CHI 2005: Day 3 – The Conference Begins 04-07-2005

With attendees fashioning wearable computers and discovering that other people, independently of myself, were taking pictures of the MAX’s accessibility features, it was apparent that CHI was in town. Today the CHI conference’s main events began, featuring presentations on full and short papers, interactive expositions, and companies show their wares and recruiting.

Opening Plenary

Randy Pausch of CMU opened the conference with a powerful talk on pushing for greater interdisciplinary work. Although, his talk overall was laden with hints at how great CMU is–not to say that was a bad thing. Randy showcased a lot of great work that they were doing, projects which are way beyond what our lab could do at this time.

What I got out of his talk was his ideas about working collaboratively across fields. Artists working with scientists or designers working with engineers and all the other various combinations which could be made. A lot of it comes down to having trust and faith in other people–people who are strong in areas which you may be weak. The challenges we hope to tackle cannot be solved if we continue to only work amongst ourselves.

Sessions

Aside from the presentations from our lab, which went very well, there was some other interesting work presented that I got a chance to hear about:

  • An Evaluation of Landmarks for Re-Finding Information on the Web discussed a novel way of basically augmenting bookmarks by allowing the user to make “landmarks” out of specific information on a page. Typically you bookmark a page either because you frequently visit the site or you want to save a particular piece of information. The landmark concept allows you to catalog those bits of information.
  • Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share spoke of the degree to which people are willing to reveal information to a person, typically over the phone, based on their location. Not surprisingly people’s managers were the least likely to get the truth from a person.

CHI Reception

Attendees met at the Hilton conference hotel for a police escorted CHI parade, lead by drummers, to head to the reception venue. Confused Portlanders looked on as a socially reserved crowd traversed the city streets.

The reception took place at the Crystal Ballroom, known apparently for its bouncy wooden floor–a floor which creeped me out most of the night. Although, the food and craft beers were enjoyable.