SIOP 2018 Chicago 33rd Annual Conference: April 19-21, 2018 Preconference Workshops April 18, 2018

Tracy Kantrowitz, Program Chair, SIOP 2018, CEB Gartner; and Chu-Hsiang (Daisy) Chang, Conference Chair, SIOP 2018, Michigan State University

SIOP 2018 will feature the “Team SIOP” theme by highlighting collaborations, demonstrating impact through partnerships, and featuring multidisciplinary approaches to advance our science and practice, with several new features and an outstanding lineup of team-focused sessions! Planning for this 33^rd Annual Conference in Chicago is well underway, so mark your calendars now. Don’t miss this chance to join the “team”!

Submissions

A sincere thank you to everyone who submitted proposals in response to the Call for Proposals drafted by Rob Stilson and his CFP commit­tee! The results of the peer re­views will be e-mailed to submitters in early December.

Concurrent Sessions: New Concepts, More Alternative Sessions

As always, the member-submitted, peer-reviewed sessions will be at the heart of our conference. Over the course of 3 days, the program will feature hundreds of highly rated sessions featuring I-O psychol­ogy research, practice, theory, and teach­ing-oriented content. Presentations will use a variety of engaging formats including symposia, roundtables, panel discussions, posters, debates, master tutorials, and this year more alternative session type format for hands-on learning sessions, research incubators, open space, mashups, fish bowl, and other nontraditional presentation styles. Introduced in 2017, sessions presenting reproducible research will be aimed at accelerating our science and practice by educating our members about new research and analysis techniques through the sharing of data, code, and syntax. New for 2018, sessions that feature multidisciplinary work will highlight science and practice for a smarter workforce through collaborations with other disciplines. In addition, we will have insightful presentations from SIOP award winners, several Executive Board-sponsored sessions that highlight the “business of SIOP,” a team-focused Thursday Theme Track, Friday Seminars that will educate attendees on an array of timely topics, Communities for Interest for connecting like-minded researchers and practitioners, and a special event track that you won’t want to miss!

Thursday Theme Track

The Program Committee is pleased to offer, “Putting the ‘I’ (and ‘O’) in Teams,” an interactive theme track that highlights boundary-breaking examples of I-O impact within and across multifaceted teams. For those unfamiliar, the Theme Track is effectively a conference within the broader conference—a full day of programming designed to bring President Fred Oswald’s vision of Team SIOP to life. The Theme Track will feature extraordinary and unconventional ways I-O research and practice fuels inter-disciplinary science, innovation, and social change. Chair Tracey Rizzuto and her committee are assembling an exceptional lineup of presenters, and call for an engaged SIOP audience to debate, create, learn from, and playfully “compete” in our dynamic interactive sessions. The sessions focus on:

• Lost & Found in Translation: Translating “I-O-Speak” to Non-I-Os in Multidisciplinary Research and Practice Teams: This session will highlight effective models of I-Os who work in multidisciplinary settings and offer tips and skills training on how to communicate our professional strengths and lend I-O science and practice contributions to endeavors outside of the field.
• I³ – I-O Igniting Innovation: This session is focused on ground-breaking innovations and patents that were catalyzed by I-O scientists, practitioners and consultant. It will feature one of Chicago’s recently recognized “most innovative” organizations and illustrate how success is amplified when I-O is part of the team.
• How-To Guide to Make Public-Private Partnerships Work (Hands-on/Action Workshop): This session will offer examples, legal guidance, templates, and models for navigating sticky public–private issues that emerge when engaging I-O science and practice with project teams that span multiple sectors. The goal is to enhance the capacity of I-O to serve as effective team players.
• TEAM SIOP Gameshow: Attention all board game and game show fans! This playful, interactive session will feature I-O “celebrities” and enthusiastic audience members as contestants in a fun-filled battle of wills and IO prowess. The winner will be named Team SIOP Theme Track Champ!

The Theme Track promises to provide a day of engaging, provocative, and inspiring sessions that are interactive—bring your laptops, cell phone and brilliant minds! The sessions are designed to provoke discussion, the exchange of ideas, and playful debate. These sessions will be scheduled back-to-back in the same room. We invite you to stay all day or attend only the sessions of most interest to you.

Special Events

This year we are excited to feature several special events throughout the confer­ence, architected by Special Sessions chair Levi Nieminen and his committee.

First, we are very excited to host a second iteration of Shaken & Stirred, inspired by the wildly popular 20x2 format at Austin’s SXSW Interactive Festival. This event was piloted at SIOP 2017 to strong attendance and even stronger enthusiasm, featuring 15 dynamic speakers who left attendees inspired and provoked in response to the big question, “What if...” At SIOP 2018, we will seek to build on the momentum from the first installation and attract dynamic and boundary-spanning thought leaders to offer us their forward-looking insights in response to a new question that will leave plenty of room for ideas to take flight.

