Who are Student Volunteers (SVs)?
Student volunteers have become an essential part in the organization of CHI. They play a major role in executing structural tasks – especially during the conference. Among other things: we hand out and check badges; monitor online sessions; show you where to find a paper session, restaurant, bathroom, your lost water bottle, etc; help set up nets for drones, build sculptures out of coke bottles and other exciting demos; also help figure out where is that missing paper presenter and why, oh why, isn’t the microphone working anymore? Along with many others, the student volunteers put A LOT of effort into helping CHI run smoothly.
SVs are also HCI researchers. Quite a few SVs already publish their research at CHI and have been attending conferences for a while. For others, CHI is a whole new experience, allowing them to see how research results are distributed and how the community interacts. In both cases, being an SV is an incredible opportunity to network with possible mentors, collaborators, and peers.
And here is the tricky bit: SVs are students! We are not trained event managers or AV technicians. We are volunteers and conference attendees. All SVs agree to an informal contract: in exchange for about 20 hours of their time (many put in much more), the conference waives their registration fees and provides daily lunch and breakfast (a lot of tasks start as early as 6:30am, some go well through lunch, and others end as late as 8pm). SVs still have to pay for their own housing and transportation. Workshops and courses are not covered either.
In the scope of their agreed hours, SVs engage in plenty of tasks, some of which are simple while others require certain expertise or training. For this reason we need some people who have done the job before and can teach the job to the next generation of SVs. This is the basic concept: returning SVs show incoming SVs how tasks work, new students come up with new ideas on how to improve them.
How Do I Become an SV?
You must have had student status for at least one semester during the academic year before CHI to qualify for the program. We are more than happy to accept undergrad, graduate, and PhD students. We need friendly enthusiastic volunteers to help us out.
The SV lottery will open on October 12th, 2022, at new.chisv.org. The SV lottery registration will close on January 16, 2023. While the number of accepted SVs may vary depending on emerging needs of CHI as a hybrid conference, we expect to have about 180 spots in total, including a number of online and in-person SVs. All other students who registered will be assigned a position on the waiting list. To sign up your interest to be an SV, please visit new.chisv.org, select the appropriate conference, and follow the steps to enroll.
There are four different pathways for you to become an SV, including online and in-person, however, no matter what, you must enroll in the general selection process where you may be selected by lottery. You can also be nominated by members of the Program or Organizing Committees, you can be selected as an institutional knowledge SV, or you can win a slot through the T-shirt design competition.
To reiterate: in all cases (including nominated SVs), the student must be enrolled with CHI2023 in new.chisv.org to be considered for a spot.
Important Dates
All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.
- SV lottery registration opens: Wednesday, October 12, 2022
- Close lottery: Monday, January 16, 2023
- Announce results: Monday, January 23, 2023
Nominated SVs
Each Associate Chair and Program or Organizing Committee member gets to nominate one student. This pool of SVs accounts for approximately 20% of the total slots for SVs. Nominations are collected after the 2nd round of paper notification, when a form will be sent to all ACs/OCs to place their recommendation.
From this selection pool we pick about 30 to 40% based on the information provided by nominators. We look for strong recommendations on the person’s ability to perform SV-related tasks, we look for opportunities to increase the diversity of the SV group, and we look for people who would benefit the most from being an SV for the current year. The rest of the slots are assigned through a random lottery within the nominated pool. Students not selected at this stage will be added into the general lottery pool later.
Institutional Knowledge SVs
Institutional knowledge SVs are students that have been SVs at CHI before, are experienced with a variety of tasks, and can help train the incoming class of SVs. These SVs account for approximately 20% of the total SV slots. All of these students were exceptional SVs in previous years (e.g., always on time AND very proactive AND helpful to others on/off duty AND went above the requirements for their current task). Many of them are trained in specialized tasks. Unfortunately due to the high competition for an SV slot, we can’t always accept all students that fit this description. We prioritize selecting a few exceptional SVs in specialized roles, the other slots are selected through a random lottery.
General SVs
The remaining 60% (105) of the slots go through the current lottery system built into new.chisv.org. The system uses a random lottery to generate a waitlist. We reserve a few spots (up to 15%, about 16) for individuals on top of the waitlist that fulfill strategic criteria. Factors we considered in the past include whether individuals are local to the conference location, whether they have specialized knowledge (e.g., accessibility, photography, video editing), and whether they fulfill specific diversity criteria. These criteria are largely dependent on conference needs and are not limited to these examples. SVs are therefore encouraged to detail in their application how they may uniquely contribute to the conference to their best capacity. The remainder of the spots are fulfilled by waitlist order.
T-shirt Design Competition SV
The last way you could get an SV slot is by winning the t-shirt design competition.
This competition happens in January where we accept t-shirt designs for the SV t-shirt. After an initial selection made by the SV chairs, a subset of the Organizing Committee and previous SV Chairs vote on which design is their favorite. That person gets an SV slot. If they are already an SV, they can pass that slot to a friend.
And Who are the SV Chairs?
SV chairs are two-three senior SVs (in-person SV chairs, online SV chair, and local SV chair) who have seen the process through multiple years of serving as SVs. The SV chair position is a two-year commitment (one junior chair and one senior chair). This is because the CHI SV program is a beast. With 180 SVs each year, coordination with many conference chairs, multiple stakeholders with different needs, serving as SV chair for CHI requires SV experience and training in the role. The first year the junior SV chair observes, learns, and helps with organizational tasks. They learn how to operate new.chisv.org, how to address different types of requests, and how to manage an operation the size of a small startup.
Future SV chairs are selected based on their experience as SVs, their graduation timeline, and the specific needs of the conference that year. The current SV chairs consider several candidates and make a recommendation to the General Chairs of someone they are confident will do a good job in organizing the SV program for the coming years. Sometimes, when there are special needs the General Chairs of future CHIs are brought in earlier in this decision process, to ensure that the “rollover” SV Chair will be able to attend to those needs (e.g. locations where English is not as widely spoken or where cultural norms are significantly different).
As SV chairs, we invest more than 100 pre-conference hours planning SV tasks and ensuring the conference is adequately supported by the SV program. During the conference we spend the majority of our time at the conference managing and addressing incoming requests. If you would like to be a future SV chair, make sure you are an SV at CHI (and other conferences as well), have higher responsibilities and tasks (volunteer for them!), and that you let us know that you are interested. Every year we go through the process of picking a new junior chair and that person can be you!
If you need to communicate with us, please always use the [email protected] address so that all of us receive it. Reply-to-all on our correspondence so we both stay in the loop and can better help you.
We are looking forward to meeting all of you!
Ciabhan Connelly, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, U.S.
Julia Dunbar, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Maximiliane Windl, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany
Email: [email protected]