[Air-l] AOIR organization

[Steve Jones]

Sam:

On Oct 26, 2006, at 12:24 PM, Sam Tilden wrote:

> Et Al,
>
>   Who were the orginal organizers of AOIR?

The story's been told in a couple of different places, including in  
the first AoIR Research Annual, but, in short...the idea for it came  
at a conference at Drake University (thank you Thom Swiss, Andrew  
Herman, and all of the attendees) in 1998. Greg Elmer, Stefan Wray  
and I were the ones who sort of "decided" that there should be an  
association. Greg and Stefan were both grad students at the time (or  
it may be that Greg had just earned his Ph.D., I can't quite recall  
at the moment, sorry Greg!) so as the more "senior" (I don't know why  
I put that in quotes, I expect I'm "senior" to them in age, perhaps I  
don't want to admit it) person I more or less took it upon myself to  
get the ball rolling. At the NCA conference that year about a dozen  
people (including Nancy Baym) got together for what might be called  
"the first AoIR organizational meeting" I suppose. But, IMHO,  
everyone who joined the AoIR email list prior to the first conference  
in 2000 is in some way an "original organizer," and so far as I'm  
concerned anyone and everyone who puts their shoulder to the wheel is  
an AoIR organizer, no matter the task (so long as it's related to the  
association in some way or another).

>   Was there a diad?

Nope.

>   If so who were they?
>
>   Who is the single most important person? (not necessarily the  
> current leadership)

This is a really difficult question. Of course I wouldn't count  
anyone in the current leadership, though it might not be erroneous to  
consider that President Bush is probably quite important, for better  
or worse. It also isn't clear quite what the dimensions of  
"importance" are. I could approach it from the standpoint of science,  
but there are so many luminaries, and even if I were to constrain  
myself to living people...Hawking...Tarter...Wong- 
Staal...Dawkins...there are too many. I could approach from a  
spiritual standpoint but that's probably even more difficult than  
from science. I could think about it in terms of family but there's  
more than one family member and they're all most important. So, I'm  
stumped.

Unless, of course, you mean this in terms of the original  
organization of AoIR, in which case...I guess it would have to be me.

(Alas, poor hubris, I know you well.)

Sj