Survey of the reviewing process

Survey of the reviewing process

This year’s review process combined papers and notes reviewing, whereas the previous years’ numbers are for papers only. The CHI Review Process survey is in its fourth year of monitoring process quality. From the author’s survey, overall the process seems healthy. Ratings of the fairness in general is up slightly over last year; metrics of review quality are down somewhat, but not enough to be concerned. Rebuttals and blind reviewing continue to be seen as improvements by the majority of authors, and authors are more positive about this than in the previous years, even rejected authors (only 6% of whom believe their rebuttal made a difference).

With respect to the new process changes – subcommittees, contribution types and the half-point scale – the majority of authors were positive, and the rest were split between neutral and disagree. Authors strongly favored the half-point reviewing scale; other innovations were received more positively than negatively.

20th User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)

1st International conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys)

3rd Conference on computer-based systems that have an impact on groups, organizations and social networks (GROUP)

3rd Conference on designing for user experience (DUX)

14th Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST)

8th International conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI)

10th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI)

5th International conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS)

2nd annual conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI)

6th Creativity and Cognition conference (C&C)

5th Eye Tracking Research & Applications Conference (ETRA)

1st Symposium on CHI for Management Information Technology (CHiMiT)
Second half 2008 & first half of 2009

SoftVis 2008: International Symposium on Software Visualization (SoftVis)

9th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI)

21st Annual UIST Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)

2nd International conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys)

15th conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST)

13th Int. conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

2nd Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology (CHiMiT)

11th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI)

1st Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration (IWIC)

3rd annual conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI)

4th Conference on computer-based systems that have an impact on groups, organizations and social networks (GROUP)

1st International Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS)
Specialized Conferences (In-cooperation).

Those conferences that were in-cooperation with SIGCHI in 2007-2008 and those projected for 2008-2009 include (an exhaustive list is available here http://www.sigchi.org/conferences/calendarofevents.html):

2nd Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI)

2nd International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Persuasive)

European Conference on Interactive TV (EuroITV)

Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces (DPPI)

7th International Symposium on Smart Graphics (SG)

7th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA)

11th International Workshop Cooperative Information Agents (CIA)

2nd Int. Conf. on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (DIMEA)

2nd Int. Conf. on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII)

6th International Workshop on TAsk MOdels and DIAgrams (TAMODIA)

9th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Mobile HCI)

6th International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2007)

(25th anniversary) European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (ECCE)

3rd Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI)

3rd International Conference on Body Area Networks (BodyNets)

10th International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI)

7th Sketch Based Interfaces and Modeling (SBIM)

7th International Interaction Design and Children (IDC)

International conference on Computational Aesthetics (CAe)

9th Annual ACM SIGCHI_NZ Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CHINZ)

8th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA)

3rd Int. Conf. on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (DIMEA)

10th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) 10th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Mobile HCI)

5th Nordic forum for human-computer interaction research (NordiCHI)

4th International Conference on Collaborative Computing (CollaborateCom)

5th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE)

1st International Working Conference on Human Factors and Computational Models in Negotiation (HuCom)

1st ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and exhibition in Asia (SIGGRAPH Asia)

11th Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI)

3rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (Pervasive Health)

Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technologies (DESRIST)

International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems (CTS)

9th International Symposium on SMART GRAPHICS (SG)

European Conference on Interactive TV (EuroITV)

8th International Interaction Design and Children (IDC)

1st conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T)

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  Atlanta ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Bangalore ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Belgian ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Brazil ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Central Russia ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Chicago ACM SIGCHI
  
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  China ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Czech ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Finland ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Greater Boston ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Greece ACM SIGCHI (GrCHI)
  
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  Ireland ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Italian ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Korea ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Mexico ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Milwaukee ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Mumbai ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Netherlands ACM SIGCHI
  
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  New Zealand ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Northern Utah ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Orange County ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Ottawa ACM SIGCHI
  
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  PhillyCHI (Philadelphia ACM SIGCHI)
  
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  Portland ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Puget Sound ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Romania ACM SIGCHI
  
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  San Francisco Bay ACM SIGCHI
  
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  South Africa ACM SIGCHI
  
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  South India ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Southern Michigan Northern Ohio ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Spain ACM SIGCHI
  
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  St. Louis ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Swiss ACM SIGCHI
  
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  Toulouse/France ACM SIGCHI
  

There are 5 student SIGCHI chapters:

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  Cornell University Student ACM SIGCHI
  
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  George Mason University ACM Student SIGCHI
  
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  Penn State University ACM Student SIGCHI Chapter
  
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  University of Michigan ACM Student SIGCHI
  
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  University of Washington ACM Student SIGCHI
  

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  Boston: Sharing calendars with other related local groups to foster collaboration and member sharing as opposed to competing with each other
  
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  Atlanta: Using social media such as Flickr, streaming video, and Twitter to expand reach and build community
  
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  Some chapters sponsor annual student awards e.g. for Master's theses in HCI
  
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  Planning programs around visits by interesting speakers to reduce costs with hosting speakers
  
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  Norway: HCI Mentorship program - experienced HCI practitioners mentor novices
  
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  Prague: Physical library of HCI books for loan to members
  
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  Netherlands: Received an infusion of money from Ministry of Economic Affairs. Other chapters were inspired to try to replicate this model of seeking funding from supportive local organizations.
  

