Arnie Lund
Bo Begole
The role of Communities
at CHI 2011 and beyond
Arnie Lund
Microsoft | Arnie.Lund@microsoft.com
Bo Begole
PARC | begole@parc.com
January + February 2011
interactions
SIGCHI has from the beginning
been a community of communities. The field of human-computer
interaction is built on the principles of diversity, balance, collaboration, and evolution. The strength
of SIGCHI lies in seeing problems
from multiple viewpoints and
integrating expertise from multiple domains to find solutions
and drive the creation of new
technologies. New communities of
practice bring fresh perspectives
by sharing research findings and
methods in those areas, stimulating innovation, and attracting and
nurturing new researchers and
practitioners—sometimes leading to further specialized communities. At times the original
vision that serves as the catalyst
for community disappears into
the diversity of its impact on the
field of human-computer interaction. The life cycle of community
change is the engine of the evolution of the field.
Recognizing that some of the
characteristics of the CHI confer-
ence were not reflecting the needs
of many communities within
SIGCHI, the CHI 2006 conference
introduced formal recognition of
six new communities. SIGCHI’s
challenge was to take advantage of
the diversity in bringing a larger
community together at CHI, while
gaining some of the benefits that
often come with smaller confer-
ences focused on specific topics.
The goal of introducing a formal
community structure to CHI was
to enable the communities them-
selves to help shape the confer-
ence program. Since then, some
communities have disappeared
and others have transformed.
The ways in which communi-
ties have affected the conference
have also changed from year to
year as different conference com-
mittees formed. As intended,
communities have successfully
introduced a variety of innova-
tions to the program while also
energizing content in existing
venues. We now have the design
expo and community-invited
speakers, while Papers and Notes,
Interactionary, Case Studies, and
alt.chi have had increasingly
high-quality content by drawing
on community expertise in the
selection processes. Papers and
Notes has recently evolved into an
organization that partially paral-
lels the community’s structure.
