[Air-l] November 2001 report

[Steve Jones]

November 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: Ulla Bunz
Treasurer: Benjamin Bates
Open Seats: David Silver and Barry Wellman
Appointed Seats: Matthew Allen and Leslie Shade
Student Seat: Lisbeth Klastrup
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
2002 Conference Coordinator: Monica Murero
2002 Conference Program Chair: Klaus Bruhn Jensen
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 transition to a newly elected executive committee has been 
proceeding smoothly, and the new team's ideas and energy are already 
helping us make progress on a number of administrative fronts. The 
timing seemed appropriate, so I have been preparing documentation of 
policies and procedures (at first primarily related to AoIR 
conferences) to ensure the organization's continuity and its 
efficiency.


2.2 Vice President (Baym)

2.2.1 I have been working on conference planning and planning on 
building an aoir research data database, which I will bring to air-l 
for input shortly.


2.3 Secretary (Bunz)

2.3.1 According to bylaws, I've created a folder that contains printouts
of the bylaws, previous calls for paper, membership list, Aoir 
history, executive
information, minutes (would love to obtain a copy of previous years'
minutes; Matt?), and conference planning guidelines. A membership list will
be added in the next few days when I receive the appropriate file. I'm
planning to save IR 1 and 2 programs off the web for a continuous record.

2.3.2 Helped David and Matt to brainstorm our "plan of action" regarding
the list of listserves.

2.3.3 Started assessment of the Aoir website with the ultimate goal of
improving its usability. There are a couple of volunteers to help me, but
I've been slowed down by heavy workload and NCA.

2.3.4 Went to the "Human Communication and Technology" division business
meeting at the National Communication Association Convention in Atlanta last
week and promoted Aoir. They requested a copy of the next call for papers.
Other than that, I'm still breathing.


2.4 Treasurer (Bates)

2.4.1 Jeremy, and I have been working at getting the treasurer's job
transferred.  Since the convention, we've processed about a dozen
new memberships and about a half dozen renewals.

I've just sent out renewal reminders to slightly over 200 expiring members.
All but a few "joined" at the first conference, and that includes a large
percentage of UKansas people who may not be that interested in
staying with AIR.  I'm starting to be deluged with address error
messages, but we'll see how effective this effort was over the next few
weeks.

I did include on the reminders sent to European members a mention
about the next conference being in Maastricht.


2.5 Open Seats (Silver, Wellman)

2.5.1 Silver: I have been working with the AIR 3.0 conference 
committee, brainstorming
the CFP and banging out a number of conference themes and subtopics.  I am
also working with Matt Allen and Ulla Bunz on developing an archive of
mailing lists and listservs devoted to discussions on Internet /
cyberculture research.

2.5.2 Wellman: Began work as liasion with Toronto based AoIR 2003 
conference organizers. Proposed changes to AoIR election procedures.


2.6 Appointed Seats (Allen, Shade)

2.6.1 Allen: Returning from the fantastic conference and with the 
honour and enthusiasm
of a newly appointed Exec Committee member, I found Australia to be full of
end-of-year chores - marking and re-enrolling, marketing and meetings!

I am currently working on a draft discussion paper for the exec on the way
in which AoIR might organise its website activities (finding a way to divide
those activities between core AoIR business, hosted on the AoIR server, and
related activities to which AoIR links).  I am also working with David
Silver on collecting information for a 'list of lists' to assist members to
select and subscribe to the many relevant Internet Studies email lists
across the world.

In December I will attend the fibreculture conference in Melbourne Australia
and heavily promote membership of AoIR as a way for Australian scholars of
Internet and related new media/technology to become part of the global
community of scholarship.

Plus, I am enjoying the delicious subshine of the Aussie summer (which will
be, by March, far too much of a good thing, just in case you are feeling
jealous in the north!)

2.6.2 Shade: Participants in AOIR 2.0 have been asked to send their 
papers so they can
be posted online.


2.7 Student Seat (Klastrup)

2.7.1 Participated in conference in Tampere, Finland: "Interactive 
Man and His Future" (http://www.mindtrek.org/conference/), which 
proved that currently a lot of interesting research is going on in 
Finland on mobile culture and mobile devices use. Currently 
communicating with other AoIR graduate student on setting up a list 
of citation databases.


2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: it has been busy
helped on air-meet
worked on aoir.org/members
    made changes to navbar
    added submitted content
            feel free to submit content to the system
    added submitted links
            feel free to submit links to the system
    approved calendar submissions
            Nalini Kotamraju submitted some conference dates for the 
aoir calendar
                you can add things to the calendar easily, but if you 
could also submit them to calendar at aoir.org, which Nalini
        volunteered to help out with.
    made changes to sections area(oceania)

worked on conference webpage policy
began work on aoir 2.0 paper archive
working on revising conference review system to match new conference 
organizational structure
irritated charlie by approving things in the listserve system before he could
        going to give charlie administration duties on air-meet in 
about 5 minutes(done).

2.8.2 Breindahl: Well, I have updated aoir.org a little bit as usual 
and been engaged in the
ongoing discussion about how to bootstrap the members area into a
collaborative effort. Not to mention that I inadvertently jumpstarted the
discussion on air-meet about possible keynote speakers in Maastricht  :o/


2.9 2002 Conference (Monica Murero, Coordinator; Klaus Bruhn Jensen, 
Program Chair)

2.9.1 Murero: The organization of next year's conference is 
progressing very well.  Local
arrangements are proceeding as planned. The conference planning committee
was very active in helping shape the conference (call for paper, invited
speakers and so on). The call for papers will be issued soon.

2.9.2 Jensen: In addition to reviewing the planning process, I have 
collaborated with Monica Murero in developing the call for papers, as 
well as participating in the collective efforts of the air-meet list. 
With the active assistance of many AIRers, planning is progressing on 
schedule.

2.10  AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)

2.10.1 The ethics committee is currently discussing competing sets of 
guidelines for Internet research.