I am at CHI this week, and last night I found myself in a conversation about the differences between CHI and e-tech (O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology). These two events have very different crowds, but they tend to focus on the same topics – innovative “human-computer-interaction” technologies. The comparison between CHI and E-tech has been very much on my mind, because I “grew up” so to speak in the research community represented by CHI, but have spent the last couple of years more immersed in the startup community represented by E-tech.

My first exposure to differences in attitudes was someone in the hallway saying to me “well, we’re not trying to make money”. Soon thereafter I accidentally stumbled into a rant against the term “Web 2.0”, rendered meaningless, it was being argued, as the new buzz word in the popular media. When I tried to defend the term, clearly defined I thought by Tim O’Reilly and readily available in his blog, my assailant said to me “yes but no one *knows* what it means”. My weak attempt to say “well, I do” were soundly overspoken.

It is true that the majority of the crew at E-tech is comprised of practitioners who work in the context of companies trying to make money. Yet, they have a strong open-source aesthetic, an undertone of the moral imperative that the world is a better, more innovative place when you make knowledge and code freely available. My picture of that crowd is of a bunch of well-meaning technology creatives stumbling over themselves hurtling collectively towards The Next Big Thing.

At CHI, the pace of innovation is more deliberate. They are a solid year behind in awareness of what’s “cool and new”. For example only the younger graduate students are trying to nudge Twitter into the consciousness of their advisors. (Although I am happy to report the emphasis has clearly leapt off the desktop and into more mobile and embedded devices.) Yet, they are making forays in directions not seen at e-tech, because academic research *is* less constrained by the need to make money.

In addition, I have to say I am appreciating the greater intellectual rigor that is here, and this is what I think it comes down to: the main difference is in the measure of quality. At an event like e-tech, presenters are selected based on who’s a prominent blogger, who’s making the most money, who’s likely according to some big picture thinkers to have big picture impact. This makes for flashier presentations that are more entertaining to listen to. At CHI, for the most part presentations are selected by peer review of papers submitted for publication in the conference proceedings. This makes for extremely well thought out work that builds on the twenty years of history in the field, documented across these years through research publications. Everyone here is an originator of new knowledge and/or new technology, no one is rewarded for an ability to synthesize other people’s work. I love E-tech, and I don’t think the academics should dismiss the important role the O’Reilly crew has played in accelerating innovation in their own field. However it’s nice, to be surrounded by people who think more like me, people who are a little suspicious of technology fad-ism, who want to see design grounded in theory, and who want to see the data.

Mostly, though, I’m just amazed there isn’t more cross over…