At CHI 2024
This below is the presentation I delivered at the opening of CHI 2024, on May 13, 2024. I share it here for others in our membership to have access to the information presented on the state of our SIG:
Aloha SIGCHI. I’m Neha Kumar, president of ACM SIGCHI, the special interest group for which CHI is the flagship conference. So here we are finally, at CHI in Hawai’i! And it is my pleasure and honor to welcome you here. I’d like to start by sharing the state of the SIG with you. Here are some numbers.
SIGCHI is now ACM’s largest SIG, with 5,200 members. We have nearly doubled in size over the last 3 years. Also, our student membership has gone up from 21 to 34%, SIG-only membership from 29 to 44%, and the total number of countries from 71 to 84. The top ten countries that our members come from are distributed across the world.
We produced almost 5,000 publications in 2023, more than any other ACM SIG. The next highest SIG, as you can tell, stands at 1900 publications.
We have 26 conferences and are continuing to grow, touching on many different facets of a rich and interdisciplinary field that we broadly recognize as HCI.
We now have 70 chapters, spanning 42 countries and 6 continents.
Our SIG is governed via 271 volunteer roles at present, all organized into 24 committees that align in their focus on: establishing a global community, enriching our members’ experience, and ensuring high-quality knowledge production through our conferences and publications.
And these committees are collectively overseen by the SIGCHI Exec., which I have been honored to lead through the last 3 years.
Even as these numbers describe us and our stature within ACM structures, where we lead on all these fronts — we are more than that.
We are also our community and relationships. Our values and our commitments. Our conversations and care. A desire to make a difference in the world. We have found this time and time again…
and especially in the last year, as we held space for difficult conversations, to learn from our past and present, and move to bluer skies and brighter futures. So I invite you to celebrate these ties and this community, through this week and (of course) beyond. In a world where so much is constantly changing, and we are surrounded by war and geopolitical conflict, it gives me tremendous joy to recognize that we are a community that cares. And because this time that we have with each other, on this beautiful land, is precious beyond measure, I invite us all to consider: how every conversation we have this week can be one to spark joy and meaning. How we can make the most of each moment we share with one another. How we can make it count.
The SIGCHI Exec. looks forward to deepening our conversations and commitments with you all this week, as we continue to discuss the futures we all care about. Helena Mentis will be hosting multiple Meet the Candidates sessions, for the ongoing SIG elections at the SIGCHI Lounge in the Exhibit Hall. We have awards talks throughout this week. If you represent a chapter or regional committee, join us for breakfast on Wednesday. The SIGCHI Town Hall will also be on Wednesday. The SIGCHI Futures Panel will take place on Thursday morning, followed by a lunch for all SIGCHI Futures Summit attendees on Thursday.
That’s a lot of futures thinking. And as we think about these futures, we must also celebrate the futures that these incredible people have charted for us — our esteemed SIGCHI awardees for 2024. They are:
Susanne Bodker, Jodi Forlizzi, James Landay, and Wendy Mackay for Lifetime Research.
Elizabeth Churchill for Lifetime Practice.
Jan Gulliksen, Amy Ogan, and Kate Starbird for Societal Impact
Karan Ahuja, Azra Ismail, Courtney Reed, Nicholas Vincent, and Yixin Zou for Outstanding Dissertation
And newly inducted into the SIGCHI academy: Shaowen Bardzell, Anna Cox, Munmun De Choudhury, Hans Gellersen, Bjorn Hartmann, Gillian Hayes, Julie Kientz, Vassilis Kostakos, Shwetak Patel, and Ryen White.
Congratulations to all the awardees! The SIGCHI community is lucky to have you.
It’s been a long road to get here, and on behalf of the SIGCHI Exec., I want to thank each and every one of you who has had a role to play. May you have a joyful and meaningful CHI.
And now I invite the ACM President Yannis Ioannidis onto the stage. Yannis, thank you for being here.
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