David Roedl

I recently wrapped up the semester in style by attending my first ACM SIGCHI conference. CHI is considered the premier conference for HCI and this years event in San Jose exceeded all my expectations. With over 2500 attendees from all over the world representing both industry and academy, it was a rather circus-like experience–yet extremely interesting to see just how diverse and multidisciplinary the field is.

In the midst of a plethora of good presentations and networking opportunities, I was mostly preoccupied with participating in the Student Design Competition. Out of the original 58 submissions, twelve teams were invited to present in the poster session in San Jose. Five of these, including my own team were representing IU HCI/d. Having so many friends and classmates together made the presentations a lot more fun and less intimidating than they might have been.

Later that night, the four finalists teams were announced: Michigan’s AltVerto, Mexico’s team EMI, IU’s second year team RiRi, …..and my team Celerometer. Our excitement soon became intensity as we had to put together a presentation to give on Wednesday morning. Our classmates and faculty were a huge support as we took on that task.

Presenting in the finals was a wonderful experience. Having the opportunity to share our hard work in front of friends and colleagues and especially the wider community was fun and gratifying and invaluable. All four teams did a great job and we were gracious to get fourth place. Later that night at the Google party, I had the pleasure to meet our peers from Altverto, and EMI. All were incredibly nice and bright folks. Meeting team EMI, from southern Mexico was particularly heartwarming. Them being undergrads and presenting in their non-native language, they were grateful for the opportunity and I was happy for their success.

Speaking of the Google party, what a perk that was! Free food, open bar, all inside the San Jose Tech Museum. Check out me doing my Gob Bluth impression. Enough said.