Selecting a site for CHI conferences requires balancing important, and often competing, concerns. Looking forward to CHI 2028 and 2029, the CHI Steering Committee is seeking input for potential CHI locations, with a specific call to look beyond the obvious large cities where CHI has been held in the past. This consultation will help the CHI Steering Committee to request proposals from a broad and more diverse range of locations for the coming years.

CHI 2028 will be seeking bids from cities in the Global South. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) the Global South broadly comprises Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia (excluding Israel, Japan, and South Korea), and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). We are seeking recommendations for locations to host CHI 2028 in the Global South.

CHI 2029 will be seeking bids from cities in or near the UTC-8 timezone in the Northern Hemisphere. This includes locations in and around the United States and Canada West Coast. We are seeking recommendations for locations to host CHI 2029 in this region.

This survey will be open for responses until the 15th of November 2024.

The site selection process is described in more detail on the CHI Steering Committee Blog. This is the first time the CHI Steering Committee has elicited input from the community on where to hold CHI in the future. The SIGCHI EC also has a working group looking at site selection for SIGCHI Conferences more broadly.
The CHI Steering Committee has a set of core values which determine which locations will be considered, although these concerns are often challenging to balance.

Safety
Safety of attendees is a key concern for site selection, with many potential dimensions. Critical values of the CHI Steering committee focus on safety for the LGBTQ+ community, gender equality and safety for all genders, and violence or crime. Issues of safety are crucial to site selection, and will be considered across a broad range of dimensions and will be used to exclude potential locations.

Access
Access and accessibility of location is a key concern for site selection, taking into account that accessibility regulations and standards are often specific and specialised to each location and region. Broader access, including connections by air or train, international travel restrictions and visas, and any other barriers to access will be considered and will be used to exclude potential locations.

Sustainability
CHI is committed to promoting environmental sustainability wherever it is possible. Given the international scope of CHI attendees, one strategy we have pursued is to move the CHI location to different population centers where CHI attendees live and work, reducing our carbon footprint where we can while recognising that every location choice is going to be distant for some people and geographies. We also look for sites that will be good partners in other types of environmental sustainability including sourcing local foods, reducing supply chains for conference supplies, and reducing needs for air conditioning and other power consuming technologies.
Location Context
There are a range of constraints specific to each location that are critical to site selection, including historical attendees from that location, potential for outreach to or growth of the community in that location, financial constraints and cost of hosting events in that location, and costs to attendees travel to that location. These issues will be considered and will be used to exclude potential locations. CHI is also committed to rotating pattern of locations to cover different geographic locations, as described on the CHI Steering Committee Blog.

Scale and Space Requirements
Running CHI requires a specific set of spaces that constrains the type of venues where CHI can be held. Venues that do not include the right configurations are not possible locations for CHI. From CHI 2026, we are experimenting with changing the shape of CHI allowing us to hold this event in a broader range of locations and venues.

The CHI conference has been a yearly event with a growing attendance of 3500 to 4500 academics, practitioners, and students meeting to confer and share new knowledge There are 4 main types of configurations needed:
  • Plenary Sessions (Capacity of at least 3500)
  • Paper Sessions in the Morning (15 Parallel sessions with capacities from 100 to 500, which must be at least 3500 overall)
  • Conferring Session in the Afternoon (15 Parallel sessions, with the same constraints of the Paper Sessions)
  • Receptions (Including Posters and Demos) Breaks and Evenings, Capacity of at least 3500 in exhibit or ballroom spaces

Question Title

* 1. Please provide some basic contact information so that the CHI Steering Committee can follow up with any questions (optional). If you have multiple recommendations, please fill in this form multiple times.

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