The Human-Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC) brings together researchers from leading organizations—primarily academia, industry, and historically, government—to promote the scientific foundation of HCI through intensive, high-level information exchange.

The HCIC Annual Meeting is organized around a theme each year and is held at a “retreat” venue, usually away from large cities or member organization campuses/headquarters, to foster an environment where participants can engage in deep, focused, and authentic conversation.

It is not a typical conference, and was, in a sense, established as an “anti-conference.” While many other events in the HCI field are student-centered, HCIC was specifically designed to fill a critical gap: providing a dedicated, single-track retreat where established scholars from member organizations meet to challenge and critique new ideas, engage in deep collaborative thought, mentor one another, and shape the future of the discipline. To maintain this rare, intimate environment, HCIC remains intentionally small, and attendance is strictly limited. Thus, the HCIC Annual Meeting is more similar to the Dagstuhl Seminars (Germany) and NII Shonan Meetings (Japan) than CHI or other major HCI conferences.

As the field of HCI continues to grow and diversify, it is increasingly important to preserve an intellectual space for sustained, in-depth, and critical discussion. Yet opportunities for these conversations—particularly among established scholars—have become increasingly rare. These discussions play a vital role in the advancement of the field by fostering new ideas, challenging existing assumptions, synthesizing emerging directions, and strengthening the scientific foundations of HCI. HCIC attempts to help address this need by providing a dedicated environment for this kind of intellectual exchange, including:

• Single-track focus: Every participant attends the same sessions, ensuring a shared, high-level context throughout the event.
• Depth over brevity: Sessions typically feature a 30–45 minute presentation followed by an equally long discussion, allowing for the deep intellectual rigor that the discipline deserves.
• Peer mentoring: The retreat environment facilitates dedicated, unstructured time for established scholars to mentor one another and form lasting professional bonds.

Membership in HCIC is by organization, and while attendance at the Annual Meeting is generally restricted to employees of member organizations, a small number of guests are often invited to attend each year. Guests are typically established scholars working closely to the theme. However, to preserve the intimate size of the retreat, prevent overcrowding, and maintain the high-quality peer dialogue that has historically defined HCIC, guest invitations are strictly limited and carefully managed by the board. Learn more about becoming a member organization.

While the primary focus of the annual meeting is to provide a protected space for in-depth presentation, discussion, and critique of ideas—often by established scholars—it also aims to support the next generation. To that end, a small cohort of PhD candidates and postdocs from member organizations are invited to attend.

Because the retreat is structured to prioritize peer-to-peer exchange among established scholars, students and postdocs are welcomed into the event as developing scholars and observers. Their presence provides a valuable educational opportunity to observe high levels of discourse in the discipline, engage with established scholars, and form professional relationships that will impact their careers.

Each academic member organization may send up to two PhD candidates and/or postdocs (e.g., one PhD candidate + one postdoc, for a total of two) to the Annual Meeting to accompany their organization’s faculty attendees. These junior attendees will participate alongside established scholars as observers and developing scholars of the community.

HCIC was founded in 1988 to foster interaction among universities, companies, and government research laboratories interested in promoting academic training, basic and applied research, and technology transfer in HCI.

From 2023-2025, HCIC ran a pilot program to expand access to its annual meeting. Due to strong feedback from the community, that pilot has ended.

To learn more about the history of HCIC, see The Human-Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC): A History by Gary Olson. Gary Olson was the primary author of this history, but many others offered important input, since much of this history had to be reconstructed from memories. Substantial contributions were also made by Martha Polson, Don Norman, Judy Olson, Terry Roberts, Gerhard Fischer, and Clayton Lewis.