Workshops

Guide to Successful Submission

Introduction

In this page, we offer some informal guidelines for putting together a successful workshop submission. Workshops are complicated events. There is no single "best" way to plan and carry out a workshop, but we can offer recommendations based on lessons learned from earlier CHI conferences.

Doing plenty of work in advance is one key to both a good workshop submission and a good workshop. Valuable resources (including time, space, and materials) are expended on workshops by the CHI conference and by workshop participants. It is everyone's goal to make sure that the use of those resources is justified by offering interesting, productive workshops.

Here is a summary of what workshops are about, offered by a past workshop co-chair:

: Workshops are ideal for having an organized discussion of topics whose dimensions are already somewhat identified but still unorganized. Interaction among participants is important, so the participants must have existing positions, or a fair amount of prior experience, or stories to tell. The workshop's resulting SIGCHI Bulletin article can then be valuable by reporting to the CHI community the new, organized way of thinking about the topic, and by identifying how the CHI community can now best proceed to further research on the topic.

Some of the important issues you must consider are brought up in this brief description. What is a good topic or focus for a workshop? Who should attend? What should a workshop try to accomplish? How can workshop results be disseminated?

In the rest of this document, we will briefly discuss these and other issues you should consider as you prepare your submission.

Choosing a Topic

Be sure that your workshop idea is most appropriate for the workshop format. Workshops are working meetings. A very well-developed or well-understood topic might be a better match for a panel or paper. A very ill-defined topic might be better discussed in a Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting, where ideas can begin to flow but no specific accomplishments are expected. Feel free to discuss workshop ideas with the workshop co-chairs (via email or telephone) if you are not sure whether your idea will work well as a workshop.

Choose a topic that represents an interesting problem for at least some significant segment of the diverse CHI community. The topic should be focused enough to permit a fruitful exchange of ideas during the workshop and to hold out the possibility of new understanding and new directions to emerge by the end of the workshop.

We especially encourage workshop leaders to explore the conference theme of Common Ground within their workshop topics, but this emphasis is not required for acceptance.

Workshop topics can be practice-oriented or research-oriented.

Participants

Determine the number of participants the workshop can best accommodate. Most workshops should have 15 or fewer people.

Think about how you will attract participants with diverse perspectives and the necessary experience to contribute to the workshop, including people you do not already know. All accepted workshops will publish a Call for Participation in the SIGCHI Bulletin. What other publications, mailing lists, bulletin boards, or meetings can you use to reach potential participants?

Also think ahead about your criteria for selecting participants, and be sure that these criteria are clearly stated in the Call for Participation.

Organization and Preparation

Set realistic objectives for the workshop and develop a plan that is suitable for meeting those objectives. Think about how you will actually run the workshop. What will the activities be? How long will they take? Will there be time for all participants to reflect, discuss, contribute? Be sure to state how long your workshop will be (one, one and a half, or two days).

While advance planning is very important, don't forget that a workshop is meant to be highly interactive. A common mistake is for workshop submitters to plan tutorials instead - opportunities for themselves to present ideas and for others to react and learn. That is not what workshops are about.

To make the best use of the time actually spent in the workshop, make advance preparation part of your plan, for participants as well as yourselves. Exactly what the participants do in advance should depend on the workshop topic and goals. For example, you might arrange for an exchange of position papers or design ideas.

Dissemination of Results

It is very important to make a firm commitment to disseminating workshop results after the workshop is over. CHI contributes significant resources to workshops that directly reach only a small number of people, and it is expected that workshop leaders will take their obligation to disseminate results to the larger community seriously.

At a minimum, each workshop organizer must produce a poster for the CHI 96 poster session and a report on the workshop for the SIGCHI Bulletin (deadline July 1, 1996). We are considering the idea of holding formal sessions at CHI 96 in which the results of the preconference events (Workshops, Doctoral Consortium, Research Symposium) are summarized. If this plan is adopted, workshop organizers will be expected to participate in these sessions as well. In addition, individual workshops may decide to publish their results through other means. Some past workshops have also produced books and articles.

Leadership Skills

In your submission, include a discussion of any experiences that show your ability to lead a good workshop. The review panel will consider prior workshop experience at CHI or other conferences; meeting facilitation, planning, and organization skills; and knowledge and experience in the workshop topic.