[Air-L] AoIR and Facebook

[Nancy Baym]

I think we've had quite the little Facebook experience with AoIR this 
last week. During the conference there was a tremendous amount of 
after-hours (and no doubt during-hours) friending going on as people 
met one another then rushed to FB to friend one another. People used 
status reports to comment on panels and coordinate with one another. 
In the days since Vancouver there's been a huge amount of status 
reports about getting home, rain or the absence thereof, continued 
post-conference friending, laughing over shared photos (especially 
those taken at the banquet of everyone in Canada hats!), etc.   Seems 
to me there's been a hearty effort to continue the camaraderie of the 
conf via Facebook in ways I half-heartedly described as diasporic 
this morning -- the conference is repeatedly described as a "home" 
and, once apart, Facebook seems to be the venue of choice for keeping 
the social dimensions of those connections active. Meanwhile, and 
surely relatedly, the AoIR facebook group just topped 800 members.

On another note, this marks the first time since the dawn of AoIR 
that I have not been on its executive committee and I just want to 
say many thanks to everyone who's kept this association going. To see 
the scholarly collaborations, friendships, and even marriages (I know 
of 3) that have come out of AoIR is incredibly rewarding. I know 
we're in good hands with the new exec. Thank you thank you thank you 
for making a dream into a reality. And thanks for the champagne too, 
much appreciated :-)

Nancy