[Air-l] October 2001 report

[Steve Jones]

October 17, 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 (Matt Stoner, outgoing)
Treasurer: Benjamin Bates (Wes Shrum, outgoing Interim Treasurer)
Open Seats: David Silver and Barry Wellman (Beth Kolko and Sean 
Cubitt, outgoing)
Appointed Seats: Matthew Allen and Leslie Shade (Diane Witmer and Fay 
Sudweeks, outgoing)
Student Seat: Lisbeth Klastrup (Matt Williams, outgoing)
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
2002 Conference Coordinator: Monica Murero
Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess
2001 Conference Coordinator: John Logie
2001 Conference Program Chair: Leslie Shade


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 Well, we had a conference, didn't we?! The reason I put it that 
way is that I am still ever so slightly disbelieving that we pulled 
it off under the circumstances, and that we pulled it off two years 
in a row. But the truth is that from my perspective and from that of 
many conference-goers it went off without a hitch. Now, whether John 
Logie and Leslie Shade think it went that way I can't be sure! I saw 
them both running around constantly making sure that we would have a 
great conference, and to them I and the members of AoIR and 
conference attendees are enormously indebted, as we are to the myriad 
people who assisted (not least of which includes conference 
participants - thank you for turning out and attending!).

2.1.2 While on the topic of conferences, planning is now well under 
way for next year's conference in Maastricht, and has begun for the 
2003 conference in Toronto. I encourage all of you to join in and 
present your research, review submissions, etc. Further information 
will be provided shortly in the form of calls for participation.

2.1.3 On a different topic, allow me to thank all those who voted in 
our elections, and all who stood for election. The energy and effort 
people are devoting to AoIR is steadily increasing, to my delight. 
I'm pleased to be able to serve another term as president, and while 
it will be my final term, I'm absolutely confident given the 
aforementioned energy and effort that the association will be in good 
hands for a long time to come.

2.1.4 I have invited each officer to provide a report, including the 
ones who are leaving the executive committee (with particular thanks 
to them for their work for AoIR). We are all looking forward to 
working together the next couple of years, and hope that we can 
create opportunities for you to join us and assist us. As ever, we 
are an open association, and if you have any questions, please feel 
free to direct them to any of us.


2.2 Vice President (Baym)

2.2.1 I want to take a quick line or four and say thank you to 
everyone who cared enough to vote. We had a real glut of excellent 
candidates for the board, and I am excited to have such a diverse and 
energetic group together for the next two years. I've been offering 
my assistance to the coordinators of the next two years' conferences 
and enjoying discussing the association and its aims with the new 
members of the executive committee and those conference attendees I 
got the chance to speak with. It has been a while since we discussed 
membership benefits on air-l, and our membership's needs may have 
grown or changed or been reprioritized as aoir has grown and evolved, 
so we need to assess the kinds of benefits we should add as we grow. 
I want to encourage anyone with ideas about what they wish this 
association could do to share them with me. At some point, this 
question will get somewhat more formalized with surveys and what not, 
but in the meantime, please help brainstorm: what are the very best 
things this association could do for you to improve your life as an 
internet researcher?


2.3 Secretary (Bunz)

2.3.1 A posting of the minutes from the executive committee meeting 
in Minneapolis is forthcoming.


2.4 Treasurer (Bates)

2.4.1 Thanks to Steve Jones for preparing the interim Treasurer's 
Report. When the mechanics get transferred over, I'll start regular 
reports on memberships and finances.


2.5 Open Seats (Silver, Wellman)

2.5.1 Silver: Bringing myself up to speed with respect to Board 
duties, conference planning, the ins-and-outs of the AoIR bylaws, 
etc.  Brainstorming with Jeremy Hunsinger a collaboration between 
AoIR and the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies to provide a 
dynamic and searchable syllabus archive. Proposing with Matt Allen an 
annotated list of mailing lists devoted to Internet Studies.  Soaking 
in all I heard and learned at 2.0.

