SCHints

Hi all SCs (This note was sent immediately after the submission process closed).

Here are some hints to help your process over the next few days go better. Remember that we want the AC assignments sorted out by next week Monday (~8 days), so stay on top of this. This is perhaps the most critical time in the review process.

How many papers per AC?

We now recommend that each AC should be responsible for 12 – 13 papers, perhaps up to 14. While this may seem like quite a bit, recall that this is a mix of notes and papers. If you distribute notes and papers more or less evenly to ACs, they should not find this too much of a burden. This also reduces the number of people at the meeting by a bit (minimizing coordination), saves dollars for CHI, and alleviates boredom for ACs who don’t have that many discuss papers to manage.

Call up more ACs if you have to

While we were fairly close in our anticipation of the number of submissions per group, some groups did receive more papers than anticipated. This means that some groups will need more ACs, even after all the reserves are called up. Here are some suggestions.

• If you have reserve ACs that you are NOT calling up who may be suitable to other groups, let the other SCs know. (Send email to the folks in this message; it includes all SCs.)
• Check the authors who have submitted to your group; this is a good pool of potential ACs, and its often easier to get someone who has submitted. That is, in your note to them you can start it with “We are pleased that you have submitted a paper to the Sub-committee on… . However, we have a favour to ask of you, where we would like you to consider a more active role on this sub-committee”. … etc
• If you need some arm-twisting (e.g., for potential ACs you don’t know), ask Scott or I to send the initial invitation (although its likely better coming from you). Alternately, feel free to add our names to the bottom of your invite.

Should you have a co-chair?

Some of you now have quite large groups compared to others. If you believe it will help, you may consider a co-chair to help. Typically, this will be one of your ACs who you could ask and elevate into this position. Advantages are that they could help assigning papers. Disadvantages are more coordination, more potential for conflicts on papers (which you are going through), etc. The choice is up to you. If you do get someone to do this, you will have to tell us as we will need to give them SC access to the system.

As you go through each paper

You will be examining each paper to see what AC would be most suitable. While doing this, we suggest you do the following.

• Examine the submission details. Look at each submission in turn (you can do this by going into your subcommittee view and clicking on the title of a paper). Then click the ‘show more information ‘ link under the authors. You will also see the PDF. Open it.
• Check for conflicts. Look at each submission details in turn – this gives a full list of authors and affiliations.
• Check if the PDF is ok. Simply scroll through the end. If you can see everything, it should be fine.
• Indicate if the submission a note or a full paper. We should have had this on the submitter’s form, but we didn’t. So it would be helpful if you could do this after the fact. If the paper length is four or less, it is considered a note. On the submission page, at the bottom it says ‘administration’. Click the ‘Modify the submission.’ Link. Scroll to the very end, and you will see a section titled “Papers vs. Notes”. Click paper or notes as best match. Then click the Submit button directly above that. Note that Scott and I may do this for the odd paper as we go through it.
• Consider who the best AC would be for this paper. This is a good time to mark this down somewhere. You may want to initially jot down two possible ACs, because you will want to load-balance later. Later, you can do the actual assignments. Note that you can download a spreadsheet view of all this, which could be a good place to do your initial playing around.

We have likely left a few things out, but I am sure we will find out in due course what is missing. Good luck to you all!

Saul Greenberg and Scott Hudson