[Air-l] minutes of Maastricht general meeting

[Ulla Bunz]

Association of Internet Researchers

3rd Annual Conference, Maastricht, The Netherlands, October 13-16, 2002

 

Minutes of the General Meeting (October 15, 2002):

 

Attendance: All members of the executive committee, ca. 60 members

 

The meeting convened at 5:30 pm.

 

1. Welcome by Steve Jones (President)

 

2. Executive Officers' Reports

2. a) President, Steve Jones

- Steve clarified that the papers of the conference will be available
online almost immediately after the conference. This has been delayed
due to permission issues. AoIR will institute a "permission to put
online" (or not) clause for future submissions.

- President Jones pronounced that "the state of the association is
strong!" Within 2 years, we have held 3 conferences, with ever
increasing quality, appeal, and support from many sources. Steve
expressed his joy and delight. 

- Steve called for continued interest and involvement from the
membership. We have grown because of our incredibly engaged members, but
we need more people to volunteer for working committees, listserve
participation, etc. etc. to continue our work at an ever increasing
level of commitment and quality.

 

2. b) Vice-President, Nancy Baym

- Nancy expressed how impressed she is with our growing
interdisciplinarity. She sees many challenges ahead, for example, how to
manage the association's growth. Comparing AoIR to her son (born a few
short days before the first AoIR conference) she made it clear that we
have accomplished amazing deeds. Nancy urged all of us to "tell'em!!!"
Spread the word about AoIR, and take an active role in the organization.

 

2. c) Secretary, Ulla Bunz

- Ulla expressed her delight at actively having been part of the
organization since the first conference. She said she was stunned by the
intellectual stimulation AoIR, once again, provided. She urged members
to continue their current conversations and exchanges of ideas on the
air-l listserve.

 

2. d) Treasurer, Benjamin Bates

- Ben reported that financially, the association is in good shape. In
2001, we had a balance of slightly above $8000. As the conference in
Minneapolis ran a slight profit, we are currently (before final
calculations of Maastricht) at a plus of approximately $17000.

- With currently about 400 members and 1200 subscribers to the mailing
list, our goal is to recruit more list subscribers to become members,
and overall keeping our budget low, so that we can strengthen our
financial base.

 

2. e) 1. Open Seat, David Silver

- David reminded the members that among his work in the past year was
the completion of the "list of listserve" project (with Ulla Bunz, Matt
Allen, and Jeremy Hunsinger), a website listing and annotating close to
80 listserves related to the field of Internet Research. David plans to
continue his outreach to strengthen the representation of fields of
study related to gender, race, sexuality, and social class in AoIR.

 

2.e) 2. Open Seats, Barry Wellman

- Barry agrees with David that we need to broaden the base of AoIR. He
sees the need to have inclusive membership, and focus on pertinent
issues of research. 

- In the last weeks, Barry has been an active liaison between the
executive committee and the conference planning chairs in Toronto.
Please see his report below under 4. AoIR Conference Items.

 

2.f) 1. Appointed Seats, Matt Allen

- Matt has been trying to actively broadcast the message of AoIR to
Australian researchers. He believes that AoIR creates a space which
welcomes and encourages contributions. AoIR provides the infrastructure
for all our activities (i.e., collaborative research), but we need
active members to make use of this infrastructure. 

- As the program chair for the Toronto conference (AoIR 4.0), Matt asked
for help and participation in the planning, especially with reviewing.
He asked that those interested in helping join air-meet (a "how to"
message will be posted to air-l shortly).

 

2.f) 2. Appointed Seats, Leslie Shade

- Leslie, who was program chair in Minneapolis at AoIR 2.0, has been
playing an advisory role with the Toronto planning team. She reported on
a project by Sandra Braman which tries to initiate comparative Internet
research. The project is moving slowly but continuously. People
interested should write to Leslie, Sandra, or at least air-l.

 

2.g) Student Seat, Lisbeth Klastrup

- Lisbeth reported that to her personally, the conference was a true
turning point, because for the first time she got to meet the other
Executive Committee members face-to-face, despite having worked with the
committee for an entire year now. 

