Organizing Family Support Services at ACM Conferences
This work addresses the problem of inclusivity and family support for practitioners and academics at ACM conferences, though it is incremental as it builds on existing conference service frameworks.
The authors tackled the challenge of implementing family-support services at ACM conferences by sharing their experiences from CHI2018, including policy decisions and empirical data from surveys and observations, resulting in best practices and recommendations for future conferences.
This article reflects on our experiences providing family-support services to a large, interdisciplinary ACM conference (CHI2018) including, the policy decisions, the challenges, and the successes. The article incorporates empirical data collected from pre- and post-conference surveys, observed use of the services, and aspirational aims for future conferences. We are discussing best practices and recommendations to facilitate the implementation of child support services at other conferences. We believe our article will be of great interest to both practitioners and academics in expanding the inclusivity and family support provided by ACM conferences and beyond.