[Air-l] minutes of the Association General Meeting (AGM)

[Bunz, Ulla]

Below you will find the lengthy minutes of the Association General Meeting (AGM) from the Chicago conference. If you prefer a nicely formatted version, please go to http://aoir.org, because I have uploaded a Word document there, accessible to everyone (not just members). 
 
Irene Berkowitz has already taken over any other duties of the secretary, so this is my last official, secretarial action. From now on, I will be a "regular" member only. Thanks, I had a good time.

Ulla Bunz
 
 
AoIR Annual General Meeting - Minutes
Chicago, October 8, 2005
1. Welcome & Introductions
The meeting begins shortly after 5 pm.
President Nancy Baym welcomes everyone to the meeting and gives a short preview of what will be covered during the meeting. Outgoing exec members present: Bunz, Bates, Hunsinger, Jones; continuing/incoming exec members present: Baym, Allen, Ess, Berkowitz, Murero, Kluver, O'Riordan, Haythorntwaite, Coopman, Halavais.
Nancy reports that the state of the conference is about on par with the 338 attendees of last year. As an indicator for the amount of work that goes on behind the scene, she also reports that since Sussex, 1257 messages have been posted to the aoir-exec listserve.
2. Executive Officers Reports
 a. President (Baym) 
Nancy states it was a pleasure to serve as president and she is happy that the association is in just as good state as when she was coming in.
 b. Vice president (Allen) 
Matt Allen reports that this year, he had to spend a lot of time with his home workplace, but he also worked on running the election. He states that he thinks it was great that there was such a large number of people standing for office, and that he has many plans for his presidency.
 c. Secretary (Bunz) 
Ulla Bunz reports that she has been keeping records as usual, and that she is grateful for all that she has learned since becoming involved in AoIR as a student volunteer for the first conference. 
 d. Treasurer (Bates) 
Ben Bates reports that the treasury is in good shape. He predicts a reasonably good conference from a financial perspective. At this point, the organization has right about 350 members from 38 different countries. About half of the members are from the US, another good portion from the UK, and the rest from the other countries.
 e. Open Seats (Gajjala, Markham) 
not present
 f. Appointed Seats (Murero, Kluver)
Monica Murero states that she had a great experience for two years, and that she learned much about the fascinating process of running an organization. After being the local organizer in Maastricht, being on the exec gave her a chance to be more involved in AoIR. She would like to say thanks for voting for her as treasurer and she has a lot of ideas there too.
 g. Student Seat (Tkach) 
not present
 h. Publication Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)
Breindahl not present.
Jeremy Hunsinger reports that the organization has been busy. The web presence transition to Drupal has been completed, and a new conference management system was used this year. There are 20,000 + messages on the email system. He owes a dept of gratitude to Charlie, Ben, Ulla who have helped him on occasion. He is happy to step down at this point to step back and see what others can do for the organization. Jeremy announces that Alex Halavais will take over as Systems Manager. Jeremy also thanks Jennifer Stromer-Galley for vote counting during the election. Jeremy was very happy to be involved in AoIR, starting with his work as program chair for the first conference. He appreciates everything everyone has done and is curious to see how the  conferences will now progress and become richer on global issues, as well as in growth/breadth. 
i. Steve Jones, outgoing ex-prez
>From the back of the room Steve Jones thanked all that helped. As his last official statement at AoIR, he wants all to know that he would do this again because it was rewarding.
3. Association Action Items
a. Reports of work committees (annual,ethics)
Ethics: 
Charles Ess reports that it was quite a year for internet ethics. The charge of the working committee was to educate researchers and IRBs. Charles got invited to participate in an IRB education workshop at Case Western Reserve in the spring. His conclusion: there is lots of work to do. At the AoIR conference there were 15 people at the pre-conference workshop. The ethics panel was held more in a Q&A fashion. He hopes the new chair will continue that as it worked well. Charles mentions that a number of issues were raised on air-l. He has also fielded inquiries from members and non-members about ethics issues. Out of interest, he did a Google search on AoIR internet research ethics working group and found it mentioned 185 times. The ethics guidelines are becoming more accepted around the world at institutions. He mentions that the Caslon Analytics group reviewed the ethics guidelines and was somewhat snippy, but they acknowledged that our guidelines will have more impact than others "out there." Charles believes they have done well and simply have more to do. He thanks everyone for their contributions. He also thanks the committee members. Finally, he reports the ethics committee almost made the Time, but he believes Internet ethics is not "sexy" enough after all. Time included an article in reference to Internet Research in which the researcher explicitly mentioned the ethics document, but the document was not mentioned in the article.
