Authors: Regan Mandryk and Caroline Appert, with support from Anna Cox, Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Katherine Isbister, Marta Cecchinato, Simone Barbosa, Cliff Lampe, Aaron Quigley, and the entire CHI Steering Committee.
Purpose of this blog post: We present the format changes planned for the CHI conference, moving forward, beginning after CHI 2025. Many of these format changes were also financially motivated, and we will justify those decisions throughout.
TL;DR: The CHI Conference will move in a future year to a 5-day event (Monday to Friday) that will provide paper sessions in one half of the day, and interactive content (in five tracks) in the other half of the day. Exhibitor booths will be replaced with other formats for sponsor engagement.
Our starting point for discussion of the conference format changes was driven by two main factors: finances and format (see Parts One, Two, and Three of the blog posts for details). To summarize these, the CHI conference has made significant budget cuts over the last decade by removing services and turning to volunteer and author labour that has a cost to our community and volunteers; additional budget cuts require removing conference elements. Beyond the financial issues, the format of CHI keeps scaling to accommodate our growth—we keep adding parallel tracks, resulting in a bloated, overwhelming, and difficult to navigate program with little structured networking time or time for discussion of content or ideas—we have lost the ‘confer’ part of our conference.
Our solution is to spend half of the day learning about the state of the art in HCI through paper presentations of refereed content. In the other half of the day, we construct the future together through interactive content (e.g., workshops, SIGs, panels, roundtables, provocations, mentoring events, student competition venues, other discussion formats, and posters)—venues that would be reviewed1. This would have the benefits of increasing time available for conferring in structured formats and also increasing the time for discussion around each paper. However, we would necessarily decrease the time in the schedule devoted to paper talks. At our January meeting, the CHI Steering Committee voted in favour of the following motions:
Proposal 1: CHI moves to five days from Monday to Friday.
By removing the weekend program, we reduce the cost of the venue rental. By leaving half of the day for interactive content, we move the nature of the pre-conference interactive events (e.g., workshops, doctoral consortium) into the main conference program.
Proposal 2: CHI removes schedule conflicts between paper sessions and all other sessions
We devote half of each day to paper presentations, allowing both for greater parallelization and supporting attendees in not having to choose between seeing the paper presentations and attending the interactive elements (e.g., panels, posters) that are harder to access after the conference. This also promotes discussions as a result of seeing the state-of-the-art content.
Proposal 3: CHI non-paper contributions are bundled into five flexible conference experiences (i.e., workshops, panels, meet-ups, extended abstracts, interactive demonstrations) that focus on building community and co-creating the future of the field.
In the other half of the day, there are a variety of structured networking events that support people at various career stages to access and contribute to the CHI conference in myriad ways. These interactive events are bundled to better streamline the conference program, reducing bloat, supporting a smaller organizing committee, and reducing the amount of needed professional organizing support, which is one of our major budget line items. We describe each of these tracks below, and also provide example CFPs for each track in this google doc.
Proposal 4: CHI sunsets exhibitor booths, but provides new opportunities for sponsor engagement (e.g., invited talks).
By removing the exhibitor booths, we expect that we will see major savings to the budget. It is true that exhibitors paid for booths; however, the cost of building the booths, powering them, paying professional staff to manage them, and paying for the venue space to house them greatly outweighed the revenue collected by exhibitors. These have been a financial loss to CHI; however, they have been a key part of the CHI coffee break experience and it will be sad to see them go. Doing so will, however, open the option for booking CHI in large hotels (or hotel clusters) as opposed to convention centres, which can be significantly more cost effective, and also opens new possibilities for different cities and countries to host CHI. To replace the industry engagement generated by the booths, CHI will turn to sponsor talks—which have proven to be very popular in the last few years—and will also innovate new ways of highlighting our relationship with industry partners.
Proposal 5: CHI redesigns the career development opportunities for doctoral students and early career researchers to be more inclusive.
