- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Berkman Center Report: Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies
by McKiernan, Gerard [LIB] 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

Colleagues/ A Major Report Officially Released Today by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard /Gerry _Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies_ Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States Published January 14, 2009 Authored by John Palfrey, Dena Sacco, danah boyd, Laura DeBonis, Internet Safety Technical Task Force The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was a group of Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that joined together to identify effective tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth. It was created in February 2008 in accordance with the "Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety" announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The Task Force was directed by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It submitted its Final Report to the Attorneys General in December, 2008. Download the Final Report * Executive Summary (51KB PDF) * Full Report, including Executive Summary and Appendices (2.7MB PDF) * Appendix A: Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety (400KB PDF) * Appendix B: Task Force Project Plan (50KB PDF) * Appendix C: Literature Review from the Research Advisory Board (266KB PDF) * Appendix D: Report of the Technology Advisory Board and Exhibits (419KB PDF) * Appendix E: Submissions from Social Network Sites (1MB PDF) * Appendix F: Statements from Members of the Task Force (600KB PDF) Links to The Report and Its Sections, a Navigable Document Version, and News Coverage Are Available At [ http://tinyurl.com/972x6g ] Enjoy! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck(a)iastate.edu <mailto:gerrymck@iastate.edu> There is Nothing More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come / Victor Hugo [ http://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490 <http://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490> ] Iowa: Where the Tall Corn Flows and the (North)West Wind Blows [ http://alternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/ <http://alternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/> ]

2 1

ASIS&T Annual CFP � deadline extended
by Richard Hill 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

Because of holidays for Martin Luther King Day and the Inauguration, we are extending the deadline for summitting drafts of full papers of contributed papers, and proposals for technical sessions/panels, and pre-conference sessions from January 21, 2009 to January 28, 2009 Complete call is at http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM09/am09cfp.html Meeting: Thriving on Diversity - Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World ASIS&T 2009 Annual Meeting November 6-11, 2009, Vancouver, BC, Canada ! Dick Hill Richard Hill Executive Director American Society for Information Science and Technology 1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510 Silver Spring, MD 20910 FAX: (301) 495-0810 (301) 495-0900

1 0

Re: [Air-L] Social Engineering
by Murray Turoff 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

A bit of shaggy dog response here! I have not heard the term social engineering for a decade or more. I think it had a political rough time at one time when one of the administrations in the US felt no one should try to change the social system especially in education. All of us who designed computer mediated communication systems tended to believe we were really designing social systems and it was expressed in some early papers. Let me give very a very early simple example or two. Our first messages systems at OEP and at NJIT had their own internal message systems and we designed them to provide notifications of delivery when someone actually displayed the text of a message they received by printing it out on their terminal which was usually thermal paper. So you knew when someone received your message. Some individual users claimed this was an invasion of privacy. However, since the message system was part of a group communication systems and we were trying to foster group collaboration and cohesion our position was that we were making the choice that benefited the group and not the one which might be felt benefited the individual. This was before the days of browsers and unfortunately we can not any longer detect the actual display of a message. Of course we were also dealing with much slower baud rates in those days which were about at reading speed or less. Displaying membership list which indicated the amount of material individuals contributed to the group was also considered a violation of individual privacy but once again we felt it was important to encouraging participation. We also gave signals when members of group logged on so they could chat when they wanted to. This was back in 1971. A lot of interface design functionality choices affect the group atmosphere and so it is always social engineering that a designer of CMC is doing and hopefully consciously. I used to give an exercise in my interface course for the students to design a dictatorship CMC systems which generates a lot of interesting design choices. A good friend of mine in those days was a social engineer, Sam Schelee. In the Delphi Method book from 1975 (free on my website) there is a chapter on the philosophy of Delphi design and Sam did a wonderful chapter explaining "negotiated reality" as a design principle and how one designed Delphis can be based upon that philosophy (Heidigger) for that form of communications. A lot of illustrations in that chapter that are worth looking at. In fact that book has a lot of CMC designs that have never been implemented yet on computers but where successful in paper and pencil forms of group communications. The other chapter in the philosophy section explains the design of Inquiry Systems based upon C. West Churchman's approach using the scientific philosophies-Leibnitz, Lock, Kant, Hegel and Singer. Negotiated reality is not considered scientific; however, it is the philosophy behind advertisements, marketing, labor management negotiations, international treaties, and other such things. Those are all forms of social engineering. Sam was also an ethnomethodolgist. That is a person who always faces the back in an elevator among other things. That is good training for a social engineer. Message: 1 Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:21:16 +0100 From: "Stephan Humer" <stephan.humer(a)web.de> Subject: [Air-L] Social Engineering/Social Hacking anyone? To: <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Hello everybody. Social Engineering is one of my research topics, but unfortunately a neglected one. It would be great to change this situation, so I?d love to get in touch with people who are also working on Social Engineering/Social Hacking issues. Are there any researchers out there who?d like to connect? Are there any research projects I can?t afford to miss? Thanks a lot in advance! Best -- Dr. Stephan G. Humer Research Director, Digital Class University of the Arts Berlin humer(a)udk-berlin.de - stephan(a)humer.de Phone: +49 (0)176 6719 3413 - www.humer.de