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  Finding and attracting speakers
  
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  Strategies for membership dues, offering compelling benefits (e.g. annual dues vs. pay per event)
  
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  How to handle potential competition from similar local groups (UPA, HFES, IxDA, etc.)
  
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  Chapter technology infrastructure (mailing lists, tracking memberships, collecting dues)
  
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  Ways to link academia and industry
  
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  Building/maintaining sense of community
  
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  Ways to attract and retain volunteers for chapter
  

The CHI 2010 committee is pushing for greater outreach to and involvement from local chapters around the world. We are collaborating to develop strategies for increasing attendance and sponsorship by working with local chapter leaders on CHI promotion activities.

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  interactions Magazine: The new editors John Kolko and Richard Anderson are firmly in place and seem to be regularly producing issues of substance.
  

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  Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) – addresses the needs of researchers. Jack Carroll’s term as Editor-in-Chief is coming to an end and there is an active search for a new editor. There is a new policy in place so that papers accepted for TOCHI can be presented at the CHI conference to increase their exposure.
  

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  The CHI conference proceedings + very strong smaller conferences
  

5. 
   Elections
   

SIGCHI terms of office run for three years, and elections were held in Spring 2009 for all offices. SIGCHI nominated a full slate of candidates, and the following individuals were elected for terms running July 1, 2009 through June

30, 2012:
President: Gerrit C. van der Veer

Executive VP: Elizabeth F. Churchill

VP for Finances: Gary M Olson

VP Membership/Communication: Loren Terveen

VP at Large: Paula Kotzé

VP at Large: John Charles Thomas

The site is scheduled to launch on August 2.

On the down-side, the SIGCHI Photo History site has once again failed. The SIGCHI Photo History site is a consultant-developed site that has proven to not be maintainable. We originally thought we were going to be able to merge the site into the new SIGCHI site, but that has proven to be unfeasible. We are going to work with our Plone consultant to resurrect the site for the short term and look for longer-term solutions which either takes advantage of external picture hosting sites or advances in the Plone itself.

Beyond these activities, we continue to maintain the other aspects of our electronic infrastructure, such as mailing lists, conference web sites, etc.

First, the SIG has continued to look for ways to increase the transparency of EC activities, and to increase discussion of SIG matters in general in the community. To that end, the SIG established a blog (blog.sigcomm.org) in September 2008. This was accomplished through the work of Neil Spring, SIGCOMM's Information Services Director, and with the help of ACM.

Blog topics have covered a lot of ground: there has been vigorous discussion of the SIGCOMM conference itself -- reviewing and openness; discussion of SIG policies and issues (steering committees, double-blind reviewing, and dual submission); and information for the community on SIG elections and "what the EC does."

Over the past year, the EC has received considerable feedback on the organization of the SIGCOMM conference, and this has prompted a series of discussions on how conference oversight may be improved. Currently the conference is managed by the EC in the role of steering committee.

The EC has developed a proposal for a new arrangement with technical oversight vested in a separate steering committee, and is now gathering feedback on the proposal from the SIGCOMM membership.

SIGCOMM held elections in June, leading to election of Bruce Davie as the new chair, and re-election of Henning Schulzrinne as Vice-Chair and Tilman Wolf as Secretary/Treasurer. SIGCOMM also has a new awards chair this year: Ramesh Govindan (USC) takes over from John Byers as the SIG's new Awards Chair.

With respect to awards, SIGCOMM has recognized Jon Crowcroft with the SIGCOMM award for lifetime achievement; he will receive his award and present a keynote talk at the annual SIGCOMM conference in August 2009 in Barcelona. SIGCOMM also has recognized Paramvir Bahl, Ranveer Chandra, Thomas Moscibroda, Rohan Murty, and Matt Welsh for the best paper in that conference, "White Space Networking with Wi-Fi like Connectivity"; and SIGCOMM has recognized Randolph Baden, Adam Bender, Daniel Starin, Neil Spring, and Bobby Bhattacharjee for the best student paper in that conference, "Persona: An Online Social Network with User-Defined Privacy." A "Test of Time" award will also be given at the conference for the best paper(s) from 10-12 years ago.

Further, SIGCOMM members Hari Balakrishnan, Jennifer Rexford, Mark Squillante, and Doug Terry were recognized as ACM Fellows.

SIGCOMM has also recognized Dina Papagiannaki with its Rising Star award; she will receive her award at the CoNEXT conference held in December 2009 in Rome.