One of the ways in which we want to improve the CHI experience is to provide better, more inclusive and accessible career development opportunities for doctoral students and early career researchers. The CHI doctoral consortium has been increasingly difficult to manage with a growing, diverse field, and can only be accessed by a small number of students each year. Instead, we plan to offer a range of more inclusive programming for students and early career researchers through the workshops, panels, and meet-up formats.
Proposal 6: CHI retains the student research competition in a format that meets the requirements of the ACM.
Although the other student competitions will no longer be offered, we are committed to continuing with the student research competition (SRC), as our winners attend the ACM-wide SRC and represent the field of HCI in the larger field of computing. The SRC will continue, and will be integrated into the Extended Abstracts track of CHI.
Proposal 7: That the CHI SC moves to multi-year balanced conference budget planning.
If you have read our previous posts on finances and our post on site selection at CHI, you will know that conference budgeting varies dramatically between North America and the rest of the world. This financial cost is why the CHI conference had a standard rotation of East Coast North America, Europe, West Coast North America, Asia, Wildcard until 2022. While in North America, CHI conferences could ‘save’ money that could be ‘invested’ into locations in which venues are more expensive. In 2022, the rotation was changed to be North America, Asia, Europe, Wildcard to better reflect the geographical location of CHI attendees and widen participation for attendees from a range of locations.
To give an idea of a typical CHI conference program, please see the “A Day at CHI” figure. Opening and closing keynotes will still be present (Monday morning and Friday afternoon), as will the conference reception (Monday evening). Papers are given in the mornings, and afternoons are devoted to the interactive events. In the afternoon, there is an extra long coffee break in which authors of extended abstracts will present their work as posters. Additionally, poster presenters will be given the opportunity to participate in the poster lightning talk session, in which they are given 30–60 seconds to pitch their poster to attendees. Interactive demonstrations will take place both during the conference reception and potentially during the coffee breaks.
Descriptions of the Interactive Tracks at CHI
Each of these contribution types require a submission in PCS, are reviewed—not refereed (meaning that they can be developed into archival contributions in the future), and are included in the CHI Companion Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.
A Workshop at CHI is a structured event aimed at communal knowledge creation, typically lasting for a half day during conference days. Workshops may take various formats, such as mini-symposia, interactive co-construction sessions, structured discussions, or instructional courses, and rely on contributions from participants before or during the event to foster discussion and synthesis of ideas.
A Meet-up at CHI facilitates informal discussions among attendees with shared interests, lasting for 90 minutes and providing a platform for dialogue and collaboration. Unlike workshops, meet-ups do not require predefined contributions from participants, focusing instead on fostering discussion, exchanging opinions, and questioning ideas.
A Panel at CHI serves as an interactive forum for discussing topics of broad interest within the CHI community, featuring panelists and a moderator to encourage audience engagement. Panels differ from workshops and meet-ups in their structured format, typically involving presentations by one or more panelists and moderated discussions aimed at eliciting audience participation and dialogue.
An Extended Abstract is a short written contribution that provides attendees with an opportunity to present new and exciting contributions that showcase innovative technologies, extend prior research conversations, detail short self-contained studies, or provide provocations for new work and ideas to emerge. Extended Abstracts will be presented both in lightning sessions and as posters in a dedicated slot in the conference program.
An Interactive Demonstration is a live demonstration on-site at CHI. The Interactive Demonstrations track is for hands-on installations to share novel interactive technologies, and stage interactive experiences. As the Interactivity track focuses on the in-person experience, it is allowed to submit work that has previously been presented as papers, as long as the demonstration adds a new and unique aspect to the experience.
For those interested in the details, we provide a detailed description of each of the tracks in this sample CFP document. Note that these are not the actual CFPs for future iterations of the conference, but are working documents used to identify problems and a timeline, that will be provided to future CHI conference organizers to work from.
What about my Favourite Track that no Longer has a Name?
Case Studies
Case studies no longer exist as their own track. However, we encourage authors to submit case studies to the conference as either a Full Paper or an Extended Abstract. Community members could also organize a Workshop for case study presentations.