2 1

Cryptically titled book
by Christine Hine 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

I am mailing with a piece of fairly shameless self-promotion - and a question attached. This is the first anniversary of publication of a book which I now totally wish I had called something different and more obvious. I think the book has relevance to some of the AOIR community, and I'm hoping some list members might be able to help me with a question that it leaves me considering. The book is Systematics as Cyberscience: Computers, Change and Continuity in Science (MIT Press, 2008, by Christine Hine )http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11472 . The book happens to be about biologists, but my main aim was to try and look at the specificity of the Internet to particular circumstances of use, and this domain of science is one site to work through that more general argument. I wanted to see how a particular set of people were negotiating a prevailing political climate of belief in the transformative beneficial capacities of new technologies. To do this study I looked at the development of the policy context, and also tried to engage with the embedding of the Internet into an existing set of communication practices, an institutional structure and a material culture. It's this last bit that leaves me with my current question as I'm working with some of the data that didn't make it into the book. Can anyone suggest to me other recent studies which look at shifts from working with material objects to working with their virtual counterparts? I'm thinking, for example, of interviews I have with someone studying classification of fish, who now often turns to an image which preserves living colour, rather than a preserved specimen which is the "actual" fish, but is now often deemed less satisfactory than the image. I have interviews with people who work with pressed plant specimens, negotiating whether to request specimens on loan or work with images online - and sometimes yearning for the days when they were given good quality colour prints to work with rather than being expected to work off the screen. I'm interested in the transformation of practices of working with material objects as virtual versions come along, and the accompanying respecification of the objects themselves. Can anyone think of parallel examples in other fields of working practice - and recommend published studies that describe them? Maybe there are examples from medicine - anywhere else? Any studies describing the working practices of artists in digital media? Best wishes, Christine Christine Hine Department of Sociology University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK c.hine(a)surrey.ac.uk http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/christine_hine.htm

1 0

Hypertext 2009: 2nd CfP
by Andrea Forte 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

