@inproceedings{f8b0b82b82a449dd91c6c74569fb8b79,
title = "Cobi: A community-informed conference scheduling tool",
abstract = "Effectively planning a large multi-track conference requires an understanding of the preferences and constraints of organizers, authors, and attendees. Traditionally, the onus of scheduling the program falls on a few dedicated organizers. Resolving conflicts becomes difficult due to the size and complexity of the schedule and the lack of insight into community members' needs and desires. Cobi presents an alternative approach to conference scheduling that engages the entire community in the planning process. Cobi comprises (a) communitysourcing applications that collect preferences, constraints, and affinity data from community members, and (b) a visual scheduling interface that combines community-sourced data and constraint-solving to enable organizers to make informed improvements to the schedule. This paper describes Cobi's scheduling tool and reports on a live deployment for planning CHI 2013, where organizers considered input from 645 authors and resolved 168 scheduling conflicts. Results show the value of integrating community input with an intelligent user interface to solve complex planning tasks.",
keywords = "Cobi, Community, Communitysourcing, Conference scheduling, Constraint solving, Crowdsourcing, Mixed-initiative",
author = "Juho Kim and Haoqi Zhang and Paul Andr{\'e} and Chilton, {Lydia B.} and Wendy Mackay and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon and Miller, {Robert C.} and Dow, {Steven P.}",
year = "2013",
doi = "10.1145/2501988.2502034",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "9781450322683",
series = "UIST 2013 - Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology",
pages = "173--182",
booktitle = "UIST 2013 - Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology",
note = "26th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2013 ; Conference date: 08-10-2013 Through 11-10-2013",
}