- Lisbeth also reported that she initiated a graduate student meeting at
AoIR 3.0 in Maastricht that was attended by a number of highly motivated
graduate students. The graduate students are planning a number of
initiatives. They will share their ideas with air-l at various points.

 

2.h) 1. Publication Officers, Charlie Breindahl

- Charlie has been working on the public part of the AoIR website
(http://aoir.org <http://aoir.org/> ). Specifically, he has added a
number of resources and book listings. He plans to continue this work,
though the breadth and depth of the available material might require a
database oriented approach soon. Charlie is also heading the Internet
Resources work group, which has not been very active due to sparse
participation. He reminded us that our website ought to represent what
we, as an organization, are all about, but that it requires the input of
many of us to make that happen. He asked for volunteers to join the work
group. If you do not wish to join the work group, please email him ideas
and suggestions for the website at the very least.

- Charlie has also been moderating air-l, not by monitoring messages,
but mostly in order to prevent spam.

- Charlie reminded us that the website is capable of providing online
forums for those of us who wish to work collaboratively and need an
online space to do so.

 

2.h) 2. Publication Officers, Jeremy Hunsinger

- Jeremy is mostly responsible for the systems that run AoIR (and the
entire exec is immensely grateful for the tremendous job he is doing!).
He has been and will have to revise the members website, mostly due to
security reasons.

- Jeremy is also planning on revising the elections system, based on
recommendations made by the Election Working Group.

 

3. Association Items

3.a) Elections Work Group

- Mia Consalvo represented the elections work group and reported that
this is an ongoing project. The group has been active and at this point
has decided to create a list of questions that candidates will be
provided with a list of questions in addition to or instead of the
personal blurb they were able to write so far. She asked for help and
input with regard to this list of questions (questions may vary
depending on office). She also said the group was considering
establishing an online forum (asynchronous) where members could ask
candidates questions. 

- Mia reported on several suggestions that the work group is still
evaluating. These suggestions include possibly creating a nominating
committee, which would help identify individuals who wouldn't
self-nominate; possibly limiting people to running for one office;
possibly using a preferential voting system (essentially rank ordering
and weighing multiple votes per voter).

- The election work group has decided not to recommend expanding the
executive committee, as functionality might be impeded. Instead, the
group is considering recommending an advisory board, but this is still
tentative. The elections work group will post a report to air-l closer
to the times of elections (elections are in the late spring).

 

3.b) Ethics Committee

- Charles Ess represented the ethics committee and presented the current
version of the ethics report to the membership (available at
http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethicsfinal.pdf). The report provides
questions that researchers can ask themselves to bring forward and
resolve ethical concerns of their research. The report does not replace
other, existing disciplinary codes or laws. Charles pointed out that in
an interdisciplinary and international organization, we have ethical
pluralism (there are many different issues, traditions, and theories).
Ethics in part depend on context, culture, etc. The ethics committee's
report provides no more than a framework, in addition to existing codes.

- The ethics report will soon be emailed to air-l for final approval by
the membership.

 

4. Conference Items

- Barry Wellman, who has been a liaison with Liss Jeffrey (Toronto
conference planning chair) and her group, reported on planning for the
conference in 2003. 

- The conference will take place in Toronto, Canada, October 16-19,
2003. Pre-conference workshops will take place on October 14 and 15. For
any information or suggestions for pre-events (of social nature) get in
touch with Barry, Liss, or David Mitchell. The conference website for
2003 is http://aoir.org/2003. 

- Toronto is a multicultural city, and a center for digital arts. We are
hoping to involve some digital artists in the conference. The conference
itself will take place in a conference hotel, located at the edge of a
funky area with lots of cafes, restaurants, and bars. 

 

5. New Business

5.a) Growth, finances and dues of the association

- Steve Jones reported that we are currently taking in approximately
$12000 per year through dues. However, as our association and conference
attendance are growing, we can no longer count on very many university
campuses to be able to host our conference. Instead, we must rely on
hotels with meeting spaces, and hold conferences in urban areas/large
cities with direct access to large (if not international) airports.

