[Air-l] Winter 2004 executive committee report + 2006 Location!

[Nancy Baym]

January, 2005
Report of the a.o.i.r. executive committee
Prepared by Nancy Baym

AoIR Executive Committee
President: Nancy Baym
Vice-President: Matthew Allen
Secretary: Ulla Bunz
Treasurer: Benjamin Bates
Open Seats: Radhika Gajjala and Annette Markham
Appointed Seats: Monica Murero and Randolph Kluver
Student Seat: Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
Past President (ex-officio): Steve Jones

2005 Conference Program Chair: Caroline Haythornthwaite


1.  Introduction & General (Baym)

This is the place to find out what's going on in 
the association. It's the best way for you to 
keep up so please read it! Our 24/7 discussions 
of the month on the executive committee mailing 
list are summarized in Ulla Bunz's section of the 
report.

In addition to the enormous amount of organizing 
we have been doing (see Ulla's report below), we 
are pleased to announce the location for our 2006 
conference: Brisbane Australia. Kylie Veale is 
serving as the local organizer, and we hope to 
announce a program chair shortly. We hope that 
this Pacific Rim location will enable people who 
have found it hard to attend our North American 
and European meetings to join us there.

Also, election time will soon be upon us and I 
urge you to consider running for office. This 
association is only as good as the people who 
volunteer to make it work. As outlined in Ulla's 
report below, many positions are opening. Jeremy 
Hunsinger, who has overseen all of our technology 
since our inception, will be leaving this role. 
That is an appointed position, so if you have 
interest in that, please let someone on the 
current executive committee know. We will also be 
seeking a new treasurer, as Ben Bates will not be 
running again, so if you have experience with 
finance, please consider running for this 
important slot.

2.  Executive Officers' Reports

2.1 President (Baym)

2.1.1  The conference in Sussex went off very 
well, with many thanks to Sheizaf Rafaeli and 
Kate O'Riordan for their hard work. We are now 
busy planning Chicago in October, 2005 and laying 
groundwork for Brisbane, 2006. I had the chance 
to visit the Chicago site this fall and think 
people will be pleased with the layout. All rooms 
are in a relatively compact area with a central 
meeting space that will work very well for 
socializing. The hotel itself is located very 
well, near the lake, lots of shopping, the Art 
Institute, and many other attractions.

We also have two new babies to welcome as both 
Steve Jones and Charlie Breindahl became fathers 
this fall (Charlie for the second time)! 
Congratulations to them and their families.

2.2 Vice President (Allen)

2.2.1 I am facilitating the AoIR website 
discussions group of the Exec; am chairing the 
Conference Management Committee of the Exec; have 
organised local liaison and program chair for 
2006 conference. In January I will start managing 
the election process for 2005.

2.3 Secretary (Bunz)

2.3.1 Since our last official report I have been 
dealing with record keeping including agendas and 
minutes, organizational statistics, and vote 
counting. The vote counting included keeping 
complex issues straight and providing clarifying 
summaries to the exec. I have put up the pilot 
survey and provided an in-depth analysis of the 
"what to keep about our conferences" question to 
the exec. I have participated actively in the 
discussions on the CMC and the 2006 and beyond 
conference locations, as well as contributed to 
other discussions, proof reading, website 
testing, Listserve transition issues, paper 
archives, etc. As the secretary is not a member 
of the CMC (for explanation see below), I cannot 
summarize their dealings and decisions, but below 
is the summary for the exec Listserve.

What's been happening on the exec:

August 12, 2003 – January 2, 2005

-   Perhaps the most significant change on the 
exec, which also accounts for the reduced email 
traffic on that listserve, has come about due to 
the institution of the Conference Management 
Committee (CMC). The CMC is AoIR-internal and 
deals with organizational conference issues. This 
allows us to standardize a lot of things and 
reduce the amount of detail work it takes every 
year when organizing the conference. This also 
reduced the micro-management of the exec in 
conference planning, though the exec still has to 
approve major decisions made by the CMC. 
Membership on the CMC rotates. Membership 
consists of: vice-president (who is in charge of 
the CMC), immediate past president, treasurer, 
student representative, local liaisons for the 
upcoming and the next conference (right now, 2005 
and 2006), the program chairs for the upcoming 
and the next conference, an appointed AoIR 
member, and a representative of the conference 
agency at Virginia Tech. The conference agency is 
not to be confused with the CMC. The conference 
agency is an external organization that we are 
paying to take care of things like hotel 
reservations, program printing, etc. as explained 
in my last summary in September, 2004. We debated 
membership of the CMC at length and even 
rescinded an earlier vote as new issues had to be 
considered. The final consistency was approved by 
a vote of 10 in favor and 1 missing vote.

-   The exec helped proof and edit the Call for 
Papers for Internet Research 6.0, "Internet 
Generations," in Chicago, October 5-9, 2005. The 
call went to Air-l on December 15 and can be 
retrieved here:
http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2004-December/006894.html

-   There was last minute conference coordination 
on issues like awards plaques,
exec conference meetings, final program issues, birds of feather meetings,
Cafepress, and instruction to panel chairs.

-   After the conference we discussed general 
conference issues, including blogs, computer 
access, and budget. A working group on 
virtualizing the conference has been set up, led 
by Tracy Kennedy. Contact her if you are 
interested in this issue.