Annual: 
Mia Consalvo reports that the 2004 annual is out. She thanks Matt Allen and Kate O'Riordan and the authors for doing awesome papers. She has learned much by editing a great variety of submitted research. The annual costs only $25 with the AoIR discount. She is now working on the 2005 version (Volume 4) and, based on the presentations she's seen, she has great material to look forward to. Mia will meet with Caroline, and reminds people to look for a call on air-l within a week, with the submission deadline coming up soon. (Note: The call has gone out already. Submission deadline is October 31. For details, see http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2005-October/008613.html)
b. Graduate Student Award
Caroline announces that Laura Robinson won the best student paper award. Through an oversight, we were unable to provide the awards plaque at the conference dinner, but at least Laura's name was mentioned in the program. By now, Laura has received her awards plaque and Internet Research books by mail.
       c. 2006 Conference
Nancy announces that the next conference will take place in Brisbane, Australia. There are many opportunities for involvement, such as being a reviewer. Nancy says if you want to help out with local things, talk to Matt Allen.
 d. Changing leadership
To proceed with the official change in leadership, Nancy asks the new executive members to come up and briefly introduce themselves, while she asks the outgoing executive members to step down. Ulla Bunz stays on as she continues to take the minutes.
MattAllen (president): 
As incoming president he thanks Nancy and Steve and the other outgoing exec members. He feels honored to have won a close election and is relieved that Monica and Charles are now joining the executive, since both have been interested in being more involved with AoIR for a long time. He feels a sense of responsibility because of the value of the association for scholarship about the Internet, and also on a personal level. He has already got much out of being part of association, the support and opportunities it provides. After two years he hopes to have assured that our social network has grown stronger. He has some ideas for new way of doing things in the organization but realizes it's challenging to match rhetoric with results.
The three main challenges Matt sees:
1. strengthen the internal network that is AoIR; increase its size and diversity without leading to parallel networks within the organizations; he wants an inter-net with networks, and networks inside of that instead
2. look outside; inter-net work with other associations who do work on the Internet
3. work on interaction between executive and association/members; create safe spaces from within the executive which are populated by the people, spaces where people's enthusiasm can find a voice
He expresses his thanks to all those who ran, congratulates those who won and looks forward to the next two years.
He will adapt Steve's rule number 1. Rule number 1 is that there are no rules. He adds that there are no rules, but great people and great networks. He wants to do what the association is all about: promote Internet Research.
Charles Ess (vice-president): 
Charles begins with a joke, saying he doesn't like hierarchies except when he's on the top. Five years ago Steve asked Charles to chair the ethics workgroup. He says it's hard to put into words just how extraordinary that work has been. Charles is grateful to AoIR for supporting and encouraging this important work. Charles expresses his thanks to AoIR and Steve again and says what he would like to do is work hard on internationalizing AoIR. There already is good representation from around the world, but he believes we need more. He encourages people to talk to him if they are interested in helping with that sort of work. He would also like to help graduate students find a venue for presenting their work and people to help those graduate students move along. Finally he thanks people for voting for him.
Kate O'Riordan (open seat):
Kate says she would like to second some of the things that have been said so far. She has been involved since the Kansas conference in 2000. She has worked in the ethics group, and has great enthusiasm for the organization. She is looking forward to serving and thanks those who voted for her.
Caroline Haythorntwaite (open seat):
Caroline says most will know her because she just was program chair for this year's conference. She enjoyed organizing the conference and abstracts. She encourages people to get their friends and relatives to send in papers. She also asks that people please help review submissions. The conference is only the tip of the iceberg of what the association is. To her, AoIR is home and joining the executive is like interior decorating.
