Local conferencing

Southeast CSCW @ Atlanta, Nov 2024
Upcoming

Organized by Amy Chen, Azra Ismail, Grace Barkhuff, Haiqing Xu, Mohit Chandra, Shravika Mittal

Agenda

Northeast CHI @ Boston, May 2024

Organized by Saiph Savage

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Southeast CHI @ Atlanta, Apr 2024

Organized by Camille Harris, Darley Sackitey, Grace Barkhuff, Raj Sanjay Shah, Shravika Mittal

Agenda

Focuses on deeper engagement through work-in-progress sessions, concise paper presentations by researchers, skill-sharing sessions, and structured paper discussions, alongside the standard welcome, ice breakers, and world café discussions, culminating in a town hall and optional social gathering.

Southeast CSCW @ Atlanta, Nov 2023

Organized by Soya Park, Chinmay Kulkarni and Richmond Wong

Agenda

Offers a more intimate setting with reduced group sizes for discussions, incorporates short paper pitches from the latest conference, and maintains a similar structure of engaging activities including organizer welcomes, ice breakers, world café discussions, followed by a town hall and an optional social gathering.

Northesast CSCW @ NYC, Nov 2022

Organized by Rosanna Bellini, Andrés Monroy-Hernández and Jérémie Lumbroso

Agenda

The event features a series of engaging activities including organizer welcomes, ice breakers, world café discussions, multiple paper-presenters panels on their CSCW '22 papers, and ends with a town hall and an optional social gathering.

Organize in my area

What is local conferencing

There is an opportunity to create a new model that incorporates the best elements of both in-person and virtual conferences. We propose an alternative: locally-grouped "unconferences". Unconferences are gatherings that combat the hierarchical structure of standard conference design, by minimizing formal speeches and emphasizing informal connections through participant-driven content.

Super efficient!

Super efficient!

The local-meet up is saving time of participants and organizers
Interactive!

Interactive!

Keeping the gathering small allows everyone to meet each other
Sustainable!

Sustainable!

Since participants don't have to fly aboard, it reduces carbon footprint


Read more about it from our recent Interactions article: The Future of Conferences Is Unconferences: Exploring a Decentralized Network of Regional Meetups

Quick & easy

You can host your own local event!

Ingredients: 📍 A room that can fit all the participants (the building should be close to restaurants for BYOF) ☕ Catering beverage and snacks for coffee breaks

  1. 1. Gauge people's interest in joining and check their availability by setting up a google form. Refer to this template: Link to the Google Form
  2. 2. Once you get a critical mass, fix the date and let everyone know. And also post your event at this website.
  3. 3. Scout for where to host the event. The event does not have to happen at the home institute of the organizers, but somewhere convinient and accessible. Contact some respondents and ask them if they can get a room and snacks for coffee breaks.
  4. 4. Plan agenda using our recommender tool. Now this is the fun part! You have complete wiggle room to customize the event as you wish. You can tweak previous event. We urge you to include a brief townhall in your event and share very very short summary of it, so the next organizer can improve up on your event.
  5. 5. Have fun at the event :)