[Air-l] November 2002 AoIR Executive Committee Report

[Steve Jones]

November 17, 2002
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
2003 Conference Chair: Liss Jeffrey
2003 Conference Program Co-Chairs: Matthew Allen and David Mitchell
Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess
Elections Working Group Chair: Mia Consalvo
Net Resources Working Group Chair: Charlie Breindahl


1.  Introduction & General (Jones)

Below is the monthly report from AoIR executive committee members. If 
you aren't reading this...well, you ought to be. I know it can get 
lengthy, and it can get detailed, but it's the single best way to 
know what AoIR is up to, and to find ways to get involved with it (in 
any number of ways from contacting the people who report to 
volunteering to work on something you see mentioned to making 
suggestions to...).


2.  Executive Officers' Reports

2.1 President (Jones)

2.1.1 Maastricht was a blast - one more round of thank-yous to 
Monica, Klaus, and the myriad others who made it happen, as well as 
the myriad who attended. Next up is the meeting in Toronto, October 
16 - 19, 2003. Planning is well under way, and to join in on it here 
is the information to sign on for the discussion:
   List-Help: <mailto:air-meet-request at aoir.org?subject=help>
   List-Post: <mailto:air-meet at aoir.org>
   List-Subscribe: <http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-meet>,
   	<mailto:air-meet-request at aoir.org?subject=subscribe>
   List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-meet>,
   	<mailto:air-meet-request at aoir.org?subject=unsubscribe>
   List-Archive: <http://www.aoir.org/pipermail/air-meet/>

There are a number of working groups doing their thing, too. For 
information about what each group is up to please contact the 
respective working group chair.

Note that one of the working groups is helping AoIR come up with a 
means of streamlining the election process and ensuring 
representation. Elections will be coming up in a few months, and I'll 
take this early opportunity to encourage you to consider running for 
office or serving in some other capacity.

Please note too that a "Call for Hosts" was recently issued for AoIR 
conferences in 2004 and beyond. If you are interested in hosting a 
future AoIR conference please contact me.


2.2 Vice President (Baym)

2.2.1 I have been doing my small part in the preparations for next 
year's conference ,planning and working on publicizing the benefits 
of membership to air-l subscribers and members themselves. 
<subliminal message> join join join </subliminal message>. and 
otherwise keeping busy with many ongoing aoir discussions.


2.3 Secretary (Bunz)

2.3.1 Since the fabulous conference in Maastricht, I have written a variety of
reports (detailed executive meeting report, summary of executive meeting
report, general meeting report) and have shared them with the
appropriate audiences, including air-l. I also did a quick country
overview and sent an accounting of how many people of what countries
participated in the conference (based on the conference listing, which
didn't include on site registrants). I have been active on the air-meet
list, chirping in on discussions regarding keynoters, scheduling, etc.
Finally, I've been contributing to the discussions on air-exec and
air-l.

Summary October 18 - November 13, 2002
This month on the executive list:

.	Finalizing of scheduling for an executive committee meeting in
April, 2003
.	Discussion regarding other listserves connected to the AoIR
mission, stimulated by Lisbeth Klastrup's idea to form an AoIR grad
student list. Creation, discussion, amendment, and final agreement on
criteria such lists would have to fulfill (posted to the website).
.	Discussion on amending membership fee collection scheduling
(i.e., everyone renew at the same time once a year), but decision to
stay with current way of doing things (rolling membership).
.	Conversation about member benefits and access to conference
papers (for various reasons pointed out on air-l, papers are available -
if presenters provide them - to members only, but everyone is welcome to
contact presenters personally and request copies)
.	Creation and editing of various outreach email messages that
will be posted to air-l and members on a regular basis
.	Discussion about possibly instituting a research annual out of
selected AoIR conference papers. More information will be made available
once final decisions have been made.
.	In the process of setting up a complaint list. More information
available soon.