Monica Murero (treasurer): 
Monica points out that she is now the only non-native English speaker on the executive committee. There are a number of issues she would like to see being worked on. She states that Ben, the outgoing treasurer, did a great job. Monica wants to look at areas that can be improved or maintained. She is thinking about maybe instituting one date to renew membership, maybe at conference time. She also wants to grow the association. She states, even as individuals we can do a lot. To the association, sometimes $1000-2000 can mean a lot (institutional membership or conference sponsorship), so she encourages everyone to talk to their institutions or library about institutional membership.
Irene Berkowitz (secretary)
Irene says she will have to follows in Ulla's footsteps. She is excited to work with this group of people. The organization has been important to her for the past 3-4 years. Irene states she brings with her a lot of experience working in organizational settings. Her goals include growing the membership, but maybe in slightly different ways than it has been done so far. Also, she encourages more diversity. She is open suggestions how to accomplish that. She believes we should reach out to groups to which we have not reached out yet, maybe even expand outside of academia. Irene wants the organization to reflect the real world.
Alex Halavais (systems manager):
Alex states his role is to make sure things don't get broken. In a way, he needs to make sure the (social) networks have a (technological) network to work on. Alex wants to make the AoIR networks more transparent, for example through communicating to members more than once a year. He also believes we ought to network outside of the organization. To Alex, it is almost as if it was our responsibility to apply our knowledge to other context. He simply wants to give people a platform to make that happen.
Ted Coopman (grad rep):
Ted begins by saying he would like to honor the other graduates who ran. Jokingly, he said his thoughts were, "wow, it'd be great to be elected," but also, "wow, it would be great if I was not elected, so I can work on my dissertation." Ted promises to email soon with things to do. He wants to build a solid interdisciplinary network for graduate students. There is a lot to do about equity for grad students, and he knows lots of decisions have already been made with graduate students in mind because the assocation knows students are the future. He hopes to contact graduate students so they can support each other in the disciplines to build into the future for interdisciplinary internet studies.
Randy Kluver (open seat):
Randy states he has worked to increase AoIR in the Asia/Pacific region and make scholarship there more available to AoIR. He intends to increase the representation of Asians and bring that into the next conference.
5. Conference feedback
Nancy now invites feedback from the floor about conference and/or association issues. 
a) Jennifer Stromer-Galley directs a question to Alex. She says that some people are doing social science research and know people who do cheap platforms that can be used. She asks how open the association is to using AoIR infrastructure to host conversations, or do a survey? Alex Halavais responds that there might be a role for that, but the primary role of AoIR infrastructure is to provide space for sharing data. It is a place for a repository of tools and best practices with those tools. He is not sure about hosting surveys, but says maybe he can help getting them up in other places. He wants to at least facilitate that service, like a bottom-up member-to-member network.
b) Mark Johns announces that since Maastricht, AoIR has been generous in partnering with the Couch Center for Social Research. Their student award was presented on Sunday morning in a special panel.
c) Jennifer Stromer-Galley points out that money is one big obstacle for graduate students who want to attend the conference. She wants to second the importance of AoIR conferences for graduate students because she believes that face-to-face conversations are crucial. She asks what AoIR can do to help graduate students in this regard. Is there a fund or scholarship that can be developed or that already exists? Especially for people from countries where it's even more difficult? 
   
Matt Allen responds that unfortunately, the association will not be able to provide funds, at least not in the next two years. There simply is not enough money. Whether it will ever be possible depends in part on the capacity of members to make that vision work. There are many opportunities for graduate student funding if one only knows about them. So, he says that the association maybe could get some of that information together to provide it to members. He says we need to start planning 5-6 years ahead anyway, at which time there might be something possible. He says that the executive always has to weigh whether it is cheaper to take the conference to a place of need or to bring 1-2 lucky people to the conference. He also thinks that the association might look at how we can become so good so that people with money will do the funding for us. 
