At the very end of Etmaal 2025, after all the other participants had already started to head home, there was a General Assembly. This GA is skipped by most, also by me, but this time, there was something relevant being discussed: If the working group Human-Machine Communication would be promoted to an official division within the Netherlands and Flanders Communication Association. There was a vote, and we got it – unanimously!
In 2022, members of the sHAI group formed a steering committee and petitioned to start a themed group within NeFCA. In past Etmaals we would be randomly allocated in sessions like Media Psychology and sometimes even Journalism. This meant that most of the public had no idea about human-computer interaction and our key theories. It meant that we could put Etmaal on our CV as having presented there, but couldn’t really expect any critical feedback. By having a theme, all of our presentations would be slotted together, meaning that we would present for each other and get feedback from experts in our field. And, of course, being a NeFCA division meant that we had a small budget to host events.
All the events we organized (and posted about on this website, e.g., the workshop on emotions in HMC) since 2022 have been mostly made possible by this NeFCA budget. The Etmaals became more relevant for us, with themed sessions relevant to our work, but we also organized 2 events outside of Etmaal each year to focus on bigger picture issues like ethical issues when doing sHAI research, or the role of emotions in social human-agent interactions. sHAI was really able to find its foundations and I think we grew a lot as a group in the last 3 years. And NeFCA recognized this and has turned us from a temporary working group, to a full-fledged Division. Congratulations everyone! This was a team effort – at Etmaal this year we had 5 Human Machine Communication sessions! It was clear to everyone that we are not a small specialist group anymore.
So congratulations, but also thank you! <3
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