Back to the SIOP You Love: Message From the 2022 Program Chair

Richard Landers, Chair, SIOP 2022 Program Committee

We’re only a few short weeks from the 2022 SIOP Annual Conference, and all signs point to this being a conference to remember. Not only will we return to the in-person SIOP experience (April 27–30 in Seattle) you know and love, but we’ve also added a sizable virtual program, available to both in-person and virtual registrants, to increase the accessibility of I-O psychology’s “main event” to everyone who wants to be a part of our community.

Things have been so strange for so long! It all started in 2020, with “the conference that never was.” It’s hard to impress upon you just how strange things were when I stepped into the Program Trio role—or perhaps I should say, “witnessed the aftermath.”  So much planning, so many resources allocated, all pulled out from under everyone, followed by a last-minute and absolutely incredible-to-behold pivot to hold a virtual event. Let me impress upon you the fact that SIOP annual conference planning for a given conference year begins in earnest a couple of months before the previous year’s conference is held. Under the leadership of Program Chair Elizabeth McCune and Conference Chair Scott Tonidandel, the success of the brave souls in the SIOP Administrative Office pivoting with basically a month to plan and execute was nothing short of astonishing.

It was also a bit intimidating, as the incoming Program Chair-in-Training, if I’m being honest.

In contrast, the 2021 SIOP Annual Conference was optimistically planned by Program Chair Emily Solberg and team as a hybrid event, but we learned much earlier—at least relative to SIOP 2020! —that things were not going to work out quite as we’d hoped. The pandemic was raging stronger than expected as late-stage planning was underway in early spring 2021, and our in-person experience was once again taken away. Fortunately, Emily alongside Conference Chair Whitney Botsford Morgan built in enough flexibility that the pivot was much more straightforward the second time around.

SIOP 2021 taught us a lot of lessons about how the SIOP community would engage with and react to a well-planned “virtual” experience, and these lessons built the foundation for what will this year become the 2022 SIOP Annual Conference.

Let me be clear here—barring some highly unexpected catastrophic change in the pandemic (knock on wood), we will have an in-person SIOP this year, for the first time since 2019. We will also be offering, for the first time, a truly cross-modal experience, with roughly 25% of all non-poster sessions being presented primarily online, available to both in-person and virtual registrants, across both the peer-reviewed and SIOP-curated invited program.  We’ve also made a particular effort to make some in-person content available to virtual registrants in the form of two in-person rooms of the Washington State Convention Center being simulcast live online! All of this means that, regardless of the modality of your registration, there will be plenty of SIOP content to experience.

It has been evident to the conference leadership for months that there is a great hunger for an in-person SIOP experience, to connect with friends and colleagues in the familiar halls of a SIOP annual conference. To that end, and under the leadership of SIOP President Steven Rogelberg, our hope is to hit you right in the old SIOP feels. Symposia, master tutorials, panels, debates, the Exhibit Hall filled with posters and random vendor swag! Alumni get-togethers, SIOP special events, THE FUN RUN! They’re all back, much like you remember.

This is largely possible because of your enthusiasm in submitting to the SIOP annual conference and your registration to attend. THANK YOU. As you can see in the table below, we have a full program planned that will be split across roughly a dozen in-person tracks and half a dozen virtual tracks, as much content overall as we typically had prepandemic.

Uniquely this year, all poster presenters will have the opportunity to be presented in both virtual live and in-person live formats! Using the same virtual format supported by Virtual Chair that we used in 2021, virtual presentations will occur on April 20, the week before the in-person conference. Not only does this allow our vast number of student poster presenters an extra opportunity to practice their poster’s elevator pitch, but it also increases the accessibility of posters to all audiences.

Finally, our SIOP-curated content will be as engaging as ever. This year, it includes

• Five Thursday Theme Track sessions celebrating Steven Rogelberg’s presidential theme: “BETTER TOGETHER.”
  • Being Better Together: Celebrating Mind, Body, and Community
  • Globally Together: Learning from and Partnering With I-Os Abroad
  • Better Together: Bringing the Joy Through Interactive Adventures
  • Building Together: Addressing & Dismantling SIOP Inclusivity Barriers
  • Intellectually Together: Hacking to Help Others—An I-O Psychology Hackathon
     
• Five Friday Seminars with cutting-edge training!
  • Practical Applications of Machine Learning in I-O
  • Designing an Optimal Remote Work Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities
  • Inclusive Leadership Training: Uber’s Approach to Balancing Science and Practice
  • #TheGreatReckoning: Remote Working Experiences of Minoritized Employees
  • Building & Managing a Machine Learning Practice in Your Organization
     
• Three sessions from the Alliance.
  • Giving Away I-O Psychology: How & Why to Volunteer Your Time and Talent
  • #TimesUp: How Real I-Os Step Up at Work
  • Global Talent Management Post-Pandemic: Remote, Hybrid, and In-Person Work
     
• Four sessions curated by a special team dedicated to creating high-engagement Special Sessions.
  • Facilitated Discussion of the Challenges Facing the Field of I-O
  • Humanism in AI
  • Religion in the Life and Career of I-Os
  • Post-COVID New Norm: Hybrid Work Model From the Perspective of Industry HR
• Over a dozen communities of interest on topics from employee health and well-being to the role of I-O psychology in fighting disinformation.
• Four sessions hand picked by the Executive Board to keep you informed about SIOP!
• Almost a dozen themed virtual networking sessions tied to poster sessions!
• Award addresses from our Dunnette and Distinguished Contributions Award Winners!

SO MUCH CONTENT. I hope to see you in the hallways of the Washington State/Seattle Convention Center in Seattle, and if not there, then virtually!