Dear CHI Community,

Thank you all for your amazing submissions and incredible efforts in helping us prepare together for CHI 2021. This is our first fully virtual CHI conference so we ask for your support, understanding and patience as we are all learning together.

We received many complaints and requests with regard to uploading video presentations for CHI 2021. We sincerely apologize for the confusion and frustration caused by our request. We have now moved the deadline for video upload to April 7 (Thursday). 

Let us explain more about why we need pre-recorded talks, and why the deadline is so early:

Why pre-recorded talks? We understand people enjoy seeing live talks, but the virtual conference will go far more smoothly using pre-recorded talks, with live Q and A. It’s very hard to swap between presenters even in live venues, and harder still with shorter talks in a virtual platform. In addition, the pre-recorded talks will be uploaded so they can be viewed by people who cannot attend the session. This format has been used at multiple virtual conferences and worked well. A side benefit--you will be able to enjoy the conference without worrying about preparing your presentation that week!

Why the early deadline? This is CHI’s first all virtual meeting, and we are working with a virtual platform that has its own workflow. They need time to prepare all the sessions, and to upload all videos so they are ready for attendees to see from the beginning of the conference. 

Please upload your video as soon as you can to PCS--the deadline is now April 7, but the system can be slow because of massive traffic around deadlines, so take care of this as soon as you are able. 

A final note: it may be necessary for you to also upload the video elsewhere later, to support the conference workflow process. (We are trying to automate moving videos from PCS to the conference platform, but are not completely sure this will work. The videos you upload in PCS will be used for the DL and SIGCHI Youtube channel, in any case). We will follow up with instructions if necessary. We apologize for the uncertainty here, we are still refining the process with the conference platform. We’ll communicate once we know more. 

Putting together a fully virtual CHI is a first experience for us all, and has involved making many decisions without sufficient information at hand.  We appreciate your patience with all this, and we look forward to a great event!

Sincerely,

Your CHI 2021 Technical Program Chairs and Assistants