=================================== Second Call For Papers Hypertext 2009 The Twentieth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia http://www.ht2009.org/ Torino, Italy, June 29 - July 1, 2009 SCOPE The ACM Hypertext Conference is the main venue for high quality peer-reviewed research on "linking." The Web, the Semantic Web, the Web 2.0, and Social Networks are all manifestations of the success of the link. The Hypertext Conference provides the forum for all research concerning links: their semantics, their presentation, the applications, as well as the knowledge that can be derived from their analysis and their effects on society. Hypertext 2008, held in Pittsburgh, was a real success. The number of submissions and attendees was up, a successful Student Research Competition took place, and a rejuvenated social linking track added new ideas and connections to the traditional core of the conference. IMPORTANT DATES * Technical tracks paper submission deadline: February 2nd, 2009 * Notification to authors: March 16th, 2009 * Camera-ready (final papers to ACM): April 6th, 2009 LOCATION AND DATES Hypertext 2009 will be held from June 29th to July 1st at the Villa Gualino Convention Center, on the hills overlooking Torino. The capital of the Piedmont region, Torino lies at the foot of the Alps, the majestic mountains that hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics. First the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, then one of the European centers of baroque, today Torino is a dynamic city known for its industry, art and culture, sports, research and education, and cuisine. The timing of Hypertext 2009 provides an excellent opportunity to visit Italy in conjunction with the International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization in Trento (UMAP 2009 - http://umap09.fbk.eu/) and the International Workshop and Conference on Network Science in Venice (NetSci 2009 - http://www.netsci09.net/) PROGRAM Hypertext 2009 will feature two stellar keynote speakers: Lada Adamic (University of Michigan) is a noted scholar of social networking and the winner of the 2008 Engelbart Award; Ricardo Baeza-Yates is Vice-President of Yahoo! Research for Europe and Latin America, leading the labs in Spain, Chile, and Israel. The attendees of Hypertext 2009 will also have a chance to experiment with applications mixing real-world data and on-line data. We will deploy active RFID tags in the badges of volunteers and run a data collection platform tracking the real-time relations of physical proximity between the attendees. The data collection and visualization systems will be provided by the SocioPatterns project (http://www.sociopatterns.org) and will expose API methods that allow developers to mash up real-world links between the attendees with other types of linking information from the Web. In the conference technical program, professionals from academia, industry, and the media will present innovative ideas and tools exploiting the broad range of links increasingly connecting people, information, communities, and structures. Research topics will be organized into three tracks: track 1. Information Structure and Presentation (Chairs: Peter Brusilovsky and Cristina Gena) track 2. People, Resources, and Annotations (Chairs: Andreas Hotho and Vittorio Loreto) track 3. Hypertext and Community (Chairs: Mark Bernstein and Antonio Pizzo) TRACK 1: INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND PRESENTATION Chairs: * Peter Brusilovsky, University of Pittsburgh (USA) * Cristina Gena, University of Torino (Italy) The information structure and presentation track represents a multitude of topics, which were traditionally represented at ACM Hypertext Conferences. The track program targets formal study of scholarly, structural, sculptural, spatial, open, dynamic and adaptive or any other type of hypertext (or Web-based Information System). This track also focuses on how hypertext approaches and technologies can be applied to structure and present information in diverse domains, and how hypertext techniques can be exploited in classical and advanced applications. The aim of this track is to bring researchers together to discuss models, architecture, applications, properties, or theory in general, about hypertext and hypermedia. Topics for consideration include: * Hypertext models * Spatial hypertext * Information structuring * Hypertext and knowledge management * Self-organized hypertext * Personal information organization * Intelligent hypertext and link generation * Navigation support * Open hypertext * Web and hypertext link analysis * Dynamic and adaptive hypertext * Hypertext and web engineering * Interfaces and interaction with hypertexts * Faceted browsing * Social navigation * Hypertexts supporting Web-based collaboration * Hypertext and recommender systems: the role of link in recommendations * Hypertext applications in everyday devices (TV, mobile phone, on board car service, etc.) * Educational hypertext and hypermedia * User evaluations of hypertext application * Hypertext and cultural heritage * E-books, kiosks, e-commerce, e-tourism * Hypertext application in medical and health systems For additional information on the track and the Program Committee, please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track1.php TRACK 2: PEOPLE, RESOURCES, AND ANNOTATIONS Chairs: * Andreas Hotho, University of Kassel (Germany) * Vittorio Loreto, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) One of the most exciting recent developments in Web science is the rise of social annotation, by which users can easily markup other authors' resources via collaborative mechanisms such as tagging, filtering, voting, editing, classification, and rating. These social processes lead to the emergence of many types of links between texts, users, concepts, pages, articles, media, and so on. We welcome submissions on design, analysis, and modeling of information systems driven by social linking. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: * Applications to search, retrieval, recommendation, and navigation * Explicit vs. inferred social links (e.g. mining query logs) * Integration of different social networks (e.g. links between blogs and bookmarking systems) * Socially induced measures of similarity, relatedness, or distance * Co-evolution of social, information, and semantic networks * Analysis of the structure and the dynamics of social information networks * Behavioral patterns of social linking * Linguistic analysis of social annotation spaces * Formal and generative models of social annotation * Unstructured vs. structured social knowledge representations * Implementation and scalability of social link representations * Automatic and user-based evaluation * Emergent semantics in social networks * Robustness against spam and other forms of social abuse * Design of collaborative annotation mechanisms * Critical mass and incentives of social participation (e.g. games) * User interfaces for collaborative annotation For additional information on the track and the Program Committee, please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track2.php TRACK 3: HYPERTEXT AND COMMUNITY Chairs: * Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, Inc. (UK) * Antonio Pizzo, University of Torino (Italy) The Hypertext and Community track will explore, examine, and reflect upon social cyberculture in electronic media, ranging from literary fiction and creative scholarship to blog and microblog networks, social sites, games, auctions, and markets. Topics will include: * Hypertext literature * Theory and practice of expression in wikis, weblogs, and social spaces * Personal journals, weblogs, and social media * Net art, literary hypertext, interactive fiction, and games * Behavioral patterns of social linking For additional information on the track and the Program Committee, please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track3.php SUBMISSIONS Papers must report new results substantiated by experimentation, simulation, analysis, or application. Authors are invited to submit papers presenting original, not previously published works. Submission categories may include regular research papers (max 10 pages) discussing mature work, and short papers (max 5 pages) describing preliminary results of on-going work or novel thought-provoking ideas. All submissions should be formatted according to the official ACM SIG proceedings template (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) and submitted via EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ht2009) Accepted papers will appear in the Hypertext 2009 Conference Proceedings and also be available through the ACM Digital Library. DEMOS AND INDUSTRIAL SESSION Technical demonstration of new tools and innovative applications of hypertext are solicited. One-page demo descriptions, including a list of any required supporting equipment, should be sent to by e-mail to Giancarlo Ruffo, Demo Chair (ruffo(a)di.unito.it) Important Demos Dates: * March 30th, 2009: Submission of proposals * April 15th, 2009: Notification to proposers * June 29th, 2009: Demo day WORKSHOPS ACM Hypertext 2009 will be running at least two workshops, taking place on the 29th of June before the start of the main conference. The purpose of the workshops is to provide a more informal setting where participants can exchange ideas on a focused topic and suggest directions for future research. As such, they also offer a good opportunity for (young) researchers to present their work and to obtain feedback from an interested community. Further information on accepted workshops will be found on the conference website. ORGANIZATION GENERAL CO-CHAIRS: Ciro Cattuto (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Giancarlo Ruffo (University of Torino) PROGRAM CHAIR: Filippo Menczer (Indiana University) WORKSHOPS CO-CHAIRS: Santo Fortunato (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Rossano Schifanella (University of Torino) TREASURER: Roberto Palermo (ISI Foundation, Torino)

