Branding 101

In 2001, CHI featured an unusual panel session: Marketing people were actually invited to come to CHI to explain what they did and why it was important to the objectives of SIGCHI. Boyd de Groot, Peter Eikelboom, and Florian Egger organized the session in which I was privileged to participate. As they remarked about how extraordinary it was to have dedicated marketing professionals at CHI, especially in presenter roles, the comments being exchanged among CHI professionals gave me the feeling that I was in a "Dilbert" comic strip, listening to the amusing, outrageous jibes of those characters.