February Site Visit Report
This week, Cliff Lampe (General Chair), Ihudiya Finda Williams (Assistant to the General Chair), and Ayman Shamma (Technical Program Chair) traveled to New Orleans for a site visit supported by our support team from Executive Events. In between bites of New Orleans cuisine, we managed a lot of planning. Other members of the organizing team participated in spirit, supporting us at a distance and pre-loading us with good questions to bring to the meeting.
Cliff, Ihudiya Finda, and Ayman at the New Orleans Convention Center.
The main thing we do at this visit is walk the site, and make sure we assign different rooms to different tasks. We want to make sure that we have rooms for things like religious observance, sensory breaks, childcare, operations – and of course technical content. We meet with the staff of the convention center to go over details like Internet access, sustainability practices, health and safety, and much more.
Ayman sitting in front of digital signage that says “CHI22.”
While we are finalizing a couple of details on the experience, our goal has been to create great experiences for both in-person and online attendees. This means planning around AV and volunteer effort to help make sure all content is streamed in the way that ties together the two experiences. While we know there will be stumbles, we know the strong commitment of this community can carry us forward.
Workshops and courses are currently listed in their mode on the site. The solution we are working towards for the experience is to have live, synchronous sessions for both presenters and attendees for the technical content. Keynotes will present at the conference, with a livestream being simultaneously broadcast for remote viewers. As always, content will be made available on the SIGCHI YouTube channel as soon as it can be processed as well.
Ayman at the theater where keynotes will be presented.
There are more details we are working hard to sort out, and more information coming soon. We hope to see you either in New Orleans or online to enjoy all of the work of the authors, reviewers, and volunteers who strive to make CHI happen during such turbulent times.