[Air-l] the next executive and the future of aoir

[Steve Jones]

I will add my own emphasis to Jeremy's well stated case for involvement 
in AoIR. Many (probably most) of us are already members of some sort of 
scholarly or professional association. Usually these are large and 
disciplinary organizations. While AoIR continues to grow larger, it is 
far from the size of most such organizations. And, it is most certainly 
not disciplinary. Most of us will not have had, nor will we have, an 
opportunity to so directly support and steer an association. AoIR, on 
the other hand, is an association in which one can have direct and 
immediate impact. For me, few things have been as rewarding as founding 
and then shepherding AoIR in its early years. I know all of the 
arguments for not getting involved. However, if we always give in to 
those arguments and do not argue against them, our scholarly fields 
will continue to remain at best disciplinary, giving at most lip 
service to interdisciplinarity. Our lives (personal as well as 
professional I dare say) will be the poorer for the lack of connections 
to people and ideas that AoIR provides us. I urge you to join in the 
effort to build the association, to build it into something other than 
another, traditional, scholarly association, and into one that can 
support interdisciplinarity among colleagues from around the world.

Sj

On May 6, 2005, at 1:59 PM, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:

> I think it is very important for people to get involved in this 
> election,  and to nominate people to serve on the executive.   This 
> next period will be very important to AoIR, and there are quite a few 
> possible directions that the association might head, for instance:
>
> Will we develop a journal? or adopt a journal? or something else?
> Will we continue to pursue the Annual, or will we go a different 
> direction?
> What will become of the website, wiki, conference system, and other 
> tools we use all the time?  Will we have to raise dues?
> Will we begin offering competitive bursaries to the conferences to 
> whom?
> Will we standardize the conference or will we continue our 'every one 
> is unique style'?
> Will we require full papers in future conferences?
>
> Those are just a smattering of the issues that the exec will deal with 
> in the next two years, and many of them directly affect all of you.  
> I'm sure the rest of the exec can think of even more issues and I'm 
> sure you can too.  So I'm encouraging you to participate in the 
> election, the discussions around it, to nominate people, and to 
> determine AoIR's future.
>
> Personally, I know that I'm stepping down this term, though I might 
> stand for election in the future.  It has been a great experience, and 
> I'd continue it if I could, but I'm entering a new stage in my career 
> soon, and want to pursue a few other projects for a while.  Other 
> original members of the exec are also reaching the end of their terms 
> and ex officio terms, so we need people to step up and take the reins 
> of AoIR, and help determine its future.
>
> Let's open the discussion,
>
>
>
> jeremy hunsinger
> jhuns at vt.edu
> www.cddc.vt.edu
> jeremy.tmttlt.com
> www.tmttlt.com
>
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