[Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR.

[Jeremy hunsinger]

well, for my part, I'll take some of the old with some of the new.  I
remember the conference being much more inquisitive, challenging, and
playful; scholarly rigor was promoted, but not promoted above inclusion of
different perspectives and even strangeness.  There was always a risk for
the first few years that a panel wouldn't work, or a paper wouldn't really
be 'strong' but that risk hasn't gone away with the push toward longer
submissions and more rigor, instead it has just been transformed into a
more reviewed perspective.

In the first few years, I remember having great fun making a list of likely
topics, and the lists always had a few humorous ones, the lists were always
aimed toward inclusion of topic and discipline, and in my mind they served
as recruitment devices, but they also set the tone of the conferences as
'collegial, open, interesting'.  I remember regretting the decision to see
the topics go, but they were replaced with other ideas.  I'm not sure they
were better though, either the topics or the new modes of presenting the
conferences ideas, both work.

I think that for me, AoIR, unlike ICA and AoIR is and should be like
friends and family, and future friends.  That's been the spirit that i've
always approached it with, and granted I know i've grated a few people over
the years with my insistence on first names and similar things, but I do
think we should be an organizations where a Master's student should be
encouraged to talk to the most senior people in the field without
recognizing the ever present academic star system and related matters.

beyond those points...  I think that AoIR has felt significant pressure in
the last few years to create an identity for itself that competes with
other organizations, but I'm not sure competition is really what we should
be after.  I think we should aim to be over-arching and umbrella-like, more
than unique and separable.  I'd rather the thought be promoted that Aoir is
the organization that you come to when your discipline, or other conference
isn't enough, when you can't get your ideas addressed completely, when you
truly need people that are both disciplinary and interdisciplinary, who can
be models for success, who can share histories and research projects which
will enable future people to do better research, etc.

mostly, i see professionalism as a problem centered on the control of
knowledge as Ivan Illich taught us ever so long ago, i believe we do have
to pay attention to our presentation and we might appear to be
professional, but we don't have to BE professional, instead we can be
friends and colleagues.