2.4 Treasurer (Bates)

2.4.1 Nothing to report.


2.5 Open Seats (Silver, Wellman)

2.5.1 Silver: I've been staying busy with participating in various 
executive committee
threads, and taking part in a number of discussions on the conference
committee list.

2.5.2 Wellman: Continuing to work on Toronto AoIR conference.


2.6 Appointed Seats (Allen, Shade)

2.6.1 Allen: I have been devoting my time to background preparation 
for the program at
the AoIR conference in Toronto in 2003.  I have facilitated some discussion
on air-meet about the structure and nature of the program (timing, type of
papers etc), and have been greatly impressed by the quality of discussion
and the helpful suggestions from all.  Over the next month or so, following
the release for the Call for Papers, I will be working with co-Chair David
Mitchell and the Conference Chair Liss Jeffrey, to finalise arrangements for
managing and finalising the program.

I will indicate now that soon I will be asking for people who wish to be on
the program committee to contact me; I will also be approaching people to be
sub-chairs, responsible for areas of internet research that will form part
of the program.

2.6.2 Shade: Nothing to report.


2.7 Student Seat (Klastrup)

2.7.1 Participated in discussions on the exec-list and continued 
networking with
the graduate students I met in Maastricht. Currently setting up a graduate
student list serv which will be launched very soon.


2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: it has been fairly busy month, and I've been working 
on the lists and web primarily, but I'm also doing some conference 
things as they come up. I am still receiving papers at 
papers at aoir.org and am putting them up bi-weekly now.

2.8.2 Breindahl: I still read your e-mail - i.e., I monitor our 
mailinglists and filter out spam and unwelcome subscribers. I have 
done very little to improve the usability of aoir.org, mainly because 
I maintain two-three other sites that need my attention from time to 
time. One beautiful day, it will happen.


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

2.9.1 Murero:   Thank you all for giving me the chance to chair such 
a great conference in Maastricht. A fabolous experience! I have 
received many messages of appreciation and I'd like to thank again 
each one of you for it, and every single person that has contributed 
to this success. I am still working on conference related matters and 
will be happy to contribute to AoIR 's growth in the future. In other 
words, I'll stay around!!!  I'd also like to send my best wishes to 
the teams that are working on the organization of AoIR 4.0 in 
Toronto, and in particular to Liss, Barry, Matt, David. All the best 
and see you soon !


2.10 2003 Conference (Liss Jeffrey, Chair; Matthew Allen, David 
Mitchell, Program Co-Chairs)

2.10.1 Jeffrey (with her team: Katherine Parrish, Jason Nolan, Alex 
Kuskis, and steering committee chair Barry Wellman)

1. We have completed the call for papers draft, with the theme set 
out and explained in terms of ways IR4.0 will broaden the band of the 
internet research community and its topics, good input from Matt on 
review criteria,attention to French papers, to the use of technology 
to work on technology at the conference, and (Katherine Parrish 
leading this one) on the inclusion of creative works and 
presentations.

2. We have continued discussions with the Hilton Hotel, and are 
working with them as partners so that everyone will want to stay 
there and use our time most effectively by allowing the happenstance 
of meeting in the same environment. We are working on the room plan, 
rough conference program outline, cyber cafe, and other questions.

3. We submitted the Toronto committee list of potential keynotes to 
Air-Meet (which I convened last month) and have just confirmed the 
list of our first and second selections in a video conference with 
David Mitchell (co-program chair) from Calgary. We are very pleased 
with this list and guarantee that substance will be the order of the 
day for keynoters. The original suggestion that we had made to invite 
Steve Jones to be one of the keynotes is repeated and affirmed by all 
of us.

4. We have an events program in prep, that will include 
techno-artistic performances and other interventions: a preliminary 
list of those we have in mind include Steve Mann (Cyborg and 
Counter-Surveillance), David Rokeby ( major international techno 
artist), Cory Doctorow, and others....

