Annotations in the Margin: What HCI 2009’s Amended Programme Says About an Event in Motion

The Programme as a Draft

A conference programme is usually read as a settled document: a neat grid of papers, panels and plenaries, typeset in advance and handed to delegates as though it were the event itself. The surviving copies of the HCI 2009 programme held in the archive complicate that assumption. They are marked by errata slips, last-minute insertions, struck-through titles and handwritten amendments. These are not decorative blemishes. They are evidence of an event in motion, and of the gap between the polished record and the lived conference.

For historians of human-computer interaction, such ephemera are often more revealing than the final proceedings. Proceedings tell us what was accepted. The amended programme tells us what was displaced, substituted, relocated or abandoned. It records the contingency that official documentation tends to smooth away.

The Slip as Primary Source

The most obvious amendments take the form of separate slips pasted or tucked into the printed programme. A session may be moved from one room to another; a speaker may be replaced; a workshop may be shortened or merged. Individually, these changes appear administrative. Collectively, they sketch a different picture of the conference: one in which rooms, chairs and speakers were reassigned at short notice, and in which delegates had to negotiate a programme that was still being written as it was enacted.

Such slips also preserve hidden labour. Someone had to notice the problem, decide on a remedy, produce the correction and ensure that copies reached the right people. That work is rarely acknowledged in retrospectives, yet it is exactly the kind of maintenance labour that keeps academic events functioning. The errata slip is a small monument to it.

Cancellations and the Ethics of the Record

Cancellations are especially telling. A cancelled session leaves a gap in the timetable, but it also leaves a question: why? The archive cannot always answer. Illness, travel disruption, institutional pressures and changes in funding are among the plausible causes, but the printed slip rarely says. What remains is the absence itself, and the quiet rearrangement of the programme around it.

For UK UX researchers, this matters because conference attendance has always been shaped by institutional and geographical constraints. A last-minute cancellation may reflect a speaker’s teaching obligations, a departmental crisis or the cost of travel from a regional institution. The amended programme does not explain these pressures, but it registers their effects. It reminds us that the conference was not an abstract exchange of ideas but a gathering of people with competing demands on their time.

Room Changes and the Geography of Status

Room changes are another category of evidence. A move from a large hall to a smaller seminar room, or from a central venue to an annexe, can alter the perceived importance of a session. The printed programme may present all parallel sessions as equal, but the amended slip can betray a hierarchy. A paper shifted to an awkward slot or a distant room may have been disadvantaged by circumstances rather than by the quality of its content.

In this respect, the errata slip complements the venue map. It shows how the conference’s physical geography was adjusted in real time, and how those adjustments may have shaped attendance, discussion and recollection. The archive cannot recover the conversations that did or did not happen as a result, but it can document the conditions under which they took place.

Substitutions and the Visibility of Expertise

Last-minute substitutions also reveal the depth and flexibility of the UK HCI community. When a speaker withdrew, a chair or colleague might step in; when a panel lost a member, another researcher might be drafted. These substitutions were often informal, and they rarely appear in the formal record. Yet they show that the conference depended on a network of people willing to improvise.

Such improvisation is not merely anecdotal. It indicates which topics could be covered at short notice, which individuals were recognised as authorities, and which institutions were able to supply replacements. The amended programme therefore offers a partial map of disciplinary capacity. It shows where expertise was concentrated and how quickly it could be mobilised.

What the Errata Cannot Tell Us

The limits of this evidence should be acknowledged. A pasted slip does not explain the negotiation behind it. A struck-through title does not record the disappointment of the speaker or the relief of the organiser. The amended programme is a trace, not a transcript. It must be read alongside other materials: delegate notes, correspondence, photographs, volunteer rotas and the proceedings themselves.

Even so, the errata slip has a distinct value. It resists the temptation to treat the conference as a coherent, fully planned event. It insists on contingency, improvisation and maintenance. For an archive devoted to preserving the conversations that shaped UX, that insistence is important. The field was not built only in the formal sessions. It was also built in the margins, in the corrections, and in the quiet work of keeping a programme usable.

A Record of the Event as It Was

In 2026, the HCI 2009 programme is no longer a practical guide. It is a historical document. Its amendments should not be cleaned up or treated as noise. They are part of the record, and they deserve to be catalogued with the same care as the papers and keynote abstracts.

To read the errata slip is to read the conference against the grain. It shows an event that was provisional, negotiated and dependent on people whose names rarely appear in the final programme. That is not a diminished version of HCI 2009. It is a more honest one.