Courses
Courses no longer exist as their own track. However we encourage authors to submit courses to the conference in the Workshops track.
Doctoral Consortium
The doctoral consortium no longer exists as its own track. However we encourage students to submit descriptions of work in progress to the conference in the Extended Abstracts track. The CHI conference will continue to support doctoral students in their career development through the provision of relevant Workshops that specifically address career development for PhD students. We encourage doctoral students to apply to take part in the relevant workshop.
alt.CHI
The alt.CHI becomes integrated into the main program, rather than existing as a separate track. We encourage authors to submit speculative and provocative work to the conference in the Full Papers and Extended Abstract tracks. We also welcome proposals for Workshops, Meet-Ups, and Panels that center on provocations and speculative work.
SIGS
The SIGS track has been subsumed into the new Meet-Ups track.
Late Breaking Work
The Late Breaking Work track no longer exists as its own track. It has been subsumed into the Extended Abstracts track.
Student Game Competition
The Student Game competition no longer exists as its own track. Submissions of research related to human-game interaction can be submitted to the Full Papers track and the Extended Abstracts track as appropriate to the size of the contribution being made. We also welcome proposals for Meet-Ups and Workshops on related topics. For researchers who wish to provide interactive experiences of their games, please submit to the Interactivity track.
Student Design Competition
The Student Design Competition no longer exists as its own track. Descriptions of design research can be submitted to the Full Papers track and the Extended Abstracts track as appropriate to the size of the contribution being made. We also welcome proposals for Meet-Ups and Workshops on related design topics.
Video Showcase
The Video Showcase no longer exists as its own track. Videos can be submitted as supplementary materials for all tracks, and may be required when submitting to Interactivity.
Interactivity
The Interactivity track has been renamed into the Interactive Demo track.
Process that Generated the Proposals
In Conference Finances and Format—Part One: Prior and Current Context, we described the financial and format constraints of CHI. In Part Two: Shaping the Future of CHI, we articulated several proposals to address those constraints. In Part Three: Insights from the Community, we presented the findings from our survey and two community sessions that we conducted over zoom. In January, 2024, the CHI Steering Committee met over three days to consider the community feedback of our proposals, and to design a new format for CHI that would be both financially self-sustaining, and would provide more structured discussion time at the conference itself. In this blog post, we present the format changes planned for the CHI conference, moving forward, beginning after CHI 2025. Not all of these changes will be integrated as early as 2026, as planning for that conference is already underway by general chairs and technical program chairs, and we want to have time to gather community feedback on these proposals. In future posts, we will present a five-year budget model for a financially sustainable CHI conference, and a proposal for formalizing virtual CHI—an annual online conference that will also be proposed to begin after 2025.
Closing Thoughts
We understand that change is sometimes difficult or even unwelcome. We are also keenly aware (from our conversations and our survey data) that different aspects of the CHI conference program are the favourite part of CHI for a subset of our community. However, as with most institutions, it is easier to keep adding things to the CHI program, and harder to remove elements. We are at a point where it is no longer sustainable—for financial and experiential reasons and to be able to continue to manage the program with volunteers. We need to streamline the conference experience to ensure that we are providing a valuable experience for attendees that is worth the cost of registration and travel, and that is a responsible choice in the face of the carbon costs of air travel, and that responsibly manages the efforts of our volunteers.
If you have thoughts, we invite you to share them with us. You can join us at CHI 24, when we will have a community panel on the topic (tentatively scheduled for the session preceding the town hall). We will host an online community session after the CHI 24 conference. You can also reach out to any member of the CHI Steering Committee and share your feedback. We look forward to discussing these format changes with you and presenting a revitalized CHI conference experience in the very near future!
- Note that these tracks would be ‘reviewed’ by the ACM’s definition. ACM considers refereed and formally-reviewed material to meet the requirements of rigorous peer-review suitable for archival publications. As the tracks other than full papers are reviewed, it would not prevent future publication of those works in an archival venue. Also note that ‘reviewing’ differs from refereeing in that there need not be written reports and statements for record. ↩︎