Eighteen people in the room. London, Norway, Korea, San Diego, Boston (MIT), Montreal, UC-Irvine and Bloomington are represented as well as some other places that I didn't catch. PhD students, professors and researchers. Kind of intimidating listening to the detail and passion that they have for their area of research interest. The professor from Seoul, Korea flew 14 hours to JFK, spent the night in the airport because of weather delays and came straight to the workshop from the airport this morning. It is so exciting to see people from all over the world coming together for this

Some of the topics of conversation - How to measure and characterize crowds? What are the effects of CCI on crowds, how do we design for crowds of certain types - soccer game, concert, protest, etc. CCI Exemplars - mechanisms, applications, scale. Interleaving events vs. perpetual CCI, track social change - will CCI alter self-consciousness (facebook). I could only stay for about an hour but may try to get back in there and stay for the day.

I love seeing what is going on in this area and I am thinking back to the conversation that Brandon, Chad and I had in the car on the way here from Bloomington. We were talking about knowing whether or not we are a designer or a researcher. As I listen to researchers talk about research, I find myself thinking how interesting it is and I am constantly amazed at the insightfulness and quality of their research. When each person introduced themselves, they not only gave their name and where they are from but they also shared briefly about what their area of research was. I think every single one of them could have given a talk right there. It really made an impact. CHI2009 is only one hour old but I already know that the 18 hours in the car to get here was definitely worth it. Of course, the drive home is another story! Perhaps I can catch a workshop on teleportation while I am here and then I won't have to worry about it.

This is Jay Steele, reporting from Boston at CHI2009.