2.5.2 Wellman: No report.


2.6 Appointed Seats (Allen, Shade)

2.6.1 Allen: I am delighted and honoured to have been appointed to 
the AoIR executive committee.  Coming from Australia, I can confirm 
that Internet research and studies is wonderfully global and I will 
be focusing, in 2002, on assisting the development of AoIR via 
membership and conference attendance from
Australia. One exciting development downunder is the ::fibreculture:: 
list - a list designed to increase the debate around internet and 
similar issues in Australia, fusing both practitioners and 
researchers within a national context.  Its first conference will be 
held in December at which I hope to spread the word about AoIR. To 
find out more about me and the program I run visit 
http://smi.curtin.edu.au/internet

2.6.2 Shade: Nothing to report.

2.6.3 Sudweeks: Nothing to report, but I would like to thank AoIR for 
the opportunity of serving on the committee and wish you every 
success. I'm happy to assist in any way I can in the future.


2.7 Student Seat (Klastrup)

2.7.1 I am new member of the commitee and look much forward to 
collaborating with the great people in the commitee. I work as a 
phd.student at the IT University at Copenhagen, Department of Digital 
Aesthetics and Communication (DIAC). Currently I am a visiting 
scholar at University of Bergen and in collaboration with ph.d. 
student Jill Walker of University of Bergen, organising a seminar 
"Cyber.*" to be held at the University of Bergen, October 24 &25th 
2001. The seminar is an informal gathering of phd.students and 
researchers in the Nordic countries, working with various aspects of 
cyber.life and aesthetics. Games, gender, learning, IT-rhetorics are 
among topics presented. If any A.i.R members happen to be in Norway 
at this time, please feel free to stop by! 
http://cmc.uib.no/jill/seminar/index.html


2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: Nothing to report.

2.8.2 Breindahl: The pre-conference workshop "Critical Choices in Web 
Research Design" went really well. The effort is going to continue in 
the members area and I will be taking part as a kind of topic editor. 
I really enjoyed IR 2.0. The diversity is amazing - from spoken words 
to online surveys.


2.9 2002 Conference (Monica Murero, Coordinator)

2.9.1 Murero: I'd like to start my contribution with simple but basic 
information, which is next year conference's dates:

13 October (Sunday) pre-conference workshop
14-16 October 2001: AoIR 3.0 conference


2.10 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator)

2.10.1. We had a big honkin' conference that a lot of people seemed 
to enjoy. Almost everything seemed to work. The technology room 
buzzed. Presentations flowed. Food was tasty. The hotel was capacious 
and reasonably comfortable. Final tallies are still unavailable. My 
guesstimates are:

300 attendees.
Close to 200 presentations
At least 60 no-shows half of whom offered no notice, and some of whom 
had not paid their conference fees.

I now begin the process of settling the conference accounts. The 
preliminary picture is good, but the bottom line has been damaged by 
the number of no-shows. The conference is likely still in the black, 
but not nearly as far as it ought to be.

I will be drafting a "lessons learned" (positive and negative) for 
future organizers. But for the moment, I wish to reiterate my verbal 
and program-based thanks to those who helped make this year's 
conference happen. The comments I'm receiving suggest that our hard 
work resulted in a conference which merited the effort it took to 
travel halfway around the globe, or even from Eau Claire. Those who 
contributed should feel very proud.


2.11 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)

2.11.1 Eight members of the ethics working committee met for the 
first time face-to-face on Tuesday, October 9, prior to the aoir 2.0 
conference.  Our conversations proved what is now a truism: online 
discussions are indispensable - especially for a group of 21 people 
scattered across the globe - but we got more done in five minutes of 
conversation with one another sitting at the same table than we would 
have accomplished across several days of e-mail (a rough quote from 
committee member Amy Bruckman). These conversations allowed us to 
substantially improve on a draft version of the report originally 
circulated via e-mail.

The report is now online at http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.html.  We 
hope the report is clear both about what we've accomplished - and 
what remains to be done.  In particular, the report emphasizes a 
number of caveats about our modest first efforts at recommending 
guiding values for Internet research. As well, the report foregrounds 
the many _differences_ between traditional Human Subjects research 
and research conducted online, and some of the ethical consequences 
of those differences, including specific examples of arguable 
exceptions in Internet research to the general guidelines for Human 
Subjects research.

The report will be updated in light of additional study and 
discussion over the coming year.  We will ask committee members to 
develop and oversee discussion of a specific case-study, beginning 
with Brenda Danet's suggestions for ethical guidelines based on her 
recent research and experiences (included in the report as an 
addendum).

Aoir members are encouraged to send their responses (including 
criticisms and counterexamples) to our report to the chair, Charles 
Ess <cmess at drury.edu>.  We welcome your thoughts and comments as we 
continue to struggle with the ethical difficulties posed by new 
technologies.