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Request a Mentor

Co-Chairs:

Michael Muller, IBM Research
Kumiyo Nakakoji, University of Tokyo/SRA-KTL Inc., Japan

Message from Michael and Kumiyo

Kumiyo Nakakoji Michael Muller

Prospective authors who have not previously published at CHI may ask for a mentor. A mentor is a person who will help you with your submission to the CHI audience through one-on-one advising, usually via e-mail. A mentor will also familiarize you with the standards and deadlines of CHI submissions. Mentors are volunteers familiar with successful submissions in the various participation categories. While we will try our utmost to find an appropriate mentor we cannot guarantee this will be possible in all cases.

Requesting a Mentor

Mentors may be available for:

  • CHI Papers
  • CHI Notes
  • Experience Reports
  • Interactivity

If you wish to ask for a mentor, you must contact us by the due dates (June 29, 2006 for Papers and CHI Notes; July 14, 2006 for the other categories) by sending e-mail to chi2007-mentoring@acm.org. The subject line of your e-mail must be in the format:
CHI2007mentoringrequest-{your last name}-{Title of your submission}.

Please also include a description of your work (an abstract is a minimum requirement), an indication of which specific participation category you are interested in and any specific questions or areas in which you would like help. Also include your full name, affiliation, and contact information as well as some indication of your level of experience with the field and the conference. Please see individual submission category pages on this web site for further help on ways to describe your work and specific deadlines for requesting a mentor.

Please include the following information in the beginning of your message, checking all that are appropriate:

  1. I need help in deciding whether CHI is an appropriate place to present my work.
  2. I need help in deciding which CHI submission category is most appropriate for my work.
  3. I need help in finding where to look for pointers to relevant previous literature, and/or formulating keywords for search for finding pointers to relevant previous literature.
  4. I need help in finding which aspects of my work to emphasize in organizing my contribution.
  5. I need another kind of help (please specify).

Reasonable expectations for a mentor might include giving advice to the specified questions, such as suggesting improvements to your submission, or referring you to relevant research of which you might not have been aware. Please be aware that it might take us 2-3 weeks to find a mentor. If you do not hear from us after three weeks of your posting a request, you may resend a request again to check.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a student, mentors are not meant to replace your own academic faculty, particularly if you are in an institution with people working in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. If you are a student, we strongly recommend you to first discuss requesting a mentor with your faculty advisor.

Typically, a mentor might spend 3-7 hours on a submission. We carefully match mentors to mentees, and wish to support you in getting your work focused into a high quality submission with a good chance of being accepted and published.

Although we will strive to find mentors for everyone who asks, mentors are volunteers and in some cases, it may not be possible to find a mentor.

Critical Dates

Please request a mentor as soon as possible, but no later than the following dates:

Contact us: chi2007-mentoring@acm.org.