences. In addition to interesting and innovative SIG topics, we also encourage interesting and innovative approaches to organizing and conducting the SIG itself. Feel free to contact us before submitting a proposal to discuss your ideas and questions.

Ido Guy, IBM Research

Daphne Raban, Haifa University

What are Special Interest Groups?

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) enable conference attendees sharing a common interest to meet informally for 80 minutes of facilitated discussion during a scheduled session at the conference. SIGs offer excellent opportunities for dialog and deliberation on a specific topic. The conference provides each SIG with meeting space and advertises SIG meetings to the rest of the conference in the Extended Abstracts and Conference Program.

Preparing and Submitting Special Interest Groups Proposals

Submissions for SIGs must be received by 14 Jan 2011. Make submissions via the PCS submission system. You will need to submit a single PDF file, no larger than 4 megabytes large, consisting of:

a four-page extended abstract suitable for publication in the Extended Abstracts, in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts Publications Format.
supplementary material including: a brief description of the community (or communities) to which this SIG would be of interest and why, assumed attendee background, the approach you will use for organizing and presenting the SIG, an informal schedule of discussion topics, and which of the organizers should serve as the primary contact.

While not strictly required, we prefer that proposals be authored by a minimum of two individuals representing at least two different organizations. We also encourage prospective submitters to examine examples of accepted SIG abstracts from recent CHI conferences, available for download from the ACM Digital Library.

Special Interest Groups Review Process

Submissions will be reviewed independently by reviewers, with final acceptance decisions made by the SIGs chairs. We will notify authors of acceptance decisions by late February 2011.

At the Conference

Accepted SIGs will have a scheduled session at the conference. After your SIG is accepted, we will notify you what technical support will be available — the SIG rooms may not have A/V support provided, but you can provide your own projector if desired. Rooms will be set up to facilitate discussion.

After the Conference

After the conference, organizers are encouraged to continue their SIG by organizing a workshop at a future conference or creating and maintaining a website. Accepted SIG abstracts will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts, available at the conference on DVD and in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.