Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

Carolyn Gale Stanford University USA		Submission Deadline: 12 January 2004 [5:00 PM (1700) PST] Notice of Acceptance: 23 February 2004 Conference Publications Format Final Submission to Sheridan Printing
Fabio Paternò ISTI - C.N.R. Italy
Contact Us chi2004-sigs@acm.org
Message from Carolyn and Fabio, Co-Chairs By organizing a Special Interest Group (SIG), you can attract a group of conference attendees who share your interest in a topic and meet for 90 minutes of interactive discussion. 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. We encourage you to think of innovative, interactive techniques for presenting SIGs. Feel free to contact us before submitting a proposal to discuss your ideas and questions

About the Venue

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) enable conference attendees who share similar interests to meet informally for 90 minutes of facilitated discussion. CHI2004 provides meeting space and advertises SIG meetings to the rest of the conference in the Extended Abstracts and Conference Program.

Following the conference, SIG organizers are encouraged to continue their discussions on CHIplace.

Submissions

We strongly encourage submissions related to the CHI2004 special themes, international issues in HCI, and e-learning.

For your help we provide some examples of previous years accepted submissions (please remember that for this year some more information is required):

Sample CHI 2002 proposal: How Can Usability Be Certified? A Practical Test of Your Skills
Sample CHI 2002 proposal: User Involvement in the Web Development Process
Sample CHI 2003 proposal: Design of Usable Multi-Platform Interactive Systems

How to Submit

Submissions for formal SIGs must be received by 12 January 2004, at 5:00 PM (1700) PST. You will need to submit:

• a two-page extended abstract suitable for publication in the Extended Abstracts, in the CHI Conference Publications Format
• a brief description of

• assumed attendee background

• justification of the SIG for a CHI audience

• an informal schedule of discussion topics

The preferred submission format is PDF; please e-mail one combined file for the proposal and extended abstract to chi2004-sigs@acm.org.

Review Criteria

Proposals must be authored by a minimum of two individuals representing at least two different organizations. SIG proposals will be peer reviewed, and acceptance will be based on the relevance of the topic to the conference themes, its importance for the HCI community, and the plan for stimulating attendee interest and participation.

Upon Acceptance

You will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of your submission by 23 February 2004.

If a final submission is accepted, the SIG contact person will receive instructions for modifying the extended abstract, should any modifications be needed for publication.

Organizers will be required to post a brief introduction of their SIG on CHIplace, and are encouraged to foster discussions before the conference starts.

At the Conference

Authors of accepted SIGs will have a 90-minute scheduled session at the conference. Audio-visual support is limited to an overhead projector; participants may bring other equipment at their own expense. Rooms will be set up to facilitate discussion among a maximum number of participants (to be determined).

After the SIG session, organizers are encouraged to post a summary of the discussion on CHIplace, with the intent of fostering interactions beyond the conference.