Everyone says that meeting people is the main purpose of a conference, but this is the first CHI that this has actually worked for me. This could have had something to do with being, for the first time, with close colleagues on the trip, or because for the first time I actually participated in a few sessions, or because I was sniffing around for job opportunities. The downside of this, though, is that I was somewhat preoccupied, and so will make a poor tour guide of the sessions. To make matters worse, the few notes I did take are hopelessly lost in the confusion that is my imminent move from Pittsburgh to Chicago. A more difficult problem is knowing what to report.
People have different strategies at conferences, too.
With this difficulty in mind, I will make brief mention of a few general sessions, and finish up with some thoughts about the place of VID in future CHI conferences. The conference began rather engagingly with the opening plenary by Rick Prelinger, who was also at the Doors of Perception conference last year. The Future as it Was , looked at how corporations presented their visions of a utopian future filled with useful technology. Rick told his story mainly through the use of industrial and advertising film clips created between 1936 and 1965 by corporations such as GM, Chevrolet, and Whirlpool. It was more remarkable, however, for putting into historical perspective our long-running idea that technology and product design are a means to improving life, still very much with us today, and because it allows us to step back from our current work and try to imagine what we will sound like to conference goers in the year 2040 looking back on today.