The SIGCHI Town Hall at CHI 2024
This blog post summarizes the SIGCHI Town Hall at CHI24. It was great to have ACM President Yannis Ioannidis, CHI Steering Committee Chair Cliff Lampe, CHI Site Selection Director Philippe Palanque, and several SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC) members present and participating.
The Town Hall at CHI24 began with a land acknowledgment — many thanks to the General Chairs Floyd and Penny for ensuring we did not forget:
It is with profound reflection that we offer up this Land Acknowledgement, acknowledging Hawaiʻi as an indigenous space whose original people are today identified as Kanaka ‘Ōiwi — Native Hawaiians. The ʻāina of Kālia on which we gather is located in the ahupuaʻa of Waikiki, in the moku of Kona, on the mokupuni of Oʻahu, in the paeʻāina of Hawaiʻi. We recognize that her majesty Queen Liliʻuokalani yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom and these territories under duress and protest to the United States to avoid the bloodshed of her people. We further recognize that generations of indigenous Hawaiians and their knowledge systems shaped Hawaiʻi in a sustainable way that allows us to enjoy her gifts today. For this, we are grateful as guests. We seek to support the varied strategies that the Indigenous peoples of Hawai‘i are using to protect their land and their communities, and we commit to dedicating time and resources to working in solidarity.
The agenda for the Town Hall consisted of updates from ACM presented by President Yannis Ioannidis (see slides), a presentation about SIGCHI (see slides), and updates from the CHI Steering Committee about CHI26 to be held in Barcelona (see slides). Please see the linked slides if you missed the presentations. I’ll summarize below the SIGCHI conversations we had.
The SIGCHI slides shared above began with a short quiz for the audience, showing them conference logos and asking them to guess which conference and year they represented (see how many you can identify!). This was intended to remind audience members how *SIGCHI* is different from *CHI*; it oversees 25 specialized conferences in addition to our flagship conference, representing a rich HCI pluriverse.
I went over the numbers from my opening remarks at CHI (see prior Medium post), more slowly this time, directing attention to discussion points for our SIG regarding ACM OPEN, publishing practices, membership benefits, the meaning and value of local chapters, volunteering workloads, etc., adding some implications of these numbers and why they might need us to collectively pause and reflect. I also shared a cheat sheet, with a list of links to information on the SIG’s finances, meeting notes, conference closings, and more. Luigi De Russis (Executive Vice-President) then went over the finances for the SIG, covering key expenses. Helena Mentis (Past President) went over details regarding the ongoing SIGCHI elections.
We had roughly 25 minutes of Q&A, drawing our questions from Slido, managed by Adriana Vivacqua (VP at Large) and Naveena Karusala (AC Community Support). *Please note that some questions were $$-related and will be addressed in an upcoming Medium post to be shared shortly, aiming to give a comprehensive understanding of the SIG’s finances.* We address all other questions here.
Q1: TAPS wastes days of student time and effort annually. Does the TAPS contract have incentives for the third party provider to improve? Can we expect improvement? ALSO: Publication efforts are getting out of hand. How can we improve our processes?
Pejman Mirza-Babaei (VP Publications): In summary: it’s essential to clarify that TAPS is an ACM-wide process, not exclusive to SIGCHI. As a SIG under ACM, we adhere to the policies and processes set by ACM. Also note that the decision to adopt TAPS for SIGCHI was made by the previous EC. Our current EC has been actively addressing the challenges posed by TAPS through several initiatives.
Training for Conference Volunteers: Recognizing the steep learning curve associated with TAPS, our Publications Committee has been dedicated to training conference volunteers, especially Publications and Proceedings Chairs, on how to effectively use TAPS. Special thanks are due to Sven Mayer and Ran Zhou for their efforts in organizing and conducting these training sessions, which aim to streamline the process and reduce the time and effort required from volunteers and students.
Collaborative Feedback and Improvement: We have established a strong working relationship with the ACM production team and our conferences to ensure continuous feedback and request necessary improvements. This collaboration is facilitated through the EC’s knowledge-sharing meetings with the conference steering committee chairs. Over the past three years, we have held three such sessions, during which the ACM team, represented by Craig Rodkin and Bernadette Shade, has presented updates and received feedback from our community. These interactions have been instrumental in addressing specific issues and implementing improvements in the TAPS process.