Monica Murero claims that AoIR can do things for graduate students (and others who can not afford coming to the conference) by looking at things in a creative way, such as trying to negotiate better conference hotel deals, by including more affordable accommodation options, rather than having only one good hotel in exchange for meeting rooms. She also suggests to try to negotiate a deal that includes hotel staying and flight, and to contact airlines for discounts to offer to graduate students and all participants. 
Nancy states that this issue has come up many times, just like the diversity issue. She says that the association wants to help people, but there are so many different groups that need help. Just like with diversity, how is that defined and which one group is the one we ought to reach out to most? This question is really hard to play out in practice when you don't have a lot of money
Ted Coopman confirms that one of graduate students' primary concerns is the cost issue. He has already talked to past and current board members and at first he had a lot of ideas, but then he realized that it really is very complex. He says that maybe instead trying to keep cost under control students need to network with each other more to find cheap airfares, share rooms, etc., so they can come and participate at conferences. His preference would be to do something that benefits all potential grad students rather than one or two based on a specific scheme.
Alex points out that for those people who have outside funding to bring students to workshops, maybe the workshop can be held at AoIR and thus travel costs can be minimized or shared.
Monica then declares that she has decided to creates a found for graduate students and scholars in financial need, and offers $1000 from her personal money to start such a fund, and see where it goes! Everybody cheers and welcome the initiative.
Denise Rall suggests that if there was the option of paying an extra $10 for donation with the registration, that would already help a lot.
Monica says, "It's done" and Matt says it's a great idea. 
d) Suely Fragoso says it would be really helpful to be able to search the papers in the conference archives by keywords. Ulla Bunz answers that though that is not possibly at this point, at the beginning of each yearly archive there is a Word document that lists all the paper titles and author names in that archive, so at least that can be searched by keyword. 
e) Lisbeth Klastrup speaks up and says that this was a great conference, but that she would like to raise a flag of concern. She has noticed a decline in people who work in artistic and gaming areas. She admits that maybe other conferences are drawing people away, but would like to know what can be done to keep people on board, and should we even keep them on board? She says that maybe we are at a point where we are diffusing into more narrow conferences and research. She would like to open up this question for general discussion.
Matt agrees to a lack of such presentations this year. He points out that there are different forms of knowledge and will put this on the agenda for the new executive. He states that Brisbane has a lot of thriving areas concerned with aesthetics and the like. 
Caroline points out that there were also other underrepresented areas. For example, though it may be hard to believe, it was difficult to put together CMC panels. On the positive side, she points out, the association is reactive to what's going on right now. Maybe before it was more gaming, and then people dropped out later for other topics.
Charles jokes that one should always take two data points and then make a generalization from them. He points out that the first generation had done its work for the new generation on the ethics workgroup. He believes we are now at a time of an interesting cusp. In a way, the Internet is disappearing in the first world which calls into question, what exactly is internet research? It is not a discipline and doesn't need to be one. So, he asks reflectively, what is our agenda as a scholarly organization? Gamers may have become such a vibrant community that they don't need to be here.
Mia Consalvo speaks up and says, yes, they need to be here because we can learn much from them.
Kathleen Fitzpatrick adds that it is not just the objects that we look at that are changing. She has been to the conferences for only 3 years, but believes to have noticed a drop-off of scholars using humanities-oriented methods. She thinks those scholars might bring something wonderful. 
Nancy responds she would like to have the executive cast fairy dust and bring everyone here, but that is not possible and the most direct way to have higher representation of any group of people at the conference is for those who are here now to encourage their colleagues to come. She says to bring the people who you want to see there. Tell the executive what resources you need to bring the people you want and we will try to help you.
Michelle White states that there has been some discussion on this issue and the review process among those attendees in the humanities and taking a feminist/critical view. She believes that there are misperceptions on "what is good research." Michele says there needs to be a re-conceptualization about how the review process works. She says that many papers were poorly reviewed and then rejected. She believes people should be directed to areas to review that they know about. We may need an "ethics" of how to review. She points out that this is also a problem in related journals.