Second, we feel it important to continue the recent dialogue and debate that was sparked by the 2017 TIP article, “Has Industrial-Organizational Psychology Lost its Way?” by Deniz Ones and colleagues. To offer an innovative spin on the traditional debate format, we plan to host a Tweetstorm Virtual Debate with two teams of scientists and practitioners who will debate the topic of I-O identity with live input from the audience via Twitter streams that will be displayed in real-time via large projection screens. Pro and con #hashtags will help bring order as we consider our way as a field. We hope this format will open up the debate to everyone, encouraging attendees’ participation and creating the opportunity for truth and advancement.

As I-O psychology increasingly integrates apps, machine learning, virtual reality, and every other technology you can imagine into its product offerings, it’s clear that driving innovation through the use of technology is an increasingly important areas I-Os can contribute. With this in mind, our third session focuses on Driving Innovation in I-O Tools. It will feature I-Os working at the cutting edge of innovation who will discuss their journey toward innovation and will share examples of innovative tools that are changing the user experience.

The rise of big data has spurred some I-Os to gain new analysis skills and explore alternative methods of maximizing prediction in the types of data sets we work with. A new special event will feature education on big data approaches and will pit “teams” of analysts in a Kaggle style competition who will use a variety of methods to see which team “wins” on prediction. Learn some new techniques and find out who wins!

Friday Seminars

Friday Seminars offer a unique educational opportunity within the main part of the confer­ence. These 3-hour sessions are the only extended-length sessions on the schedule and take place on Friday. The sessions are intended to provide a rich immersion ex­perience for attendees on timely, cutting-edge content areas presented by true content experts. Each session is shaped around learning objectives in order to ensure that professional developmental goals are met. Please note that Fri­day Seminars require advance registration and an additional fee. This year’s Friday Seminars committee, led by Richard Chambers, will offer the following six sessions:

• A Crash-Course on R!
• Fostering Effective Change: Not All Who Wander Are Innovative 
• High Tech Assessments
• Wearable Technology 
• Communicating Insights and Visualizing Data 
• Social Networking Analysis 

Featured Posters

We will once again showcase the top 20 rated posters at an evening all-conference reception. Come view some of the best sub­missions to the conference while enjoying drinks in a relaxed atmosphere with the presenters. If you’ve never been to this event, make 2018 the year you check it out!

Communities of Interest

Interested in an “open space” SIOP format that is attendee driven, informal, and focused on a topic of particular interest to you?  The Communities of Interest allow you to meet new people, catch up with colleagues, learn about new advances, discuss ideas, have a provocative discussion, and play a part in driving breakthrough research and practice ideas on a hot topic at the forefront of I-O psychology. These sessions are designed to enhance existing communities and create new ones around common themes or interests. They have no chair, presenters, discussant, or even slides. Instead, they are discussions shaped on the basis of the audience and informally moderated by one or two facilitators with insights on a topic of interest. These are great sessions to attend if you would like to meet potential collaborators, generate ideas, have stimulating conversations, meet some new friends with common interests, or expand your network to include other like-minded SIOP members. Chair Dev Dalal and the rest of the COI Commit­tee are lining up some great sessions and facilitators for this year’s conference, cover­ing a wide range of topic areas:

• Fostering Science–Practice Collaboration: Employee Well-Being
• Communicating I-O Psychology to Society: Taking a Seat at the Decision Making Table
• Technology in Assessment: Moving From Reactive to Proactive
• Communicating with Organizational Leaders: Selling Our Intervention
• Recruitment in Today's Workplace: Current Practices and Research Needs
• Fostering Science–Practice Collaboration: Recruitment and Candidate Experience
• Taking Advantage of Breaks at Work: Easier Said Than Done?
• Collaborating Across Scientific Disciplines: Making I-O More Cross-Disciplinary
• Let's Talk About Dirty Data! Grappling With Issues of Real-World Data
• Alternative Work Arrangements:  Agile Project Management Methods Are Here!
• Mindfulness at Work: Opportunities and Challenges for Research and Practice
• Affect and Emotions in the Workplace: Current Findings and Practical Implications
• I-O and Job Automation: Implications for the Future of Work

Continuing Education Credits

The annual conference offers many oppor­tunities for attendees to earn continuing education credits, whether for psychology licensure, HR certifications, or other pur­poses. Information about the many ways to earn CE credit at the SIOP annual con­ference can be found at http:/www.siop.org/ce and will be continually updated as more information becomes available.

Closing Plenary and Reception

Your Conference Committee is in the process of finalizing our closing plenary speaker. We will follow the closing plenary with our closing reception. The conference committee invites you to join us on Saturday evening at a themed closing reception in one of the largest hotel ballrooms in the midwest that will be filled with music, dance, and delicious food.

The Conference Hotel  

The Sheraton Grand Chicago will provide the perfect setting for our conference. Overlooking the Chicago River, the hotel is in the heart of the Windy City. Sheraton is within walking distance from Chicago landmarks such as Millennium Park and Navy Pier, and endless dining options along the Magnificent Mile. Please see the SIOP Web page for details on booking your room and taking full advantage of all the SIOP conference has to offer.

There is much anticipation for SIOP 2018. We hope we’ve sparked your excitement the conference. We can’t wait to see you there!