[Air-l] June 2001 report

[Steve Jones]

June 15, 2001
Report of the a(o).i.r. executive committee
Prepared by Steve Jones



AoIR Executive Committee
President: Steve Jones
Vice-President: Nancy Baym
Secretary: Matt Stoner
Treasurer (on leave): Benjamin Bates
Interim Treasurer: Wes Shrum
Open Seats: Beth Kolko and Sean Cubitt
Appointed Seats: Diane Witmer and Fay Sudweeks
Student Seat: Matt Williams
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
2001 Conference Coordinator: John Logie
2001 Conference Program Chair: Leslie Shade
Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess


1.  Introduction & General (Jones)

Below is the monthly report from AoIR executive committee members.

2.  Executive Officers' Reports

2.1 President (Jones)

2.1.1. The executive committee is working on a revision to the AoIR 
bylaws to make them better reflect the shape the organization has 
taken. We will, of course, share the proposed revisions with the 
membership, ask for comment, etc. This is an important matter. We 
have been operating under essentially "draft" bylaws. I encourage 
your participation and discussion of the revisions when they are 
posted.

2. Along with that revision I have asked the executive committee to 
draft new descriptions of their roles, now that they've had some time 
to work in them, in advance of upcoming AoIR elections.

3. An important point follows, which is that since we are now a paid 
membership organization, and according to the bylaws, only members 
who have their dues paid up at the time of a vote are in fact 
eligible to vote.

4. There is planning afoot for the 2002 and 2003 conferences, and I 
hope to have an announcement soon about those.

5. For those of you keeping score... :-)

As of a couple of weeks ago on air-l there are 773 people. There are 
358 paid members including people from AoIR 1.0 whose membership was 
included in the registration for the conference. 279 of those expire 
on October 1. We have 79 members who paid apart from AoIR 1.0.


2.2 Vice President (Baym)

2.2.1 We (Ben Bates, Steve Jones, and I) met in DC [SJ note - at the 
International Communication Association meeting] where we discussed 
the upcoming elections, bylaws revisions, and a few other lesser 
topics. No decisions were made. The two are somewhat interdependent, 
since election procedures and elected positions are set forth in the 
bylaws. I have been trying to get and keep some of this discussion 
going.


2.3 Secretary (Stoner)

2.3.1 Nothing to report.


2.4 Treasurer (Shrum - interim, Bates)

2.4.1 Shrum: No report.

2.4.2 Bates: Will get back to work after research trip to NZ for the 
next month or so.

2.4.3 S. Jones addendum: As you may recall Ben was on a Fulbright to 
Finland the past year. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Wes 
Shrum for standing in, particularly during the conference in Kansas, 
and helping us out.


2.5 Open Seats (Kolko, Cubitt)

2.5.1 Kolko: No report.

2.5.2 Cubitt: Nothing to report.


2.6 Appointed Seats (Witmer, Sudweeks)

2.6.1 Witmer: Nothing to report.

2.6.2 Sudweeks: Nothing to report.


2.7 Student Seat (Williams)

2.7.1 No report.


2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: Everything seems to be going smoothly on the server. 
I'm in preparation to upgrade several things in the members only 
section.  I just received Manuel Castells' keynote back on two 
cdroms.  I should be making that stream soon, but it is currently not 
compressed as much as it could be, so I have to do that also.   I 
think other than that we're good.  John is generating some bios for 
this year's keynotes, once we have those we'll put those up.  I may 
be migrating the conference material and picture archives over to the 
aoir server sometime soon also.

2.8.2 Breindahl: No report.


2.9 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator and Leslie Shade, Program Chair)

2.9.1 Logie: As of today, June 15th, there are 29 registrants for the 
conference. We expect a significant spike in registrations in the 
coming weeks, as scheduling within the conference is finalized. 
Roughly half of the registrants have "opted in" for the Friday night 
dinner. We will continue to monitor registrations and evaluate 
whether the dinner is beyond the means of a significant number of 
registrants.

U of MN's Professional Education and Conference Planning department 
has produced a detailed timeline for their share of the conference 
responsibilities. Meanwhile, I have been working on five core issues:

1) Formalizing arrangements with D'Amico, caterer for the Thursday 
night reception;

2) Establishing a working relationship with local bookseller 
Ruminator Books to handle the book exhibit room.

3) Working with the local Apple representative to maintain the high 
standard of technical support found at IR 1.0

4) Revising the Conference webpages to answer still more frequently 
asked questions and to provide more information about our keynoters.

5) Locating additional space for the conference should the number of 
confirmed continue to outpace the totals for IR 1.0.

I had hoped for #4 (the revised site) to be up and running by today, 
but it now seems clear the task will extend into the weekend. Look 
for the revised site Monday.


2.9.2 Shade: Paper and panel acceptances have been sent out in May 
and I am doing an e-mail follow-up, this next week, for those folks 
that haven't responded as to whether or not they're coming. Then the 
jig-saw of putting together the panels starts. Meanwhile, summer's 
here and I'm taking advantage of that.


2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)

2.10.1 No report.