- Due to these concerns, Steve projects that we will have to increase
both the conference registration fees, and the membership dues at some
point in the next few years.

- Steve asked for feedback on how the membership feels about these
increases. He also called for help with suggestions to keep up with
costs, yet keep running the organization smoothly and accommodate its
growth. 

- Steve also pointed out that the executive committee needs members'
help in order to keep running and expanding the organization. He called
for participation in working groups that will be formed increasingly.

- Finally, Steve clarified that the next 1-2 years are crucial for the
development of the association. We have to figure out our finances to
ensure a long term future. We also have to establish means of
participation, as AoIR depends heavily on volunteerism. 

 

6. Conference and general member feedback

6.a) Audio taping sessions

- A suggestion was made to audio tape all sessions for those who cannot
attend them (or the conference). A follow up suggestion recommended web
streaming. 

- A resource committee may be formed soon to investigate our members'
resources on this and similar issues.

 

6.b) Multi-lingual conference

- To increase francophone representation at AoIR conferences (and with a
special eye on Toronto), the suggestion was made to allow people to
present in French.

- Nancy Baym pointed out that the conference has no official language,
though de facto it is English. Nancy also pointed out that this year, we
did review (and accept) submissions of French abstracts.

- Clearly, multi-lingual presentations have to be considered in an
international conference. At this point, the association cannot afford
simultaneous translation, as for example, was done at the International
Communication Association in Acapulco (Spanish and English). For
Toronto, interpretation/translation might be funded by the Canadian
government. The association has applied for a grant and will have to
wait for results.

- Nancy urged to bring up such questions on air-meet, the forum for
conference ideas.

 

6.c) Association demographics

- A question was posed to the executive committee to reveal the
statistics and demographics of the association. Specifically, the
questioner was interested in an inventory of disciplines.

- Though the association keeps records of country association (by
current address, not by birth or citizenship), we are not currently
keeping an official inventory of disciplines. When signing up for
membership, one can state one's affiliation with certain fields or
disciplines, and provide keywords, but few people make use of this
option. 

- A call was also made to provide statistics on submission and
acceptance rates.

 

6.d) Conference time management

- Critique was voiced about the short time for paper presentations
(generally about 12-15 minutes). 

- The executive committee acknowledged a conflict between allowing as
many people as possible to share their ideas in depth, and limiting the
conference to three days and an acceptable number of parallel sessions.
This problem has been discussed at length and repeatedly by the
executive committee. Last year, members asked for more interaction time,
so time between panels was increased from 10 to 15 minutes, and an
official lunch break was instituted. It is up to the Toronto planning
team to decide on the schedule for the next conference. Please join
air-meet to participate in the planning.

- Also, please consider alternative modes of presentation forms (i.e.,
pre-conference workshops) or creative presentations. An additional
audience comment called for more workshops and pre-conference social
events. It is up to the conference attendees to initiate such work
shops. To plan social events, contact Liss Jeffrey
(ljeffrey at mcluhan.org) or David Mitchell.

 

6.e) Intellectual value of the association to its members

- A call was voiced to increase the value of the association to its
members. The executive committee supports the call that ongoing projects
or projects in planning should be announced on air-l, so there is room
for collaboration, or, at the very least, awareness of current work. 

- Jeremy Hunsinger pointed out that the website offers the technical
options of online forums etc. for online collaboration, but that these
are basically never used.

- Matt Allen volunteered to initiate more communication about the
technical possibilities and opportunities AoIR provides.

 

With no further business to attend to, the meeting was adjourned around
7 pm.

 

Compiled and submitted on October 17, 2002,

Ulla Bunz (Secretary)

 

 

----------------------------------------------------

Ulla Bunz

Assistant Professor

Department of Communication

Rutgers University

4 Huntington Street

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Email: bunz at scils.rutgers.edu

----------------------------------------------------

 

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