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SIG Meetings

Call for Participation

SIG Meetings Quick Facts

  • Submission deadline: 5 October 2012 using the PCS Submission System
  • Notification: 14 December 2012
  • Camera-ready deadline: 20 January 2013
  • Submission format: Camera-ready, four-page maximum non-anonymized document in Extended Abstract Format, suitable for publication, as well as supplementary material describing the SIG.
  • Selection process: Juried
  • 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 contribution types at subsequent conferences. In addition to interesting and novel SIG topics, we also encourage creative approaches to conducting the SIG itself.

We welcome you to contact us before submitting a proposal to discuss your ideas for innovative and attractive SIGs!

Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Tampere University of Technology

Albrecht Schmidt, University of Stuttgart

sigs@chi2013.acm.org

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 5 October 2012. 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 description of the SIG, suitable for publication in the Extended Abstract Format and
  • supplementary material including: (a) a brief description of the community (or communities) to which this SIG would be of interest and why it is of interest; (b) assumed attendee background; (c) the approach you will use for organizing and presenting the SIG; (d) an informal schedule of discussion topics; and (e) which organizer 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 Selection Process

Submissions will be reviewed independently by 2-3 reviewers (jury members), with final acceptance decisions made by the SIGs chairs. We will notify authors of acceptance decisions by 14 December 2012.

SIG Jury members

  • Susanne Boll, University of Oldenburg, Germany
  • Sebastian Boring, University of Calgary, Canada
  • Elizabeth Buie, Northumbria University, UK
  • Robert Comber, Newcastle University, UK
  • Alois Ferscha, University of Linz, Austria
  • Morten Fjeld, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
  • Hans Gellersen, University of Lancaster, UK
  • Jonna Häkkilä, University of Oulu & Soul4Design, Finland
  • Jennifer Healey, Intel, USA
  • Eija Kaasinen, VTT Technical Research Center of Finland
  • Effie Law, University of Leicester, UK
  • Panos Markopoulos, TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands
  • Donald Patterson, University of California at Irvine, USA
  • Daniela Petrelli, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
  • Aaron Quigley, University of St Andrews, UK
  • Enrico Rukzio, University of Ulm, Germany
  • Khai Truong, University of Toronto, Canada
  • Arnold Vermeeren, TU Delft, the Netherlands
  • Teija Vainio, Tampere University of Tecchnology, Finland
  • Elise van den Hoven, TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands & UTS University of Technology, Sydney
  • John Vines, Newcastle University, UK
  • Max Wilson, Swansea University, UK

Upon Acceptance of your Special Interest Groups Submission

You will need to read the reviewers’ comments carefully and submit the updated (camera-ready) version of your SIG description by the camera ready deadline (20 January 2013).

At the Conference

Accepted SIGs will have a scheduled, 80 minutes long 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, the 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.

Alternative to SIGs: Informal “Birds of a Feather” meetings in CHI’13

CHI’13 will host informal Birds of a Feather(BOF) meetings to bring together attendees interested in a specific topic. We will provide meeting space and a list of time slots, which will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis. Any attendee may propose a BOF and organisers are responsable for inviting people to attend. BOFs will also be publicised through the CHI’13 twitter feed.

BOF meetings do not require written proposals, nor will they be included in the Extended Abstracts. However, they offer an excellent way to form new communities and we hope some will continue as workshops or SIGs at a later conference.