We have a new “Community” page: https://sigchi.org/community/ to offer members a space to share information and updates within SIGCHI. Right now it has (1) our Events Calendar, (2) our Holidays Calendar, (3) the Voices of SIGCHI blog feed, and (4) a call for SIGCHI Development Fund proposals and suggestions to help augment this page in a way that supports SIGCHI communities better. Expect to see more about our Equity Talks here soon!
1. Events Calendar: This is a community-sourced events calendar, aiming to foster stronger virtual ties across our multiple and diverse communities, especially during COVID. We blogged about it and have been populating the calendar over the last few months. Please add events/event series to it!
2. Holidays Calendar: This is a community-sourced holiday calendar, aiming to signal dates that matter, religious or cultural holidays, to SIGCHI event organizers so they might consider them when deciding event dates/deadlines. Please help populate this calendar by adding holidays! Also indicate whether it is okay or not to organize a conference during the holiday or to have a paper submission/reviewing deadline on it.
Why this calendar? As our community grows and becomes more diverse and distributed, we are committed to respecting every person’s culture, beliefs, and identity. In this spirit, we encourage all of us to be attentive to, even celebrate, days significant to some of us. If certain indicated holidays become difficult to avoid due to other planning constraints, organizers are requested to convey this with sufficient prior warning and enable flexibility and workarounds for those affected. Some holidays span multiple dates, and we will aim to mark the full window of a holiday and in the description note what subset of those days are actively observed.
See a problem? We set up the calendar system using SIGCHI’s infrastructure so that people can get an iCal feed without a login and use whatever calendar system they like. We are still working out some features (e.g., user-specific timezone display would be lovely!), but figured we can all try to iterate together. So please share feedback!
3. Voices of SIGCHI: SIGCHI’s Medium publication has a section labeled “Voices of SIGCHI”, where we invite (or interview) voices of the SIGCHI community to share updates about/for the community. So far, it has featured posts around community-centered initiatives, conference planning that others might care to learn about, workshop findings, stories about how chapters were started around the world, and more. Contribute to it!
4. Call for Proposals: How can we better support your community? Tell us. OR apply for a SIGCHI Development Fund grant.
5. Coming Soon — Equity Talks @SIGCHI: The first one is done and more are in the making. Read all about them, and expect to see the YouTube videos linked here soon!
Are there other things you’d like to see on this page? Do you have any additional questions or suggestions on the above? You can email us at sigchi-4all@acm.org.
Many thanks to Vikram Kamath for his service on the SIGCHI Development Fund Committee and help implementing the Events/Holiday Calendars. Also grateful to SIGCHI Operations for their help integrating this into the SIGCHI website.