Columbus ACM SIGCHI Chapter

First Organizational Meeting: Minutes

The first organizational meeting to form a Columbus Local SIGCHI Chapter was held at OSU on Monday, November 27, 1995. Twenty two people attended the meeting after Kevin Mullet's (mullet@macromedia.com) talk. The meeting began with brief introductions, followed by a discussion of the formal requirements for creating a local ACM chapter. These requirements include: The discussion turned to the less straightforward issues of whether a local SIGCHI chapter is a good idea, what the chapter would do, and why should a local activity be associated with ACM.
Good Idea?
About 40 people expressed interest in a local chapter, and 22 people showed up at the first organizational meeting, so it does appear that there is a critical mass for a chapter. One activity that should be a high priority for the viability of a local chapter would be to contact local organizations. The following were suggested (*'d organizations are already represented, to some extent): Additionally, Phil Smith (psmith@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) suggested contacting Columbus Small Business, and Srinivas Raghavan (raghavan@cis.ohio-state.edu) suggested contacting consulting organizations such as: Computer People, Andersen Consulting, and Keane Consulting.
Activities?
A recurring topic was that we should consider a variety of meeting formats, not just one-speaker-on-a-topic, but other formats that support networking and sharing ideas. Some suggested activities included: The following sources should be considered for ideas:
ACM?
ACM affiliation would help legitimize local CHI activities, particularly ones we might use to raise money (e.g., courses) for other purposes (e.g., bring in outside speakers); many companies are more willing to support well-established professional organizations. Additionally, ACM affiliation would allow for coordination with other ACM activities, both locally and with nearby cities such as Dayton, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.

A steering committee to look into all of the above was formed:

Columbus SIGCHI WWW Page: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~perlman/BUCKCHI/index.html


Address
Gary Perlman
Department of Computer & Information Science
395 Dreese Lab, 2015 Neil Avenue
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 USA
perlman@cis.ohio-state.edu
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~perlman
+1-614-292-2566 (voice) +1-614-292-2911 (fax)