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SAP at CHI2007 – San Jose, California

By Gerd Waloszek, SAP User Experience, SAP AG – March 16, 2007

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the CHI conference, one of the leading leading human-computer interaction (HCI) conferences in the world – some professionals would even say that the CHI conference is THE leading conference in the HCI realm. CHI2007 will be held in San Jose, California, from April 28th to May 3rd, 2007 – so it will be located close to the pulse beat of Silicon valley. In their welcome message, the CHI chairs Mary Beth Rosson and David Gilmore focus on two things: Firstly, they prompt the CHI attendees with the conference motto, namely to "reach beyond" what has been established during the past 25 years: "beyond our comfortable methods and praxis; beyond our exciting and innovative technology; beyond our established scientific frameworks and reputations; beyond the common ground of professional and national cultures; and beyond our far-flung social networks." Secondly, they invite the CHI attendees to join them in reflecting the past 25 years and the accomplishments achieved. I will return to the second aspect further down.

CHI2007 logo

Figure 1: The CHI2007 logo (from the CHI2007 Website)

In recent years, it has become something of a tradition that SAP is a sponsor to the CHI conference. Starting in 2003 as a contributing sponsor, SAP has been a champion sponsor to the conference since 2004 and will be one in 2007 as well (SAP also sponsored CHI in 2000 in La Hague). Sponsorship includes a booth with recruiting activities and presentations from SAP colleagues. Christine Wiegand from SAP User Experience who is responsible for UX sponsoring has already been very busy during the past weeks with organizing SAP's presence at the conference and inviting other UI-related groups at SAP to join in and to contribute to the presence. Her pulse rate will definitely increase during the next few weeks before the conference and hopefully slow down after a successful CHI presence. She invites you to stop by at the SAP booth, ask for job opportunities, watch the presentations, and to talk with SAP's UI professionals.

Christine Wiegand

Figure 2: Christine Wiegand took the running of SAP's UX sponsoring activities in 2003 and of the SAP booth at CHI conferences in 2004

 

25th CHI Anniversary, CHI Buzz, and some Memories...

In 2007, the CHI community is celebrating the 25th CHI anniversary conference, a "quarter-century of research, innovation, engineering, and development that has produced one of the largest and most vibrant communities in the computing field," as you can read on the CHI Website. If you are interested in the history of the conference, visit the CHI Buzz Online CHI Conference Community where you are invited to "share stories, memories, and thoughts about this exciting conference in CHI Stories and Memories and share pictures from past CHI conferences in CHI Photos!" On the site, you will also find Ben Schneiderman's Photo History of CHI, which covers the years from 1982 to 2000, as well as a CHI 2001 photo collection.

However, when I clicked the links for CHI retrospectives and first impressions of CHI, I found only empty pages (March 15th, 2007 – it was no better after I registered). Hopefully, the gaps will be filled soon. If not – apart from a few CHI editorials like this one – you will find ten CHI retrospectives dating from 2001 to 2006 in the Stories section of the SAP Design Guild Website contributed by SAP colleagues and myself (see also the links below). That's at least a start for delvers into the history of CHI.

CHI 1997

Figure 3: CHI 1997 at Atlanta, Georgia (photo taken with a Kodak DC50 – somehow it shows its age; photo: G. Waloszek)

My own CHI history dates back to 1997, when the conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia. I must admit that I was very impressed with my first CHI attendance. I will not attend this year's CHI, so I will eagerly await what my colleagues have to say and report report about the conference. Hopefully, we will be able to add one or two more articles to our list of personal CHI reports on the SAP Design Guild.

I still remember the long debates about whether the conference should become more scientifically- or more practically-oriented, when CHI had its 20th anniversary in 2002. Of course, this issue was not settled then and will definitely resurface at intervals. My personal impression, particularly with respect to CHI 2006, is that the CHI conference is continually moving in the practitioners' direction and is more and more concerned with business, rather than scientific, issues.

Figure 4: Section of a map showing where European CHI2002 attendees came from (photo: G. Waloszek)

I remember well an attempt, lead by Terry Winograd and others, to move the HCI community away from the computer science community towards the design community. I attended, for example, a panel at CHI 1997 with Paul Dourish (and, I think, Henry Liebermann) on the "opposite side" that debated directions. As far as I can see, there hasn't been too much impact of this debate on the community yet.

Figure 5 : Peter Pirolli made the case for Human-Information Interaction at CHI 2006 (photo: G. Waloszek)

Just recently, at CHI2006, there was a new attempt to split the HCI community and spawn a new one, namely the Human-Information Interaction (HII) community. Peter Pirolli was one of the proponents of the split. However, once more the panel discussion ended without agreement. Let's see whether CHI2007 will mark any important changes in direction and break new grounds, as its motto "reach beyond" might suggest.

 

More to See – San Jose, CHI Tour

For people, who can stay one or two days longer at San Jose, there are quite a number of options. While probably not the first address that comes to mind when talking about the Bay Area, San Jose deserves a closer look. It is also near enough to Silicon Valley to feel the pulse beat of the computer industry. And it is located in the Bay Area, which is known to be a focal point of the HCI community – think, for example, of the BayCHI community and its manifold activities. San Francisco is only a stone's throw away from San Jose, and for wine lovers, Napa Valley is too far either.

Skyline of San Jose

Figure 6: Aerial view of the skyline of San Jose (from www.sanjose.org/pressroom/photogallery/photogallery.php)

Last but not least, there will be the CHI tour the day after the conference: On May 4, Google, Intuit, Frog Design, and SAP invite you to visit each of their campuses to meet their designers and tour their facilities.

 

References

CHI and San Jose

CHI Reports

CHI Editorials

 

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