hello my name is Andrew Kuhn and I'm the interim vice president for conferences
for SIG CHI I would like to start this presentation with a thank you I'll thank
you to the volunteers to you who are working to make our conferences happen
even under these changed circumstances that you did not sign up for I've spoken
to many of you over the last several months and I know you're fighting
through these changes and I would like to thank you because I know that your
community appreciates your work making sure that the scientific exchange
continues I would also like to thank our colleagues at the ACM they're working
extremely hard there is a lot of work to be done
when conferences need to shift from physical to virtual and make changes to
their contracts there's a lot of work that they need to do and we thank them
for helping us have a sustainable ACM and have a sustainable community of our
own I wanted to address three issues today logistical issues regarding
conferences how we move to virtual video collection especially for virtual
conferences and then budgets so as we move to virtual conferences I would
encourage everybody to take a look at the ACM Presidential Task Force document
on virtual conferences it is a a nice document that helps us think about the
various issues that come into play not a prescriptive document but rather one
that hopefully will help us consider issues and then work to find solutions
that work for our conference for our community from our community's point of
view we're looking at a host of experiments running now people are
preparing for virtual conferences and there are many virtual events already
underway from workshops to conversations and so forth and so I'm
looking forward to learning from these I would I will soon organize a roundtable
discussion so that we can exchange information and learn from each other
one big part of virtual conferences will be collecting videos from authors and
here I would like to thank the video team that is led by the vice president
for operations they created a wonderful video set of video guides which are on
our website and there are five items that I would like to point out here
first conferences should have a video presentations chair to be the single
point of contact with the video team this will really simplify communication
between the conference and the video team conferences should focus on PCS and
QOALA this is what they should use because this is the path that
information then moves on to the video team for all these videos to move online
the video team has video specs and of course they should be followed and then
importantly the video submission deadlines should be at least two weeks
prior to going live so as to give the video team enough time to organize
everything to process all of the data of course conferences specify when exactly
things should go online so the flexibility is with the conference but
as far as the submission deadlines for videos from authors they should be at
least two weeks prior to that date as we move to from a physical conference to a
virtual conference the budgets have new budgets have to be created so if there
was a conference that was that decided to to cancel the physical event moved to
a virtual event we need to look at a new budget of course because the expenses
will be different and for the budgets our focus has to be on the
sustainability of our community of 24 conferences so for going forward for
virtual or for mixed conferences where the mixed conference might have a
significant virtual component and then perhaps some physical component as well
here are some things that I wanted to share with you first of all the
Executive Committee confirmed our approach in a vote that conferences are
not responsible for the cancellation costs due to having to cancel a physical
venue as well as maybe food associated with this physical venue these costs
will be something that the entire community will take on and not they will
not be left in individual conferences to somehow handle of course as we create as
conferences create new budgets these budgets meet didn't account for all of
the expenses that are related to that virtual conference in addition in order
to create a sustainable family of conferences we do need to have returned
from the conference that's what was the the practice so far however when a
conference becomes virtual most often the budget is significantly smaller for
example there's no food there's no venue so these returns if they're calculated
on a on a small budget become weight basically too small to have a
sustainable community for this reason we're changing what it means to have a
return and that return will now be the last approved return from the physical
conference so we're going to look at the last budget that was approved so
physical conference and simply take that return number into the new budget and of
course conferences will continue to have contingencies in their budget because a
virtual or physical there is always the possibility that we need a little bit of
backup financially
I also wanted to take a look at some of the questions that came from the
community the first one I wanted to address is about virtual workshops can
we develop a new type of SIGCHI workshop that is entirely virtual and the short
answer is yes absolutely and I wanted to add that before the current crisis the
executive committee approved a small budgets to experiment with expanding
conference reach using online tools so maybe your conference right now has 200
people a year can we increase that to 2000 probably not in a physical conference
but quite possibly we could do something online of course things have changed and
now our conferences are mostly not going to be physical and so I think the right
thing to do now is let's start with our virtual conferences and try to learn
from them and then adapt that learning as things change again and as some of
those physical meetings are again possible what else can we do that will
be online I think there's gonna be a lot of learning that happens and let's take
advantage of that another question is about community how do we maintain
community as a participant in some of these events it strikes me that a
benefit of collocation is that it gets rid of the time zone barrier and how can
we maintain a healthy international community when it may be difficult for
physical colocation I fully agree this is an important it's a critical question
and again I would ask people to take a look at that ACM task force document and
SIGCHI does have support for this for example the videos but really I think
our community will end up with a host of experiments I go back to that and we'll
have lessons learned all of the conference's are thinking about how do
we maintain a community and so let's see how our online experiences work and
let's talk about it because this is going to be critical for us moving
forward how are we doing with the whole pandemic
thing what's the worst-case best-case scenario budgets future plans you know
I'll get back I'll come back to we need a financially sustainable
community so we need to work as a team between all 24 conferences to make sure
that our finances are in order and if that happens then we have a good future
right we will continue the scientific exchange we will adapt to what the
circumstances are and continue that good work and then we will experiment with
meeting types and I'm sure that the situation on the ground will
continuously change so we will have to be able to adapt
this is all I wanted to talk about today I would like to wrap up with a thank you
to you the volunteers these are difficult times for all of us and for
you you did not sign up for what you're doing right now and I thank you for
pushing through to the best that you can and I would also like to again thank our
ACM colleagues because their help is greatly appreciated