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Special Interest Groups

Message from the Committee

By organizing a Special Interest Group (SIG), you can attract a group of conference attendees who share your interest in a topic and engage in an 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 strongly encourage submissions related to the CHI 2007 theme: Reach Beyond. In that light, we also 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.

Make submissions via the SIGCHI PCS site external link starting on 21 Dec 2006 until the deadline. NOTE: Submit a SIG under the category of CHI 2007 Trends.

Introduction

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) enable attendees who share similar interests to meet informally for 90 minutes of facilitated discussion during a scheduled session at the conference. SIG proposals are welcome from all six of CHI's communities: Design, Education, Engineering, Management, Research, and Usability. Cross community SIGs are especially encouraged. If you think your proposed SIG will appeal to multiple communities, select one of the relevant communities during the submission process and then in your supplementary material explain what other communities your proposal relates to. The proposal will be reviewed by members of all relevant communities. 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.

Format of Submissions

Submissions for SIGs must be received by 13 January 2007 5:00 PM (1700) PST. You will need to submit:

  • a four-page extended abstract suitable for publication in the Extended Abstracts, in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts Publications Format
  • supplementary material: a brief description of
    • community(ies) to which this SIG would be of interest and why
    • assumed attendee background
    • an informal schedule of discussion topics
    • which of the organizers should serve as the primary contact

These documents should be submitted in one PDF file. The filename should be named lastname_sig.pdf, where lastname is the family name of the primary SIG organizer.

Examples of Successful Submissions

To guide you, we provide some examples of previous years' accepted submissions (please remember that for this year some more information is required):

  • How Can Usability Be Certified? A Practical Test of Your Skills
  • User Involvement in the Web Development Process
  • Design of Usable Multi-Platform Interactive Systems

These documents are available for download from the ACM Digital Library external link

Review Criteria

Submissions will be reviewed independently by reviewers drawn from the relevant community(ies). Proposals must be authored by a minimum of two individuals representing at least two different organizations. SIG proposals will be reviewed, and acceptance will be based on, the relevance and importance of the topic to the community it is submitted to, and the plan for stimulating attendee interest and participation.

At the Conference

Accepted SIGs will have a scheduled session at the conference. There is no A/V or technical support guaranteed for SIGs; after your SIG is accepted, we will notify you what technical support will be available, if any. Rooms will be set up to facilitate discussion.

After the Conference

After the conference, organizers are encouraged to continue their SIG by organizing a workshop at a future conference or creating and maintaining a website.