Many people rely on captions every day. Unfortunately, not everything has captions; this often includes simple things, like that webinar you’re attending, or more advanced systems like Mozilla Hubs. Recently, I discovered Otter.ai, which offers AI-based live transcription. It’s not perfect, but it works about as well as most live…

Before there was a global pandemic, we were planning on running a workshop on SocialVR at ACM CHI2020 and were underway to have a half in real life and half virtual meeting. Of course, the pandemic took everything 100% virtual. As organizers, we quickly pivoted to run the whole SocialVR…

In January of 2019, I stepped into the volunteer role of ACM SIGCHI VP of Operations. I must confess, I didn’t know what operations did exactly but I was told it was to run the technologies for the SIG and that my 15+ years of industry research experience would help…

It’s been tough this social distancing and working from home. If you’re like me, it’s also tough not traveling, seeing friends, and attending events. Many of the talks, workshops, and conferences we’ve been planning to attend had cancellations. When HRI 2020 (Human Robot Interaction) was cancelled, we decided to spring…

As remote participation grows at ACM SIGCHI, so does the need for remote presentations. This little guide presents a how to make a presentation video that can be used in case you can’t attend or for a virtual conference. Quick Overview Create an engaging video. For best results, include both the presentation-view…

CSCW 2019 was the last of the annual cycles for submission. The Papers Chairs and the 121 Associate Chairs and the 786 Reviewers all worked hard to take the 658 papers through the process and really discuss contributions, deliver quality reviews, and deliver a program with 205 successful submissions (accepting…

Earlier this year, the SIGCHI Ops team decided to sunset our native apps for conference programs. As an alternative, we put our efforts into making a progressive web application (PWA) which will allow for faster development time, greater accessibility, and easier maintenance. Being Papers Co-chair for CSCW2019, I convinced the…

This is reposted from my report in the ACM SIGMM Records. There is no doubt that research in our field has become more data driven. And while the term data science might suggest there is some science without data, it is data the feeds our systems, trains our networks, and…

2 months, 5 string sets, 1 experiment — I’ve owned a Ukulele for about 4 years. I’ve been playing (mostly) charity or community gigs for the past few months. Summertime means there’s quite a lot of performances at Parks, Fairgrounds, and Delis. Armed with a brand new Kamaka Tenor Deluxe and having several gigs in a row, I…