As we have been discussing with conference leaders, the ACM Council voted back in March on a transition plan for ACM Open (which kicks off on January 1, 2026) towards ensuring that our conferences and SIG do not lose people as we make the shift to open access.

On Monday (June 2, 7pm UTC), we will be joined by Scott Delman, ACM Director of Publications, who will talk to us about the transition and answer any questions we might have. Any members who would like to learn more about our upcoming conference transition to ACM Open is welcome.

See the event page for the Zoom link.

You may also wish to read our blog post published last month on the transition, which outlines details of the plan and answers some frequently asked questions.

SIGCHI is co-sponsoring the (re)presented Initiative, coordinated by community members Rua Williams and Jennifer Mankoff. Please see their message:

Over recent months, we have held a series of listening sessions with the larger community of folks affected by travel restrictions for a wide variety of reasons (e.g., disability, parenting, visas). Over and over we have heard that the most challenging impacts travel restrictions have on careers relates to networking and visibility. In that vein, we have proposed a new initiative, to be jointly sponsored by AccessSIGCHI, SIGACCESS, and SIGCHI, focused on creating presentation opportunities for individuals affected by these restrictions. Each of our university and industry partners will be asked to reserve at least one slot per year in their existing seminar series to build a distributed seminar series for the “unrepresented presentations” of our various conferences. We are hoping to launch this fall; in the meantime we need to form an organizing committee and are seeking volunteers.

If you are interested in helping, please reach out to us through this form: https://tinyurl.com/unheard-initiative. You are also invited to join our mailing list, ACCESS-COMMUNITY@listserv.acm.org, to hear more about this and related initiatives.

On Thursday, April 3, we will be holding two open sessions on conferences and contingency planning, at 1pm UTC (in your timezone) and 9pm UTC (in your timezone). Each of them will be ~45 minutes long.

We have heard concerns from members of our community regarding ongoing events that are likely to impact conference participation with downstream effects on member and conference wellbeing. In response, we are organizing this forum to make space for concerns, brainstorm contingency plans, and find ways to keep the conversation going.

Session 1

When: Thursday, April 3, 1pm UTC

Zoom: https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/92832082471?pwd=YS579Yf0c8N8keEHzVzMhWLzuCfMbH.1

Session 2

When: Thursday, April 3, 9pm UTC

Zoom: https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/94343319281?pwd=yk9irEY55CzzSLTtys6IfHRPucHxlc.1