Panels

Quick Facts

  • Important Dates:
    • Submission deadline: 13 January 2016 (12:00pm noon PST).
    • Notification deadline: 26 January 2016.
    • Publication-ready deadline: 2 February 2016.
  • Submission Details:
  • Selection process: Curated.
  • Chairs: Moira Burke, Franca Garzotto, Jaime Teevan (panels@chi2016.acm.org).
  • At the conference: Accepted panels will be presented in a 80-minute session at the conference.
  • Archives: Extended abstracts; ACM Digital Library.

 

Message from the Panels Chairs

We look forward to seeing a strong and engaging panels program at CHI 2016. The format of each panel session is intentionally left open to encourage creative and unexpected submissions. Panel organizers are encouraged to think of ways to promote lively dialogue between the set of experts on the panel and the audience. Panel sessions should not be treated as paper sessions consisting of a set of talks with limited interaction among panelists, but rather should spark debate and careful thought.

Moira Burke, Facebook
Franca Garzotto, Politecnico di Milaon
Jaime Teevan, Microsoft Research
CHI 2016 Panels Co-chairs
panels@chi2016.acm.org

 

What is a Panel?

Panels are 80-minute sessions that involve significant interaction with audience members. Effective panels have been designed in many forms and formats. For example, a panels session may include a group of experts invited to debate a topic or theme, enact some aspect of their expertise, or reflect on and compare their diverse experiences. ACs may suggest panels to surround accepted or rejected full papers if the topic seems particularly interesting to the community and appropriate for panel discussion. They may do so in collaboration with the paper authors or simply suggest to the paper authors that they should submit a panel. Either way, these panels would go through the standard panel review process.

Panels must include involvement from the audience, through questions and answers, voting or critique of the experts’ presentations, extensive discussion, or other mechanisms, and your proposal should explain how you would involve the audience were your panel selected. While we encourage panels that provide multiple perspectives and controversy, rancor or ad hominem attacks are not professional and should be avoided.

We highly encourage panel organizers to minimize the number of panelists to provide for fruitful and satisfying discussion; we will not allow more than five panelists and note that the best panels tend to have fewer speakers (four or fewer) and more interaction with the audience. We also encourage debate and discussion.

It is important to us that panels represent the diversity of CHI’s community, including diversity of gender, experience, national origin, native language, race, ethnicity, and sexual identity. Panels that have all representatives from one part of the globe or one gender may be less favorably considered. Additionally, a diversity of ideas is strongly encouraged. Panels can cover issues of pragmatic or applied importance in addition to research issues. Panels are a great place to sound some of the major debates of the field, whether about how we develop scholarly knowledge or teach and apply that knowledge.

 

Preparing and Submitting your Panel

Panels proposals must be submitted via the PCS Submission System by January 13, 2016 (12:00PM noon PST). The Panel proposal must submit an extended abstract submitted as a single PDF file.

  1. Extended Abstract. A maximum 6 page proposal, in the Extended Abstracts Format: The extended abstract should include the title of the panel; the names and affiliations of the organizer(s), confirmed invited participants, and participants who have been invited but not confirmed. Although they can be invited only at the time of the submission, we encourage organizers to get confirmation from as many participants as possible prior to submission. All participants must be confirmed at the time of camera ready, no exceptions. Within the 6-page constraint you should summarize the main topic(s) to be presented, debated, discussed, enacted, and any lessons or experiences you hope to convey in the session, as well as contrasting or controversial perspectives on the topic(s). You need to persuade the chairs that your panel will be exciting, enjoyable, well-attended, and relevant to the CHI community. You must list who will participate, how they have been recruited, why these people were selected, what qualifications they bring, and so on.All panelists must be listed as Authors in the proposal and in the PSC Submission System for scheduling reasons, and all authors must be panelists or the panel moderator, no exceptions. You must include the session format: how you will run it, the invited participants’ role, your role, the audience role, and any special logistical needs (e.g., special seating or A/V, audience size limitations, use of student volunteers, expectations about attendee background or interests, etc.).Your proposal must stand alone; readers must be able to get something out of the abstract even if they do not attend the panel session. Regardless of the topic, all session proposals should include a plan for engaging audience members in the interaction.Experience suggests that it is better to have fewer panelists. Again, we will not allow more than five panelists except in extreme circumstances

Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions should NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference, with the exception of title and author information which will be published on the website prior to the conference.

 

Panel Selection Process

Panels will have a mix of invited and curated content. All proposals submitted through this open call will be Curated. We will determine which panels are accepted on the basis of the review criteria below, and may decide to bring in outside experts for further review. Organizers will be provided with the reviews of their submission after the decision is announced. There is no mechanism for author response in the review of panels, and decisions are final. In some special cases, the Panels Chairs may request changes to the panel proposal as a condition of its acceptance: a “conditional accept.” We encourage panel organizers to respond to suggestions from the Panel Chairs as part of the conditional accept rapidly and to engage in constructive dialog to produce the best overall panel experience for the conference.

Authors will be notified of acceptance, conditional acceptance or rejection on 26 January 2016. The organizer (i.e., the “contact author”) of accepted panels will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit the camera-ready version of their panel. These will be due on 2 February 2016.

Review Criteria
Panels present ideas that are novel, controversial, or engaging, inspiring the audience to respond and further elaborate the ideas. We aim to select a balance of panels to appeal to the wide variety of CHI attendees. The review criteria will consider the extent to which the session includes:

  • One or more topics likely to evoke a lively response from the CHI attendees,
  • Invited participants who will contribute unique perspectives, content, or other interactive content to the session,
  • A well-organized and feasible session plan,
  • Useful and interesting contributions to HCI,
  • Appropriate levels of diversity in panelist selection,
  • Likely to draw large attendance, and
  • Content that is unlikely to be seen by CHI audiences elsewhere in the conference.

 

At the Conference

Your panel will be included in the conference program, and will have an 80-minute slot in its own room (subject to other requirements). Panels will take place during the main conference in parallel with other sessions. Session organizers are strongly advised to meet with their invited participants prior to their session to ensure a coordinated effort. If any special logistics are involved (e.g., seating, student volunteers, special A/V) organizers should also check in with Scooter Morris, Technology Liaison techliaison@chi2016.acm.org

 

After the Conference

Panels can often be a jumping-off point for future work. Previous panels have become the starting point for special issues of journals or books, or follow-up panels, papers, workshops, SIG meetings or Communities. We encourage panel organizers to think about the potential of their panels to inform future work. Accepted Panel abstracts will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts, available at the conference on DVD and in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide. Some of these Panels may also be recorded at the conference and distributed by the ACM.



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