ACM GROUP History and Evolution

The first conference in the GROUP conference series was held in Philadelphia, PA, USA, June 21-23, 1982. At the time, the conference series was sponsored by ACM SIGOA (Special Interest Group on Office Automation) and the conference name was Conference on Office Information Systems (OIS).

The Proceedings of the first conference can be found in this June 21-23 1982 SIGOA Newsletter. The Front matter in this ACM SIGOA Summer 1983 Newsletter describes SIGOA's purpose, performance, and plans, and officially states that the first major conference on OIS was held at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in 1982.

The next four OIS conferences were held in Toronto, Canada (1984), Providence, Rhode Island, USA (1986), Palo Alto, California, USA (1988), and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (1990).

In 1991, the conference name changed to COCS - Conference on Organizational Computing Systems. The 1991 conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 5-8, and was sponsored by ACM SIGGROUP (Special Interest Group on Supporting Group Work). The next two conferences (in 1993 and 1995) were also sponsored by SIGGROUP and both were held in Milpitas, California, USA.

In 1997, the conference moved to Phoenix, Arizona, USA, and again changed its name, finally becoming GROUP - International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work. It stayed in Phoenix, Arizona in 1999 as well. The 1997 Technical Program included 48 paper presentations in parallel paper sessions and two panels. As the systems for supporting group work had expanded, leading to their growing application to organizational information, communication, and cooperation processes, the 1999 conference integrated two research themes: (1) the organizational and behavioral issues and (2) the implementation issues associated with group work. The Technical Program included 39 paper presentations in parallel sessions, a panel, three workshop presentations and two demonstrations.

A fun fact from the 1999 conference: On the Aim and Scope for Group '99 webpage, the following announcement was made:

“This conference will be a little different than the last conferences. We intend to have a high-speed connection to the Internet and try to network the conference rooms with connections for almost every attendee. If you bring your ethernet connectable laptop (10/100Mb), we will provide a connection. We anticipate having some local servers available so that presenters can demonstrate any systems they might have and allow attendees to use those systems both during and after presentations.”

In 2001, GROUP moved to Boulder, Colorado, USA, and then finally in 2003, it settled in Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, in Sundial Resort, where it remained until 2023. The 2001 conference program included 32 paper presentations and two workshops. In addition to addressing the integration of technology with social practice, the papers reflected on the growing influence of the Internet, mobile and ubiquitous computing, agent systems, and virtual reality that started to influence group and organizational structures and processes. In its first year on Sanibel Island, FL, the 2003 conference program committee accepted 42 papers for presentation in parallel sessions, out of 120 submissions.

ACM SIGGROUP, the special interest group that successfully sponsored the conference between 1991 and 2003, was disbanded at the end of January 2005. The 2005 GROUP was sponsored by ACM's Executive Committee. As an innovation, GROUP 2005 expanded its submission categories to include Posters and Short Papers. The purpose of this change was to “bring research into the GROUP community that is relevant and original, but might not fit well within the traditional long papers program.” The 2005 conference program included 40 paper presentations in parallel sessions, one panel, and 15 posters.

In 2007, the conference was held under the auspices of ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) for the first time. ACM SIGCHI remains the main conference host and sponsor until today. The Short Papers category was renamed into Notes, and the conference hosted its first-ever Doctoral Consortium sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and Microsoft Research. The conference program included 38 papers and 9 notes selected from a record number of submissions - 132 papers and 25 notes.

The 2009 GROUP conference was moved to May (instead of being held in November, as was tradition since 1991), and the next conference edition was then planned for November 2010 (only 18 months after the 2009 edition). This change in dates and a move from odd to even years was done to accommodate changes in the timing of the CSCW conference, which became an annual conference in 2008. The 2009 call for papers attracted 110 submissions and the program committee accepted 35 papers and 5 notes.

In 2010, GROUP attracted 101 submissions and the program committee accepted 27 full papers and 9 notes. Among the innovations, the conference transitioned from two parallel sessions per time slot to a single track program. It also included a dedicated reviewing track for technical systems development papers, in an effort to sustain this critical component of the GROUP's larger research community. In addition to four pre-conference workshops, the conference also hosted its third Doctoral Colloquium. The poster program was expanded to two days of integrated sessions, highlighting 26 research projects, including those from Doctoral Colloquium participants.

The 2012 conference attracted 94 submissions (64 papers and 30 notes) and accepted 24 papers and 11 notes. The conference introduced the Best Poster Award. The aim was to give motivating feedback to PhD students and other researchers presenting their posters to further develop their ideas.

