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CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS – SIGCHI Volunteer Development Team

Role Summary

We are looking to grow SIGCHI’s Volunteer Development team to understand volunteer needs and develop systems to support volunteering activities with two new posts as a Research Scientist and Systems Analyst / Designer. Both positions which will start immediately. These are new roles and are still being forged, so you will have the opportunity to shape and define your own responsibilities.

Volunteering lies at the heart of SIGCHIs activities, from reviewing and serving on committees for conferences like CHI, CSCW and UIST, to working with its local chapters all over the world. We need to make effective use of our most valuable resource – our volunteers’ time, effort and enthusiasm. To make this an equal opportunity for all we need to recruit a diverse group of people to offer opportunities and support their engagement in the full range of roles within the SIGCHI community, from reviewing papers to acting on committees.

We recognise that the existing organisational and technical systems that support volunteer applications for roles, search, selection and volunteer recognition are now operating under enormous pressure, and may not be working as effectively as they could. To fully involve all of our community, we need to understand the needs of existing and potential new volunteers on how best to map our volunteer’s skills and expertise to the roles available and design better software to enable this. SIGCHI is therefore building capacity in the Volunteer Development Team to understand the needs of volunteers involved in its activities which will result in developing better systems which will allow more efficient use, search capabilities and recognition of volunteers’ effort and time.

Role Definitions

Research Scientist

You will be experienced in designing surveys and interviews for data collection and analysis for understanding needs and opportunities for supporting SIGCHIs volunteer base, including activities such as conference / journal reviewing, conference and local chapter organisations and volunteer selection and recognition. Where applicable, you may be involved in developing your analysis into supporting the design requirements of a new SIGCHI volunteer support system, working closely with the Systems Analyst / Designer role also being advertised here. The expectation is that this role will be undertaken by a mid to end-cycle PhD student, or early career researcher.

Time commitment: ~ 3 hours per week. You will report directly to the Adjunct Chair for Volunteer Development. This role is expected to last around 1 year.

Systems Analyst / Designer

You will undertake systems investigation, analysis and design for a system to better support SIGCHI volunteering activities such as covering aspects of conference and journal reviewing, conference and local chapter organisation as well as volunteer selection and recognition. You will be expected to have basic skills in interface / interaction design and understand systems development and integration sufficiently to design actionable software development solutions. The expectation is that this role will be undertaken by an early-career faculty or postdoc academic (or an exceptional final year student), or an equivalent experienced industry practitioner. It would be useful to have prior experience of SIGCHI volunteering and the Precision Conference System (PCS) process. Note that this is not a programmer role.

Time commitment: ~ 3 hours per week. You will report directly to the Adjunct Chair for Volunteer development. This role is expected to last around 1.5 years.

Please use the following Google Form to indicate your interest, or send an email to Mark Perry, SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for Volunteer Development (mark.perry AT brunel.ac.uk).

https://forms.gle/h8LnqbtGESxTS2mL6

SIGCHI membership is not required to serve in these positions. If you know people who you think would be interested please forward this advertisement to them.

Applications will be accepted until suitable candidates are found.

Prof. Mark Perry, ACM SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for Volunteer Development (mark.perry AT brunel.ac.uk)