While authors may need to do some extra work to comply with TAPS requirements, the system significantly reduces our overall production effort required from our conference volunteers and ACM staff. By streamlining the production process, TAPS helps ensure a more efficient and consistent process, ultimately benefiting the entire SIGCHI community.
Q2: Thanks for all the positive support to widen inclusion and diversity in our community. How can we ensure we continue to be progressive? ALSO: How can SIGCHI continue to pioneer and exemplify positive values shaping a modern research culture?
Naveena Karusala (AC Community Support): Our EC has focused on sustaining excellent research by infrastructuring a global, sustainable, equitable, safe, accessible, and hybrid community. As surfaced in the SIGCHI Futures Summit, we can (and should) ensure that SIGCHI continues to lead in the following areas:
Supporting conferences and knowledge production. Conferences are core to knowledge production and exchange, and ensuring they are inclusive in terms of cost, conference experience, volunteer labor, and other dimensions — despite significant changes like economic downturns or ACM OPEN — will require a systemic view across conferences and nurturing stronger relationships between conferences.
Being responsive to changes in membership. We’re seeing an increase in student/early career membership and global participation. The next EC will need to consider how to offer value to this growing membership, for example, through early career peer networks and mentorship, and innovative ways to support regional committees and chapters.
Addressing volunteer burden. There is a clear need to recognize and evaluate the distribution of the volunteer work members do to ensure quality scholarship, whether it is participating in peer review or ensuring accessibility. We hope the next EC will focus on the challenges confronting volunteer work, and identify ways of reducing redundancy and recognizing labor, among other things.
Supporting transparency, community awareness, and engagement. The CHI in Hawai’i conversations showed that difficult conversations will push us to progress as a community. Building on channels like open sessions and town halls, we recommend the creation of more pathways to engagement, such as via community advisory boards.
Q3: Why has SIGCHI failed to participate in open annual reporting through the SGB (SIG Governing Board)?
Neha Kumar (President): You can find these reports on our website for 2021, 2022, and 2023. All have been filed with the SGB, although the 2022 one was only recently submitted following a prompt at a “Meet-the-Candidates” session. In addition to these annual reports, we regularly provide updates on the SIG’s other activities, e.g., its conferences, conference tools we use, and more. Here, for example, is a report on our diversity and inclusion programs and practices put together by Naveena Karusala, which was recently requested by the ACM’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council.
Q4: When will we have CHI in the Global South?
Neha Kumar (President): In 2028, as confirmed by the CHI Steering Committee.
Q5: Why was there no SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award this year?
Niklas Elmqvist (AC Awards): We regret not having been able to give the award this year. We would share more details if we could, but in a nutshell, the ACM’s SIG Governing Board Awards Committee guided us against giving the award this year.
Q6: With the ever decreasing quality of reviews we receive, when will we implement an open peer review process? ALSO: We complain about reviewer load. Let’s early reject clearly bad papers and stop having strong accept papers go through re-view. ALSO: What is your vision in retaining scientific quality in response to the growing number of submissions? How can we improve HCI’s reputation?
Pejman Mirza-Babaei (VP Publications): The quality of reviews has become a growing concern, raising questions about potential changes to our peer review processes and strategies to handle the increasing submission volumes while maintaining high scientific standards. Here are our thoughts and current actions on these issues:
Adherence to ACM Policies: We must follow ACM’s pre-publication evaluation policy to ensure that the papers we produce maintain their status and reputation within ACM and the broader scientific community. Any significant changes to the evaluation process, such as implementing an open peer review, would require coordination with ACM and possibly an update to ACM policies.
Early rejection is already included in ACM’s policies and is utilized by many conferences to manage reviewer load and maintain review quality. This mechanism allows for the quick dismissal of clearly unqualified submissions, thereby freeing up reviewers to focus on papers with more potential. There have been numerous discussions among conferences about effectively implementing early rejection, including a recent session at CHI 2024. The SIGCHI EC supports these discussions, recognizing the need to balance efficiency with the integrity of the review process. While supporting these mechanisms, we also need to ensure that our conferences adhere to ACM policies and retain autonomy over their internal review processes.
