CHI 2005

April 2-7, 2005, Portland, OR

Notes

I was lucky to have been selected to join a smart group of student volunteers from universities all over the world. The student volunteer program for CHI conferences is known for its long waiting list. There was no chance that being #372 on a list going to the 400s would ever get me to the top first 85 limit that the conference can take in. I registered anyway since I thought it was a shame not to attend a significant conference in human-computer interaction that was going to be held in my own city.

I also have sought out the local chapter of the ACM and tried to get involved in their plans to welcome conference participants to Portland. This and knowing how hard it is for students, especially from overseas, to pay for airfare and hotel to attend the conference, made me write to the SV co-chairs and offer to host two student volunteers in my home. I honestly could say I had no ulterior motive other than to have the opportunity to meet other students since I didn't know anyone from my program who was attending. I didn't have any professor telling me or encouraging me to attend the conference either. As the conference date drew near, I was offered one of a few spots that are sometimes opened for local students to help with local errands.

It was a privilege to have hosted Bettina Thurnher, a PhD student from Austria (to the right of Jakob Nielsen in picture) and Dmitry Nekrasovski, a Masters student from Canada. It is as much a show of graciousness being a guest as being a host. They have shared generously about their research - Bettina in usability and process engineering and Dmitry in user evaluation of information visualization. I found the CHI SV program to be a very generous student volunteer program. Every effort was taken to connect students with leading theorists and practitioners in the field, not to mention making sure we were well-fed. The SV co-chairs, Louise Barkhuus and Cuauhtemoc Rivera- Loaiza, were particularly competent, organized, and caring (coordinating 90+ student volunteers is no joke!).

I will not write in detail about the sessions that I have attended [see the table of contents of the conference proceedings]. I hope the following links to chi2005 photos on Flickr and elsewhere convey the spirit of this conference.

Photos

• 'chi05' tag on Flickr
• Marlo's pictures. Marlo was our official SV photographer. She did great photos for the overhead screens.
• Flickr chi2005 pool
• Bag duty: Photo1 | Photo2
• Dancing the night away with Jared Spool. The SVs were allowed to choose an open tutorial to attend. I chose to attend Spool's The Secret Design Strategies of Highly Successful Web Sites. Designing for 'scent' was interesting but it was more fun dancing with Mr. Spool and Bettina at the conference reception. See these pictures: Photo1 | Photo2
• Playing "orchestra" for Michael Waizvisz. On short notice, several SVs were asked to play a musical instrument at the closing plenary. Oh no, I thought. I only can play the guitar and I'm not even good at it. It turned out we were going to play the Crackle Box, one of Waizvisz's home-built musical instruments. It was so much fun being part of his show at the plenary. See these photos of Waizvisz performing at the plenary: Photo1 | Photo2 | Photo3 | Photo4
• A Google Party: I first experienced Google's party reputation at the CRA-W grad workshop in San Francisco. It was a privilege to experience it again in Portland. Superb food. Fun drawing the Google logo. My design won a Google water bottle and I've got to pour somebody's wine on an umbrella won by Matt, a fellow SV.

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