[Air-l] absenteeism... and some con-reflections...

[Nils Zurawski]

Dear all,

I seem to have been lucky, not to have been 
sitting in many sessions with people missing.. 
except for my own panel on identities and 
internet... (localities)... out of 6, three were 
present.. one panelist was cancelling on monday 
.. so not much to do about that... then only 7 
people showed up for the session at all... but 
nonetheless it was worth it and for those of you 
that haven't been there .. you can take a look at 
http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/seminars/AOIR2004/aoir_2004.htm 
to see the abstracts and soon the full papers of 
the people that presented...... I hope that we 
can keep the discussion going for a bit, as it 
was interesting and many important issues as to 
how we are researching on identity issues, 
diaspora and migrants use of internet technology 
came up. interesting to note, that the sesson was 
only attended by non-native english speakers.. 
which may say something about the importance of 
the issue for groups tha tdo not live in their 
home countries or people that are dealing with 
these issues... the breakdown was 5 Germans, 1 
Brasilian, 1 Polish, 1 Russian, 1 
German-American-English and 1 Indian.

On the conference: Praise for Kate and all her 
work (and that of her staff of course)
some remarks for next year.  I was a bit 
dissappointed with the sessions, as most had no 
chair that could focus the issues and tried steer 
through the papers. Many times the papers seemed 
isolated from each other, when in fact there were 
common issues... a chair could bundle them and 
thus a discussion would be much more fruitful.

the last day... I know there are many papers and 
too little time.. but given the travel schedules 
and the attendance concentration, would it be 
worth to think about less session on the last 
slot of the last day... because I believe many 
participants are gone by then, or are about to 
leave... so less people could then hear fewer 
session and it would be better for the presenters 
and the audiences on the last day... the first 
can have 2 or three more sessions, even longer on 
that day... as most people are already there and 
still curious and not too tired... ???

comments welcome..

best  and thanks for a great and stimulating time in Sussex.

nilz




-- 
Dr. Nils Zurawski
Universität Hamburg
Inst. für kriminologische Sozialforschung
Allendeplatz 1
20146 Hamburg
Germany
tel. +49 (0) 40 42838 6185
fax. +49 (0) 40 42838 2328

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