In 2014, the conference received 90 submissions and accepted 27 papers for presentation. For the first time, reviewing of the papers was conducted in two rounds. The goal of the first round was to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each paper and provide a structured review to help authors improve their papers. In the second round, one reviewer on each paper was assigned the Primary AC role and asked to lead an online discussion of the paper and write a Meta-Review. The program co-chairs then considered all review scores and comments when making their final decisions. The conference also introduced a new paper category - Working Papers - as a discourse format. The aim of this new format was to help researchers develop journal papers through short presentations and active engagement with the conference attendees.

The 2016 conference edition introduced several more innovations, including a new track called Design Fictions: Exploring Future Research Agendas to explore possible futures for research on the relationships between computers and people, and a JCSCW Papers session, featuring authors of recently published papers from CSCW, the Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices (Springer). The conference program committee accepted 36 papers (out 111 submissions), four design fictions (out of nine submissions), and four working papers (out of six submissions).

A fun fact about the 2016 conference: A hurricane was headed for Sanibel in 2016, and Stephen Hayne and Sean Goggins (Treasurer and Local Arrangements Co-Chairs at the time) were actively making alternative site plans. Fortunately, that hurricane missed the island. As told by Sean, Andrea Forte, one of the General Co-Chairs for 2016 correctly thought they were being ridiculous 🤣 … (Thanks Sean for adding this fun detail).

In 2018, the conference dates were moved again, this time to January. This move to a Winter date was forced to avoid overlapping with CSCW, which again moved its dates (back to Fall), after CSCW 2017 was held in February. [More on CSCW reasons for moving the conference back to a Fall date can be found here]. Twenty-two out of 94 submissions were accepted to the papers track, four to the design fiction track, and four to the working papers track. In addition, three JCSCW papers had been selected this year for conference presentation, continuing with the initiative of providing authors of recent publications in “The Journal of CSCW” (JCSCW) the opportunity to present their paper to the community.

In 2020, the conference joined a growing number of ACM SIGCHI-sponsored conferences that publish their papers in the newly created ACM journal PACM HCI. For the first time, the conference featured two research waves (i.e., two submission cycles), each with an R&R (Revise and Resubmit) process. The first Group issue of PACM HCI was published in December 2019, followed by the January 2020 Group issue, just before the conference was held in January 2020. Thirty-four out of 108 submissions across both waves were accepted for publication. Group 2020 program also included seven design fictions, 14 posters, two workshops, 12 works by doctoral colloquium participants, and two JCSCW presentations.

The GROUP conference series was again disrupted in 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in March 2020, shortly after the 2020 conference edition. Despite being planned for January 2022, the GROUP SC postponed the conference to January 2023 due to the Delta surge in late 2021 and early 2022. As the plans for the January 2023 conference were ramping up, hurricane Ian hit Florida’s west coast on September 28, 2022, rendering most of the area, including Sanibel Island, uninhabitable. The GROUP SC and the 2022/23 General Chairs quickly secured a venue for the January 2023 conference, and the conference again changed its location after being held nine times on Sanibel Island, Florida. The 2022/23 conference edition took place in Sonesta Resort, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, USA, January 8-11. Because of the postponement to January 2023, the conference introduced the third wave of research papers. In total, 69 out of the 193 submissions across all three waves were accepted and published in PACM HCI - a record number of paper presentations for GROUP! In addition, the 2022/23 conference also included 12 posters, a demo, and 16 doctoral consortium contributions.

The 2025 conference will be again held on Hilton Head Island, SC, at Omni Hilton Head Oceanfront Resort, on January 12-15, 2025. The first call for research papers attracted 31 submissions from all over the world, of which 8 papers (25.8%) were accepted for presentation and published in the January 2024 issue of the PACMHCI V8, GROUP. The second call attracted 109 submissions, of which 37 were accepted for publication in the January 2025 issue of the PACMHCHI (currently in press).

Despite sporadic changes in the conference name (from Office Information Systems to Organizational Computing Systems to Group), locations, and sponsors, the conference series has consistently focused on the challenges of developing computer systems to support collaborative work in organizational settings. In the early 2000s, the conference also started paying attention to social computing and lower-cost, versatile networked systems to understand how groups work in a variety of contexts and conditions. Over the years, the conference has worked hard to maintain rigorous, high-quality publishing standards (as exemplified by joining the PACM HCI and R&R processes), while still being flexible and adaptable to emerging topics in the field.