CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Improving International Communication and Cooperation in SIGCHI
David G. Novick
EURISCO
4 Avenue Edouard Belin
31400 Toulouse France
+33 (0)5 62 17 38 38
David.Novick@onecert.fr
John Karat
IBM
IBM TJ Watson Research Center
30 Saw Mill Road
Hawthorne, NY 10532 USA 91405
+1 914 784 7612
jkarat@watson.ibm.com
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon
LRI
Université de Paris-Sud
Orsay Cedex France
+33 (0)1 69 15 69 10
mbl@lri.fr
Keywords
SIGCHI, international cooperation, community
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
INTRODUCTION
SIGCHI, as the world's leading association for computer-human interaction, aspires to being a world-wide venue for our community. Of SIGCHI's local chapters, nine are located in Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia and Switzerland, and fourteen are in the USA. This demonstrates the success of SIGCHI's work to become more relevant internationally but, as indicated in the latest "From the Chairs" column in the SIGCHI Bulletin, there is still much to be done. Some issues include:
- Differences in intellectual and research traditions
- Practices and perceptions of SIGCHI within national communities
- Language barriers and problems in sharing HCI research and publications
- Differences in cultural traditions
- Differences in social and business interaction styles
Through identifying and addressing these sorts of issues, SIGCHI can leverage its past and current work on internationalization.
SIG GOALS
This SIG's goal is to continue the process of increasing international cooperation and communication within the international HCI community generally and within the structure of SIGCHI specifically. The SIG is not aimed at technical issues such as internationalization of interfaces.
ISSUES
The SIG will deal with questions such as:
- What are the special needs and outlooks of national HCI communities?
- How can communication and cooperation be encouraged and grown among these communities?
- What HCI organizations and associations already exist, and how can SIGCHI cooperate with these?
SIG ACTIVITY PLAN
People who know sufficiently in advance that they will participate in the SIG are encouraged to bring with them a brief statement describing (a) experiences, perceptions or problems in dealing with CHI communities from other countries, and (b) how they think foreign CHI communities view CHI in the participant's country.
This SIG will be scheduled for ninety minutes and will include three main activities: sharing international perceptions, envisioning SIGCHI as an international community, and planning a program for making this happen.
Sharing Perceptions
At the beginning of the session, we will share our international cross-perceptions of the CHI com-munities, using materials prepared by participants in advance of or at the SIG session.
Envisioning
We will use a participatory envisioning technique to develop a picture of SIGCHI as an international community, and identify some of the principal factors that would help or impede the achievement of these aims.
Planning
We will outline a set of steps that the participants and SIGCHI can take to achieve the aims envisaged for international cooperation and communication among and between our various communities.
EXPECTED RESULTS
As a result of the SIG activities, we expect that the participants will produce:
- An assessment of the current challenges
- A plan of action
The SIG organizers and interested participants will prepare an account of the SIG session, the assessment and the plan of action for submission to the SIGCHI bulletin. We expect that SIG participants who agree with the action plan will join in taking the steps we outline.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
We invite all CHI members who are interested in improving SIGCHI as an international organization. We especially invite anyone who thought (or still thinks) that SIGCHI is an American organization.
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
