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So I've been thinking about this more in the last day or two. Here's the story:
I had 1000 1" circular stickers with the logo of my research group printed up, and those of us associated with my research group attending the conference split the cost between us, each getting ~100 stickers. (Quick plug here for webstickers.com, who gave a very competitive advice, turned the whole thing around faster than they promised, and were very professional and competent throughout the whole thing. $100 including 2-day air shipping for 1000 stickers, fyi.) It looks like this, but without the background gradient:
We went around putting them on people's badges, and all in all it was enjoyed by everyone. There was a cool effect in that by the end you were seeing people with them on that you didn't know, and then you'd go and chat to them and figure out why someone you know gave them a badge. It basically became 'people we like', and, in general, it was pretty cool. Perlick said the other day in response to my first email about it:
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The sticker idea is awesome. I think it'd be interesting in both the viral (where you give stickers away for the recipient to distribute) and non-viral forms - in the non-viral form, you're more likely to keep a higher "quality" of tagged people, because you're only one link away (somebody in your group thinks this person is interesting), but in the viral form, you get better dispersal, with the price of a possibly lower interest overlap. If I ever go to conferences, well okay cool conferences not soul-sucking industry conventions (not that I even get to go to those), I'm definitely going to consider doing this.
---
And in many ways he's right. The downside is that it ended up feeling a bit cliquey, and that wasn't really the plan. I think to some people it ended up feeling like an ingroup/outgroup kind of thing, and that really wasn't the idea.
However, it makes you think about the other things on the conference badge in the first place. Last year, I'd been inspired by the roses that the chairs for this year were sticking on the badges of people who said they'd come to this year's CHI. It was in Portland OR, and apparently the city symbol is the rose -- not that anyone knew that, I think. The Montreal tourist board was handing out little Montreal badges this year, for example. Then there's all the tags that go on the bottom of the badges: fabric strips the width of the badge of varying colours: the blue PRESENTER one was probably the most common, and the brown CONTRIBUTING SPONSOR, with lots of others -- SIGCHI EC for the executive committee of the conference, CHI CHAIR for previous chairs of the conference, CHI 2006 for chairs of next years, etc. Some people have like six or seven of these, cos they're totally importand and all, plus there's other vertical strips with things on them. I don't even know what those are for. Maybe eating all your conference breakfasts, or having an aliterative first and last name or something. But those are all official things, and that makes it different, I guess. Like, you've earned them. Or paid for them. One way or the other. And before our stickers arrived, I had been wearing a Georgia Tech Human-Centered Interaction sticker on my badge, just for random. But somehow when it becomes a big thing and spreads, some people get uncomfortable about it.
So, no real conclusions. I probably wouldn't do it again, but I do think that it was an interesting thing to do. I think one of the problems with CHI is that everybody feels like they're in the minority. The real-world practioners feel like they're in the minority, the hardcore usability people feel like they're in the minority, the designers feel like they're in the minority, the anthropology/ethnography people feel they're in the minority, etc etc. Of course, the point is that they're all right -- they all *are* in the minority. (Assume they're each 20% of the population, right? Therefore they're all in the minority and nobody's in the majority.) And maybe having the stickers felt like an ingroup/outgroup thing because of that. I would assume that the distribution was biased towards people who work on and think about things roughly the same way that I and my colleagues do, so maybe it had that effect.
I do think this is an interesting thing to think about. I like the low-tech-ness of the stickers, which is satisfying, and I think it's important that it's not just a random distribution, but that it marks, in some way, "people like us", which makes the meeting someone you don't know with one actually interesting.
Danah had a paper she co-authored (which I didn't see) on back-channel communication at conferences -- shared chat rooms/IRC channels while speakers were talking, I think -- and this seems related, particular in its grad-student-originated, bottom-up kind of way. I do like the way it queered the standard, official conference badge additions, and it was definitely fun. But if any of you go and try this at your conferences, let me know.
I had 1000 1" circular stickers with the logo of my research group printed up, and those of us associated with my research group attending the conference split the cost between us, each getting ~100 stickers. (Quick plug here for webstickers.com, who gave a very competitive advice, turned the whole thing around faster than they promised, and were very professional and competent throughout the whole thing. $100 including 2-day air shipping for 1000 stickers, fyi.) It looks like this, but without the background gradient:
We went around putting them on people's badges, and all in all it was enjoyed by everyone. There was a cool effect in that by the end you were seeing people with them on that you didn't know, and then you'd go and chat to them and figure out why someone you know gave them a badge. It basically became 'people we like', and, in general, it was pretty cool. Perlick said the other day in response to my first email about it:
---
The sticker idea is awesome. I think it'd be interesting in both the viral (where you give stickers away for the recipient to distribute) and non-viral forms - in the non-viral form, you're more likely to keep a higher "quality" of tagged people, because you're only one link away (somebody in your group thinks this person is interesting), but in the viral form, you get better dispersal, with the price of a possibly lower interest overlap. If I ever go to conferences, well okay cool conferences not soul-sucking industry conventions (not that I even get to go to those), I'm definitely going to consider doing this.
---
And in many ways he's right. The downside is that it ended up feeling a bit cliquey, and that wasn't really the plan. I think to some people it ended up feeling like an ingroup/outgroup kind of thing, and that really wasn't the idea.
However, it makes you think about the other things on the conference badge in the first place. Last year, I'd been inspired by the roses that the chairs for this year were sticking on the badges of people who said they'd come to this year's CHI. It was in Portland OR, and apparently the city symbol is the rose -- not that anyone knew that, I think. The Montreal tourist board was handing out little Montreal badges this year, for example. Then there's all the tags that go on the bottom of the badges: fabric strips the width of the badge of varying colours: the blue PRESENTER one was probably the most common, and the brown CONTRIBUTING SPONSOR, with lots of others -- SIGCHI EC for the executive committee of the conference, CHI CHAIR for previous chairs of the conference, CHI 2006 for chairs of next years, etc. Some people have like six or seven of these, cos they're totally importand and all, plus there's other vertical strips with things on them. I don't even know what those are for. Maybe eating all your conference breakfasts, or having an aliterative first and last name or something. But those are all official things, and that makes it different, I guess. Like, you've earned them. Or paid for them. One way or the other. And before our stickers arrived, I had been wearing a Georgia Tech Human-Centered Interaction sticker on my badge, just for random. But somehow when it becomes a big thing and spreads, some people get uncomfortable about it.
So, no real conclusions. I probably wouldn't do it again, but I do think that it was an interesting thing to do. I think one of the problems with CHI is that everybody feels like they're in the minority. The real-world practioners feel like they're in the minority, the hardcore usability people feel like they're in the minority, the designers feel like they're in the minority, the anthropology/ethnography people feel they're in the minority, etc etc. Of course, the point is that they're all right -- they all *are* in the minority. (Assume they're each 20% of the population, right? Therefore they're all in the minority and nobody's in the majority.) And maybe having the stickers felt like an ingroup/outgroup thing because of that. I would assume that the distribution was biased towards people who work on and think about things roughly the same way that I and my colleagues do, so maybe it had that effect.
I do think this is an interesting thing to think about. I like the low-tech-ness of the stickers, which is satisfying, and I think it's important that it's not just a random distribution, but that it marks, in some way, "people like us", which makes the meeting someone you don't know with one actually interesting.
Danah had a paper she co-authored (which I didn't see) on back-channel communication at conferences -- shared chat rooms/IRC channels while speakers were talking, I think -- and this seems related, particular in its grad-student-originated, bottom-up kind of way. I do like the way it queered the standard, official conference badge additions, and it was definitely fun. But if any of you go and try this at your conferences, let me know.
