Author: Cliff Lampe (General Cochair)

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). CHI – pronounced 'kai' – annually brings together researchers and practitioners from all over the world and from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and positionalities, who have as an overarching goal to make the world a better place with interactive digital technologies.

CHI 2022 is structured as a Hybrid-Onsite full conference from April 30–May 5 in New Orleans, LA.

Categories
General Program Hybrid Conference

Hubb(le) Bubble – CHI2022 Updates

Hubb(le) Bubble – CHI2022 Updates

It’s been wonderful to see so many registrations to the conference since we opened the system, and exciting to see the previews of papers people are posting online. We’re working hard to figure out this very weird CHI. As always, we appreciate your patience and you should feel free to contact Simone or I if you have any questions.

Here are some updates about the conference!

We will be using Hubb as our online conference platform

Hubb (https://www.hubb.me/) is a system that has been used by comparable conferences like SIGGRAPH and SuperComputing. As a team, we looked at a dozen different platforms, with a very deep dive of a final list of four platforms. The decision teams were the general chairs, technical program chairs, and equity, justice and accessibility chairs – with plenty of feedback from others. Considerations included cost, accessibility features, stability, team experience and similar parameters.

Our volunteers are working hard with Executive Events to structure the site, streamline processes and make sure data is moving between all of our systems. SPOILER: things will go wrong. These platforms are often only roughly parallel to what we need. We’re doing everything we can to make the experience great for online participants – but we’re sure problems will arise. When they do, we’ll be there to listen and learn.

We will be using Discord to help build community and connect

Following the work SIGCHI has done in building communities on Discord, we will have a CHI2022 Discord channel where people will be able to interact more informally. That site will be limited to registered members of CHI and will go away after CHI is over. Research in online communities show ephemerality can be a powerful tool. We’ll still be interacting with you over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and *of course* Hubb. Discord will be for fun and interaction.

We’re focusing our efforts on key content experiences

We had been planning to do a CHI preview event (a.k.a. the web exclusive) where some content was to be open and broadcasted a few weeks before the conference. While we were excited to offer a preview event, we decided to move to unlocking and opening some livestreams at the event itself by making them open for anyone to view, whether they are registered or not. Not only will these livestreams energize the conference with outreach, but they will also save time (for our volunteers and presenters) and reduce the overall monetary cost. We still have some details to work here, but we’ve removed references to the pre-conference event from our site. This does not affect the virtual courses and workshops that are scheduled before the main conference.

COVID Updates

At the time of this post, trends in the U.S. are looking decent. We’re now working on implementation details for our health and safety policies. For example, what full vaccination means, how to support testing, and what types of policies exist on the ground. We’ll be posting more about this after we have more conversations with some vendors we are working with.

Categories
General Program Hybrid Conference

Registration Now Open

Registration Now Open

We’re excited that registration for CHI2022 is now open for both the in-person conference as well as the online option. Here’s where to register: https://cvent.me/AgNgla

A change this year is that we are following the example of CHI2021 in setting differential pricing by geographic region (see list of countries in each category below). We are extending that price reduction to the in-person conference fees in addition to maintaining the differential for the online conference registration rate.

We are still sorting out some of the COVID protocols that will be managed through registration, but we’ll make another announcement when we do.

We look forward to seeing you either online or in New Orleans in just a few months!

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What should I do if I run into problems with the registration? Please contact our registration team at chiregistration@executivevents.com.
  • How do I get an invitation letter for a visa application? If you need an invitation letter for a visa application, you will have an opportunity to ask for it when registering. The registration team will email you an invitation letter within two business days after the registration is confirmed.

Categories (country list) 

Category C

All countries not listed in category H or I.

Category H

  • Albania
  • Algeria
  • Angola
  • Argentina
  • Armenia
  • Azerbaijan
  • Belarus
  • Belize
  • Bosnia
  • Botswana
  • Brazil
  • Bulgaria
  • Colombia
  • Cook Islands
  • Costa Rica
  • Cuba
  • Dominica
  • Dominican Republic
  • Ecuador
  • Fiji
  • French Guiana
  • Gabon
  • Georgia
  • Grenada
  • Guadeloupe
  • Guatemala
  • Guyana
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Jamaica
  • Jordan
  • Kazakhstan
  • Kosovo
  • Lebanon
  • Libya
  • North Macedonia
  • Malaysia
  • Maldives
  • Marshall Islands
  • Mauritius
  • Mexico
  • Montenegro
  • Namibia
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Romania
  • Russian Federation
  • Saint Lucia
  • Samoa
  • Serbia
  • South Africa
  • Sri Lanka
  • St. Vincent
  • Suriname
  • Thailand
  • Tonga
  • Tunisia
  • Turkey
  • Turkmenistan
  • Tuvalu
  • Venezuela