Jeremy Hunsinger states that the call for papers dropped the extended list to invite disciplines such humanities etc. that used to be part of the call, because we could never list all the possible disciplines. Instead, the call aims to invite on the theme of the conference, but maybe that list needs to be put back into the call as otherwise people don't know for sure that their approaches are welcome. 
Terri Senft speaks up to say that anyone who is interested in issue of performance should contact her.
Caroline responds to the comment on reviewing by saying that she asked people to select their areas of expertise. For about 85% papers, papers were reviewed by people who had selected the paper's area as their area of expertise. It would help though to get more reviewers.
Matt closes the discussion on this issue by saying what Caroline and Michelle are saying is both important, and they are both right, because it is possible to be in same area and still get diametrically opposed reviews. The issue of method might be important for reviewer assignments, not just the overall area of expertise. He says the executive will look at the reviewing process with the new program chair. He also reminds people that in Toronto about 50% of individual papers were rejected, but that panels tend to have more coherence and panel organization may be a way to strengthen the organization. He says he will try to even out the cycle.
f) Taso Lagos says he will add $100 add to the fund for graduate students. As to panel presentations, he believes there should be more presentations per time slot so that there are fewer parallel sessions.
Ulla points out that over the years, we have tried different things, and some people want more papers, some fewer. Several people have made it clear that the coffee breaks are valuable and should be longer, and that we also need long lunches. It simply isn't possible to accommodate all these wishes without making the conference 10 days long. It is a problem that the executive is well aware of and we have arrived at a point where we have come to somewhat of a middle approach, and may not want to change that for a while.
Ted adds that people should try to get outside of the box and mix it up more during their presentations. He believes people should get away from PowerPoint and traditional ways of presenting. He adds that maybe poster sessions will allow more space for conversation and decrease the number of concurrent panels.
Abby Goodrum suggests to have papers, panels and poster sessions, and to have each reviewed by different people. She says that if you want academics to come you have to offer a refereed published proceeding. There need to be rigorous reviewers and full papers. Of course, at the same time we don't want to lose creative people and the scholarship of creation. She says we need to look at what the value is that a paper may add. Posters are a great idea for not fully formed ideas where input is needed.
g) Lois-Ann Scheidt asks what happened to air-meet. For example, air-meet used to have influence on the discussion of the conference theme.
Matt says the list needs to be more defined as to what it does and how it can be more helpful. (Air-meet is currently active. To voice your input, subscribe at http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-meet-aoir.org)
h) Stefanie Coopman says she would have loved to go on the L-Tour, b but had to present at that time. She says special events should not be held during panels or keynotes. Such events should not provide something that may seem as "more important" than presentations or keynotes. 
Matt thanks Stefanie for her comment and says they will certainly take that into consideration.
In closing, Matt says that there will be a local flavor in Brisbane. We need to remember that that's part of the fun. Nancy adds a closing thought. She started working on AoIR in the Fall of 1998. Since then there is one thing she has learned repeatedly: for every great idea there is a problem with it that someone else has. She says the new executive needs to continue the process of balancing opposing tensions. In the end, everyone will be unhappy with something, no one will be happy with everything. She says the association needs the membership to step up to the plate to see through those ideas that they raise. There are always many volunteer at conferences, but then when we get home our vision never comes to manifest because other things interfere. She pleads that people should please try to recognize that it is a balancing act and be patient with the executive. If people have good ideas, please try to sustain the energy that it takes to see them through. Finally, Matt says that Michelle's contribution was good because it is something that the executive needs to consider, but with YOUR help. Being blunt, he says, he cannot do much about the cost but will try to keep it about the same. He wants to put our energy into something we can control.
6. Adjournment
Matt closes the meeting around 6:30 pm and states he is looking forward to working with everyone. He wants to see them and friends and family and colleagues in Brisbane the week of September 25th (conference will be from Sep 27 - Oct 1, 2006).
Respectfully submitted,
Ulla Bunz
(Secretary)
October 19, 2005
Corrections made, October 22, 2005
 
 
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Ulla Bunz
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
356 Diffenbaugh Building
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306
Email: ubunz at fsu.edu
Phone: 850-644-1809
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