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Madness

What are the hot topics at CHI 2009? Which sessions should you attend?

Come to CHI Madness to find out!

CHI Madness is a fast-paced experience offering a preview of many of the upcoming sessions, condensed into a single block. Each CHI Madness session is a vibrant, fast-paced concatenation of in-person 25-second talk previews. Still not convinced? Check out some examples of previous presentations.

If you have questions or need more information on CHI madness, feel free to contact the madness chairs at madness@chi2009.org.

Participating in CHI Madness

If you are presenting one of the following publications at CHI 2009, you have an opportunity to present during madness:

  • Paper
  • Note
  • Case Study
  • TOCHI Paper

The instructions below are intended for presenters from these venues.

Finalists in the student design and research competitions, alt.chi presentations, and Interactivity demonstrations are also invited to participate. Presenters in these venues will be submitting their presentations through a different process than the one described here, however and should expect to receive additional information about CHI Madness from their venue chairs.

Coordinating more than 300 authors is not easy and we need your help. Here are your action items:

1. By March 6th, 5pm PST, prepare and submit your 25-second CHI Madness presentation

Getting your idea across is easy with the right visual material! Many presenters choose a single slide, while others use multiple auto-advancing slides or a video (CHI Madness Example Gallery). Due to the logistics of Madness you will not have control over the timing of the slides. If you use multiple slides, you need to pre-program them to advance automatically and to finish within 25 seconds. To minimize time loss between presentations, we will compile all slides into four master slide decks - one for each day.

This year, we plan to use a new submission process for CHI Madness. To submit your presentations, please go to http://www.chimadness.com. The first time you visit the site, please register with the same email you use for PCS. We already have all session information in our database, and it is linked to the email addresses you use in PCS. If you do not see you presentation when you log in or you encounter any problems along the way, please contact us at madness@chi2009.org.

To simplify the process of assembling slide decks and ensuring successful playback at CHI, we are placing some restrictions on the material that may be submitted.

Requirements for CHI Madness Presentations:

  • Ensure that your presentation takes 25 seconds or less. Presentations taking longer will be automatically truncated. This includes videos, powerpoint slides, etc.
  • You may submit either:
    • a PowerPoint slide deck in either ppt or pptx format (embedded videos are allowed)
    • a video (see video format restrictions below)
    • one or more images
  • If you submit a PowerPoint slide deck:
    • If there are multiple slides, ensure that the slides automatically advance on a timer
    • If you embed movies, ensure that the movies are embedded from the same directory as the powerpoint file. This will help avoid linking problems when we import your slides into our master deck.
    • You must submit any embedded videos (see video format restrictions below).
    • Be wary of your font choices. We will be showing your slides during Madness on a stock Windows machine, with the default selection of fonts. When in doubt, use images instead.
    • If you construct your slides on a Mac, you should test playback on a Windows machine. We will be assembling and showing slides from a Windows machine using the latest version of PowerPoint.
    • Also be wary of including content in the slide master. When we import your slides into our deck, content from the slide master may be lost.
  • If you submit a set of images:
    • Make sure to specify timing information for the duration of each image.
  • All submitted videos, including those embedded in PowerPoint, must meet the following requirements:
    • Allowed formats: AVI or QuickTime (MOV), using either the DivX or H.264 compressors.
    • <100MB in total size for all submitted videos
    • NOTE: We we will be transcoding videos in QuickTime format into DivX format for playback in PowerPoint on a Windows machine.
    • NOTE: We will contact you if we have problems with your video.

2. Double-check your Madness presentation at CHI

We will offer CHI Madness "office hours" during the afternoon break on each day of CHI and for part of the day on the Sunday before the first Madness session. This is your one and only opportunity to check and/or modify your madness slides, so please take advantage of it.

We will not modify or test presentations in the morning before the Madness session.

3. Give your 25 second presentation

CHI Madness is supposed to be fast paced, but we will make sure it won't get hectic. Student volunteers will tell you when it is time to leave your seat and get in line at the stage. Locations will be marked for the speaker and the next two people who will be speaking, and you should move from the line to the appropriate marked location as the speakers ahead of you finish. Be ready to speak the moment that the speaker in front of you finishes. Your slides will be visible for exactly 25 seconds; this is the time you have to get to the microphone and to present.

There are many ways to give a great CHI Madness presentation. Please watch the CHI Madness Example Gallery. The slide deck will be set to auto advance, and you will not have an opportunity to run longer. You can finish early though, in which case we will advance the deck for you.

Thank you for working on this with us. If you have questions, please free to email us at the address linked below.

We are looking forward to your presentation!

Co-Chairs

Jeffrey Nichols, IBM
Mira Dontcheva, Adobe
Contact us: madness@chi2009.org