Our strategy involves training for reviewers and emphasizing the importance of thorough and constructive reviews to improve their evaluation skills and understanding of quality metrics (see this new set of SIGCHI videos on reviewing featuring Max Wilson, created by our Best Practices Group including Hao-Chuan Wang and Fuyin Cherng). We are also promoting a culture where authors are expected to actively participate in the reviewing process, to provide detailed and constructive feedback, helping peers improve their work. We are also supporting ongoing discussions and sessions on best practices in the review process (such the discussion at the SIGCHI Future Summit and CHI 2024), involving stakeholders from various conferences to share insights and strategies.
Q7: What is the SIGCHI exec’s view on hybrid, which has increased the cost of running conferences?
Neha Kumar (President): We encourage our conferences to maintain hybrid offerings, but to the degree that they are able and willing to support the labor and costs involved. We additionally encourage conferences to consider venues where the hybrid setup might cost less, when possible. We do recognize and appreciate the costs involved.
Q8: How are you striving to improve the third party services we use? PCS, TAPS, QOALA, PWA are increasingly getting harder to use and more time-consuming for volunteers.
Pejman Mirza-Babaei (VP Publications): To answer this question let’s first clarify the different systems we use.
ACM Systems: Some of these systems, like TAPS, are managed by ACM. As a SIG under ACM, we follow ACM’s policies and processes for these tools.
SIGCHI-Developed Systems: Other systems, such as PCS QOALA, and PWA are developed by third-party contractors specifically engaged by SIGCHI.
To improve these systems and reduce the burden on our volunteers, we are employing two main approaches:
Training Conference Organizational Teams: We focus on providing comprehensive training for the conference organizational teams, particularly Publications and Proceedings Chairs. These training sessions are designed to help volunteers navigate and utilize these systems more effectively. By equipping them with the necessary knowledge and skills, we aim to minimize the time and effort required to manage these tools.
Feedback and Continuous Improvement. ACM Systems: For systems like TAPS, we facilitate a feedback loop between our conferences and the ACM production team. This is done through our meetings for conferences’ Steering Committee Chairs, where we communicate issues and request improvements directly to/from ACM. In our EC term, we have conducted three such sessions, ensuring that ACM is aware of our concerns and can address them appropriately.
SIGCHI-Developed Systems: For systems like PCS, QOALA, and PWA, we gather feedback from conference organizers and users and relay this information to the SIGCHI Operations team (via VP Operations Kash Todi) who works closely with third-party developers. This ongoing communication helps us to identify specific pain points and work collaboratively with the developers to implement necessary enhancements.
Q9: The large number of private invite-only parties seems to go against our community’s values of inclusion. Could SIGCHI leadership take a stance on these parties?
Neha Kumar (President): SIGCHI leadership can offer suggestions when asked, encourage inclusivity more generally, and support via bringing awareness to the concerns raised. We could — as a community — do better at organizing more public parties!
Q10: This EC’s outreach to the Global South has been amazing. Supporting young HCI professionals and academics is really important. How can we increase our “reach”?
Neha Kumar (President): Thank you! By socializing ways in which these efforts have been successful, and reminding our conferences and future ECs to continue promoting participation in research communities and volunteering. As mentioned above, networks and spaces for junior researchers to support their professional development are important, particularly where the value of HCI still needs to be recognized by institutions.
Q11: I really appreciate SIGCHI’s focus on accessibility and putting money behind it. It has let me come to conferences that I could never have attempted. Thanks!
Neha Kumar (President): Thank you for this note. We do take accessibility seriously, and are always aiming to do better.
Q12: What is ACM doing to centralize resources that increase the DEIA standard across SIGs and to reduce the burden on SIGCHI and AccessSIGCHI? ALSO: Rather than saying “if the numbers are right” can ACM take proactive steps for disabled participation? Equity != utilitarianism.
Yannis Ioannidis (ACM President): There are at least three action items that are currently under way:
- When the first batch of the diversity questionnaire data is collected (roughly by the end of the year), the answers to the “Do you have a disability?” question will be analyzed so that we may have a good idea about the landscape of each community within ACM and see the kinds of services that we should consider offer in general.
- A reminder will be sent to SGB (SIG Governing Board) members to declare their accessibility needs and challenges, as only two SIGs responded to the original message.
- The topic of accessibility will be proposed for the agenda of the next SGB meeting (mid to late fall) so that the different SIGs discuss the issues they face, as well as the idea that all/most conferences may have an accessibility chair, the idea of procuring such services at the ACM level, so that total costs are reduced and may be shared by multiple SIGs to the extent possible, etc.