-   We had animated discussion on the conference 
locations for 2006 and beyond. We took into 
consideration a number of issues, such as 
enhancing our international reach, 
financial/budget issues, organizational growth, 
and membership opinions. Brisbane was chosen as 
the 2006 location. The local liaison will be 
Kylie Veale from Curtin University. We have also 
begun considerations for conference locations 
beyond 2006 as we are beginning to be able to 
plan long-term.

-   Jeremy transitioned us onto a new Listserve 
program but most didn't experience too many 
difficulties. Some people had password problems 
but with combined efforts, Jeremy and I figured 
them out.

-   We have continued to evaluate our stats on paper submission and conference
attendance. To make a long story short: We continue to get more international.
However, South American and African scholars are 
still very under-represented. Our Asian 
contingent remains comparatively small as well.

-   We had to deal with an allegation of academic 
fraud. The issue was resolved to the satisfaction 
of both parties involved.

-   Jeremy prepared a new electronic conference 
submission and management system
that we tested and will be using from now on. So, 
watch for submission guidelines!

-   We conducted a pilot survey Monica Murero 
designed related to conference issues and 
discussed the results and how they (should) 
influence our planning of future conferences. So 
far they have been guiding us mostly in the 2006 
decision, but we have also noted that most people 
like the smaller size of AoIR, that you want 
Internet access at the conferences, and that you 
really like open spaces to mingle and talk.

-   Based on a suggestion by Michele White, we 
now have a Listserve for "feminists, postcolonial 
theorists, and queers doing Internet research."

-   As many of you may have noticed, the 
members-only part of the AoIR website has been 
down for a while, which is also why we do not 
have the conference paper archive for 2004 up 
yet. This is due to a website transition that we 
are undergoing. As all of the code-writing is 
done by Jeremy "pro bono" it's simply taking a 
little while longer. Please be patient, or 
volunteer your help if you have experience with 
programming. Matthew Allen is coordinating the 
web development, so contact him if you are able 
to help.

-   We are starting to gear up for AoIR elections 
which will be held in the spring. More 
information will be made available, but 
essentially there will be 10 positions open. The 
presidency is by default as Matt Allen will move 
up to become our president. Of the 10 positions, 
6 are voted on by the membership 
(Vice-president/President-elect, treasurer, 2 
open seats, graduate rep, and secretary). The 
remaining 4 are appointments (two technology 
people, two seats). If you are interested in 
running for any of the positions, please keep an 
eye out for more information. If there are people 
you would like to see run, please encourage them 
to do so.

2.4 Treasurer (Bates)

2.4.1. Busy managing membership as always.

2.5 Open Seats (Gajjala, Markham)

2.5.1 Gajjala: has been participating in discussion.

2.5.2 Markham: Been participating in Executive committee discussions of future
conferences and direction of the association.  Actively participated
in dealing with various issues arising at the most recent conference.
Also been helping with analysis of AOIR's web presence and testing
possible interfaces.  The qualitative research methods listserv has
been up and running but there seems to be more discussion activity on
Theresa Senft's blog, so this special interest group seems to have
shifted.  I have joined the Ethics working committee.


2.6 Appointed Seats (Murero, Kluver)

2.6.1 Murero:  I have participated to all 
discussions and decisions in air-exec,
and have organized the AoIR conference pilot 
survey , and analyzed results (to be discussed in 
air-exec).

2.6.2 Kluver: has been participating in discussion.

2.7 Student Seat (Tkach-Kawaski)

2.7.1 During this winter, I

* participated in web-site discussions through the
new site design draft, and am looking forward to further
discussions;

* participated in the conference management committee by
offering opinions when warranted;

* suggested/participated in 2005 keynote speaker discussion.


2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: I've been very busy and my 
current main project is to get the new version of 
the website up and running with the members area 
all set.
other than that, I've been involved with everything ulla noted.

2.8.2 Breindahl: I'm still weeding out the Rolex 
offers and the viruses (Subject: "Hi!") from the 
real messages to AIR-L. I am also active in the 
discussions regarding the future web presence of 
AoIR.

2.9 Past-President (Jones):

In the main I've been working on the planning for 
the 2005 conference in Chicago, which is coming 
along quite well. The conference will take place 
in the heart of Chicago's downtown and I'm 
working on setting up several 'local' events of a 
non-scholarly nature for everyone's enjoyment.

I've also been preparing for the onslaught of 
paperwork associated with attaining permanent 
non-profit tax-exempt educational status from the 
U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Our temporary 
status expires at the end of this calendar year, 
and we must file forms to demonstrate that our 
activities over the past five years have been 
consistent with those of a non-profit tax-exempt 
educational organization. While I am confident 
that our activities have met the IRS's criteria, 
one never knows how they may be viewed by others, 
and there is rather a lot of information to sort 
through and paperwork to be written up. A final 
determination should be forthcoming by the middle 
of 2005.

3.0 2005 Conference Program Chair (Caroline Haythornthwaite)

The conference website is nearly ready for release and should be available
soon. Deadlines will be reconsidered given the timing of the site
released. New reviewers are still being sought as well as calling on those
who have reviewed in the past.

-- 
Nancy Baym	http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA
Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org