The first day of CHI started with a great opening plenary by Lou Yongqi (check keynotes here and yes, check out WHO is the closing plenary!), which came forward and highlighted the importance of Sustainability in research! Followed by an amazing program of novel technology (think Virtual Reality!), human augmentation (check this totally new way of embodying another person by Prof. Rekimoto), user studies (“Understanding and evaluating User Performance”), and understanding of elder users (“Designing for 55+”) and communities (a great session on Activism in Wikipedia, one on Privacy and one on the “Maker Community”)!
Also this was the day of the video-showcase, which is a non-academic venue in which authors can submit their videos for further appreciation. It is an amazing opportunity to great a glimpse of CHI by sitting in the theater and watching great research in motion. This year’s winner was the Transform project by the MIT Media Lab (see it here), from which one of the authors is our dear editor Sean Follmer, so congrats to him and his team!