5. The SSHRC application went in on November 1st. No idea what the 
outcome will be , however it certainly consumed one plus days for my 
busy byDesign eLab and eCommons/Agora project, and I thank my office 
admin Graig Kent for his support. The Knowledge Media Design 
Institute at U of Toronto is now our lead organizer (in addition to 
adjunct faculty, McLuhan Program, I am a senior researcher there) and 
we thank Barry Wellman (my fellow steering committee member on KMDI) 
our steering committee chair for all of his support.

6. On Nov. 28 we will hold a volunteers meeting, after we do a 
visualization of the conference and a divide and conquer session on 
the activities we now face. The web site will get more advanced later 
next week <http://www.ecommons.net/aoir>

7. Finally we have plans for pre-conference events, and the Toronto 
committee welcomes all suggestions and ideas, so that we can start 
figuring out ways to place people in locations, formalize these 
events, and add some substantive themes as well as hands on workshops.
More to come....


2.11  AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)

2.11.1 The ethics working group has finalized its statement on 
Internet research ethics, revised in light of both aoir-list comments 
and comments received during the panel presentation on the statement 
at AoIR 3.0: please see <http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf>. We 
are placing the statement before AoIR members for their review and, 
we hope, their endorsement.  Voting will begin soon. We will continue 
our work in the coming year - in part, by continuing to respond to 
queries and suggestions from the aoir membership on how to expand and 
refine the statement and its resources in ways that will be helpful. 
As always, my thanks to the members of the ethics committee for all 
their hard work, cooperative and critical discussion, insight and 
experience.


2.12 AoIR Elections Working Group (Mia Consalvo, Chair)

2.12.1 We are in the process of scheduling a live meeting to wrap 
things up, and make a final recommendation to the executive board. 
That should appear by the end of this month.

Here's the scoop:

--We believe that a better version of the nomination and voting 
procedure should be written up for our elections. These new 
procedures and guidelines should be posted to air-l before the 
procedure begins; they should be available as a document on the aoir 
web site, and they should also be printed out and available as a 
handout at aoir conferences.

--We also support gathering more information from candidates running 
for various posts. We suggest having the general membership 
contribute ideas for questions, which could be general to all 
categories
and/or specific for some (treasurer: how good are you with money?).

--We are still debating how candidates are identified. Current ideas 
being tossed about include: nominations and self-nominations 
remaining the norm; adding to the above, a nominations committee that 
would identify potential candidates that have shown excellent service 
to the organization, but are too shy to self-nominate; finally, going 
to a system of nominations only by a committee, but this doesn't seem 
to have wide support as a system.

--The voting process: we seem to be in agreement to limiting people 
to running for only one office-otherwise their votes can get split. 
Additionally, we are considering a "weighted voting" system.

--We are also considering recommending expanding the executive 
board--particularly in the area of open seats. Alternately, the 
executive board has proposed (and we are talking about) having an 
"Advisory Board" that people could (volunteer or be named) to 
participate on, having more of a say in aoir business, but not 
burdening the exec board w/too many chefs.

--Regarding elections, we are talking about having some sort of 
"event" for candidates- the idea of a synchronous chat was proposed, 
but due to our wide geographic boundaries, seems burdensome. 
Alternately, a specific time period for an asynchronous talk/Q&A has 
been floated.


2.13 AoIR Net Resources Working Group (Charlie Breindahl, Chair)

2.13.1 The AoIR Net Working Group has been dormant over the summer, 
but we have recently begun discussion of the future of aoir.org as 
content management system (audience oriented) or groupware (author 
oriented).


------------------------------------end of executive committee 
report------------------------------

The Association of Internet Researchers is a scholarly association 
dedicated to the advancement of the cross-disciplinary field of 
Internet studies. It is a resource and support network promoting 
critical and scholarly Internet research independent from traditional 
disciplines and existing across academic borders. The association is 
international in scope.

The association's web site is at http://www.aoir.org. Membership 
information is available at http://aoir.org/airjoin.html