CHI2022 will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana – and barring major changes in the direction of the pandemic we anticipate meeting in person. More accurately, we will be having a hybrid conference, where some elements will be online, and some will be in-person. It’s too early to clearly say what the hybrid experience will look like, but we are committed to making sure all elements are engaging and exciting for participants. Our phrase has been “no second-class experiences” no matter the mode you attend CHI. We understand that while many are anxious to get back to in-person meetings, many need online experiences in order to equitably experience the conference. Between traditional cost barriers, concerns about sustainability, and uneven pandemic recovery, we know that we need to be able to deliver a first-class online CHI experience.
Our slogan for this year is “Cultivating Communities”. One of the many lessons we’ve learned over the pandemic is how difficult it is to maintain and build our communities in a mediated context. We’ve also seen in the past year how communities can be unjust for some members. We approach “cultivating communities” with the idea that we have to be purposeful in building just communities that reflect the goals and needs of everyone in the HCI space. We know that CHI is a network of communities as well, and that building connections between them and the people in them requires communication work. We hope you do that work with us.
We’re excited by many of the initiatives we’re implementing this year. One is a focus on equity, justice and access. This year, Katta Spiel and Christina Harrington have been leading our efforts as part of the executive team. What that means is that they’ve been part of every meeting and every decision since we started organizing the conference – helping to ensure that our principles in these areas are reflected in all of our activities.
This year too, the papers program will offer an opportunity for Revise and Resubmit. There will be another blog post about the details of that, but in short we are excited about this new approach and see it as an equity and quality advance.