Category I 

  • Afghanistan
  • Bangladesh
  • Benin
  • Bhutan
  • Bolivia
  • Burkina Faso
  • Burundi
  • C African Rp
  • Cambodia
  • Cameroon
  • Cape Verde
  • Chad
  • China
  • Comoros
  • Congo
  • Congo, Democratic Republic
  • Djibouti
  • Egypt
  • El Salvador
  • Eritrea
  • Eswatini
  • Ethiopia
  • Federal State of Micronesia
  • Gambia
  • Ghana
  • Guinea
  • Guinea-Bissau
  • Haiti
  • Honduras
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Ivory Coast
  • Kenya
  • Kiribati
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Lesotho
  • Liberia
  • Madagascar
  • Malawi
  • Mali
  • Mauritania
  • Mongolia
  • Morocco
  • Mozambique
  • Myanmar
  • Nepal
  • Nicaragua
  • Niger
  • Nigeria
  • North Korea
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
  • Papua New Guinea
  • People’s Dem. Republic of Lao
  • Philippines
  • Republic Moldova
  • Rwanda
  • Sao Tome and Principe
  • Senegal
  • Sierra Leone
  • Solomon Isl
  • Somalia
  • South Sudan
  • Sudan
  • Swaziland
  • Syria
  • Tadzhikistan
  • Tanzania
  • Timor-Leste
  • Togo
  • Uganda
  • Ukraine
  • Uzbekistan
  • Vanuatu
  • Viet Nam
  • Yemen
  • Zambia
  • Zimbabwe
Categories
Hybrid Conference

Response to Open Letter Regarding CHI Format

Response to Open Letter Regarding CHI Format

On 9 October 2021, an Open Letter was given to the organizers of CHI2022 entitled “CHI 2022 Should Be a Virtual Only Event.” The letter was signed by 36 people. Issues in the open letter were addressed at two town halls scheduled to maximize time zone access, both in October of this year.

Town Hall A
Town Hall B

The authors of this letter have successfully advocated for many changes to the CHI conference over the years, which has made it more just. We thank them for bringing their concerns about these issues to us.

In the specifics of the letter, some things are under our purview while others are more under the auspices of the Steering Committee. Some are new problems caused by the pandemic, while others are long term issues we will continue to address no matter what. However, the broad point of the letter is much more important than the sum of its parts. My reframing of the letter is this:

“Deciding to hold an in-person event for CHI 2022 puts some people at risk, and historically excluded and marginalized people bear more of that risk than is just.”

We acknowledge that, and while the move to hybrid we hope increases equity, there are still gaps to overcome. We are of the mind that the future of CHI, for many reasons, is hybrid. The sooner we start trying out different hybrid formats and assessing their success the better able we will be to create meaningful hybrid experiences as a conference series.

Once again, we appreciate the authors and signers for bringing this issue to light, and for challenging us all to reconsider our options and decisions. Continually iterating on our decisions and the ethics around those decisions is the only way we will make forward progress as an organization.

Cliff Lampe
Simone Barbosa
CHI2022 General Chairs

Categories
General Program

Equity, Justice, and Access Commitments

Equity, Justice, and Access Commitments

CHI 2022 is committed to creating an equitable, just, and accessible environment that is safe for everyone to conduct their professional meet-ups. Assuming a hybrid event, this accounts for both virtual and in-person parts of CHI 2022. We have dedicated Equity, Justice, and Access teams working independently and collaboratively towards this goal. Christina Harrington and Katta Spiel lead these teams with Anupriya Tuli and Cayley MacArthur serving as assistants to ensure high-level representation within the executive team for CHI 2022. Overall, our guiding ideals are to create a conference experience that is accessible and enjoyable for everyone contributing to and/or attending CHI. Please feel free to contact us at equity@chi2022.acm.org in case you miss any commitments here or have any other feedback. In the remainder of this post, we’ll introduce the individual teams.

Continue reading “Equity, Justice, and Access Commitments”