Reflections on Planning and Running a Virtual Doctoral Consortium at CHI 2020

ABSTRACT

Brumby et al describe what was done to run a virtual Doctoral Consortium at Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2020. The event was originally planned as an in-person, two-day event to take place in Honolulu, Hawaii, on April 25, 2020. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the decision was taken in March 3 that the CHI conference would not go ahead as a physical event. Most events were canceled;however, the Doctoral Consortium continued as a self-contained track and was swiftly reorganized to successfully run as a virtual event on April 28. Here, they describe the key steps involved in organizing the Doctoral Consortium as a virtual event, from the technology involved to how to schedule activities. Given the expected long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on conferences for the coming year, they hope to provide useful information for the organizers of similar events.