This year the SIG decided to add its support to ACM-W's scholarship program. ACM-W provides approximately 12 scholarships of $500 each to help women students attend a research conference. SIGCOMM decided to augment the scholarship for any recipient who chooses to attend a SIGCOMM-sponsored or in-cooperation conference or workshop. The additional funds provided by SIGCOMM will cover full costs of travel, lodging, and conference registration. In addition, SIGCOMM will help find informal mentors for such students before they arrive at the conference.

SIGCOMM continues its geodiversity travel grants: For the fourth year in a row, we have awarded travel grants to support junior researchers from under-represented regions in attending the main SIGCOMM conference; this year, support was extended to selected authors at the Latin American Networking Conference (LANC 2009).

The SIG Newsletter (Computer Communication Review) continues to publish lively and timely articles and commentary. Editor Keshav has continued the succcessful format that incorporates both peer-reviewed articles, fast-turnaround unreviewed articles, and community news and commentary.

Finally, the SIGCOMM main conference continues to thrive. In August 2009, the flagship SIGCOMM conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain. SIGCOMM 2010 will take place in Delhi, India. We are in the process of selecting a site in North America for SIGCOMM 2011.

SIGCSE FY’09 Annual Report

July 2008 - June 2009

Submitted by: Barbara Boucher Owens, Chair
By-Laws Revision
The revised SIGCSE By-Laws have finally been approved by all levels of ACM and are now in place! Many thanks are due to past and present SIGCSE boards for their tireless work in this process.
Membership
Historically, SIGCSE has had a very loyal membership. Recent initiatives to attract more members seem to be connecting well with many in the computing community. At the end of the 2008 fiscal year (the last year for which we have complete data), SIGCSE has 2671 members, an increase of 85 members over last year, with strong gains in both professional and affiliate members, against a 50 member decrease in the subscriber-only category. 54% of the one-year members have renewed, but 84% of those who had been members for at least 2 years have renewed, showing a loyal membership. However, we are not resting on our laurels. The membership committee of the Board is looking at ways to (1) increase membership, (2) improve communication with members, particularly new ones, and (3) improve publicity and visibility of SIGCSE.
Awards
Each year, SIGCSE gives awards to those who have been particularly helpful to the computer-science-education community. SIGCSE gave two awards this year, both officially at the Technical Symposium which was in March, 2009. Elliot Koffman, Temple University received the Outstanding Contribution award and gave the opening keynote address. The SIGCSE Award for Lifetime Service was presented to Michael Clancy of the University of California at Berkeley who addressed partakers of the first-timers luncheon.
Conference Highlights
In 2008-2009, SIGCSE sponsored three main conferences: the Technical Symposium, the summer (Northern Hemisphere) ITiCSE conference and the September/October research conference known as the ICER workshop. The SIGCSE Technical Symposium and the Digital Library revenues continue to generate additional revenue to support our many endeavors.
Reviewing

Our homegrown online submission and reviewing system for the technical symposia has streamlined the process and allowed reviewing to involve all interested SIGCSE members. Most papers for the Symposium and ITiCSE are now sent to six reviewers, giving significant input to program committees, and both submitters and reviewers can view the reviews of their papers after acceptance decisions are made. With over 1000 reviewers in the SIGCSE conference databases, some variation among reviews can be expected, and conference leadership and the SIGCSE Board are exploring how to best utilize reviewers and promote consistency. This year for the Symposium, the program chairs instituted a meta-reviewing process which seemed to work quite well.

SIGCSE 2009 was remarkably successful, with very strong attendance and a healthy surplus to support other SIGCSE programs (without raising conference fees) in spite of a struggling world economy. This year’s Co-Chairs, Mark Guzdial (Georgia Tech) and Sue Fitzgerald (Metropolitan State University) were incredible. Mark utilized his extensive blogging skills to blog about the conference and issues surrounding computing education. Sue kept a tight eye on the budget and all the details surrounding a conference. Last year's Symposium co-chair Susan Rodger was particularly effective in her new role as vendor liaison. Our second annual Kids’ Camp at the Symposium blended a childcare service with efforts to engage the next generation with computing. Children attending the camp wrote programs in both Scratch, a new graphical, multimedia language from MIT as well as in Alice, a 3D animation software from CMU. This effort was a sell-out.

The International Computing Education Conference (ICER) originally began through the vision and guidance of Richard Anderson, Sally Fincher, and Mark Guzdial. New leadership began for ICER conferences starting in 2008 when ICER was held in Sydney, Australia. The number of papers submitted was double that in previous years and this conference also had two co-located events, the second 2008 doctoral consortium and the BRACElet research group workshop to study novice programmers. The former was held the day before ICER and the latter the two days following.

Behind the scenes, Bob Beck (Villanova University) and Scott Grissom (Grand Valley State University) have continued outstanding service as Symposium Site Coordinators; and Mats Daniels (Uppsala University) continues fine work as ITiCSE Site Coordinator -- with the help of Bruce Klein from Grand Valley State University. Michael Goldwebber will be joining the ITiCSE Site Coordination effort as an understudy for Bruce Klein.