1 0

Re: [Air-L] Social Engineering/Social Hacking anyone?
by Imam Ardhianto 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

Dear Stephen I'm also interested with this topic. I've been writing my undergraduate thesis about the methodological implication of researching hacking issues with ethnography approach. The major issues arrive are the disappearing of social co-presence and the emerging form of identity multiplicity when we interviewing. Beside, I'm also found the difficulties to clarified a category of virtual social space, such as hackers forum. 2009/1/13 Stephan Humer <stephan.humer(a)web.de>: > Hello everybody. > > Social Engineering is one of my research topics, but > unfortunately a neglected one. It would be great to > change this situation, so I´d love to get in touch with > people who are also working on Social Engineering/Social > Hacking issues. Are there any researchers out there > who´d like to connect? Are there any research projects > I can´t afford to miss? > > Thanks a lot in advance! > > Best > > -- > Dr. Stephan G. Humer > Research Director, Digital Class > University of the Arts Berlin > humer(a)udk-berlin.de - stephan(a)humer.de > Phone: +49 (0)176 6719 3413 - www.humer.de > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ -- Imam Ardhianto Research Associate Center of Anthropology Studies University of Indonesia Depok, West Java, Indonesia imam.ardhianto(a)gmail.com (021) 78887749 085692493274

1 0

Re: [Air-L] Social Engineering/Social Hacking anyone?
by Julia Pellicciaro 14 Jan '09

14 Jan '09

Viele Gruesse Dr. Humer: I'm not quite sure which angle you are coming from when you speak of social engineering, but I am a bit familiar with the (non-malicious) hacker scene and would say that it is definitely one worth investigating. I would start here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/09/berlin_hacker_spaces_1.html http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hacker_Spaces A good friend of mine is the co-principal of The Hacktory ( http://www.thehacktory.org) here in Philadelphia and orchestrated an international Hackerspaces call-in in November. I believe Chaos ( http://www.ccc.de/) in Berlin was one of the participating hacker spaces. You can view the blog entry about the call-in here: http://industrialsomething.org/?p=219 One social engineering (a.k.a. geek–?) phenomena from the 1980s that is being revived by the hacker scenes in Philadelphia and in New York is the live performance of chiptunes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiptunes) by means of hacked/repurposed Nintendo Gameboys. Without fail, these shows are always accompanied by 8-bit VJing (http://www.waitforvblank.com/ & http://www.no-carrier.com/) Philly's 8static crew (8static.com) were major players in the recent Blip Festival in New York ( http://blipfestival.org/2008/) This may not be the kind of thing you were looking for, but most of these people do work as some type of engineer by day and play hacker by night/weekend. It is a fascinating (and friendly!) scene, and I'm sure the hacker scene in Berlin has just as much to offer. Feel free to email me off-list if you would like more information. Alles gute, Julia Pellicciaro Philadelpia, PA -- tweet :: twitter.com/juropel blog :: telluricaesthetic.net <http://blog.telluricaesthetic.net> /* Passion. Purpose. Integrity. */ Only the curious will learn, only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The Quest Quotient has always excited me more than the Intelligence Quotient. —Eugene S. Wilson

1 0

Fw: [cultstud-l] ethnography conference, University of Leeds
by Rhiannon Bury 13 Jan '09

13 Jan '09

Hey AOIR people I've been looking at this CFP from another list and was thinking it could be fun to team up with someone here who does ethnographic research on online communities and do a presentation virtual ethnography and study of living cultures. We've certainly raised some of the key issues on this list over the years: public vs private observation vs text analysis, etc, etc. It's a short time frame, so might suit s/o already based in the UK? Email me off list if you're interested. Rhiannon Bury rbury(a)athabascau.ca ----- Forwarded Message ---- The Institute of Communications Studies (ICS) and the Media Industries Research Centre (MIRC <https://outlook.leeds.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ics.leeds.ac.u…> ) at the University of Leeds invite papers for a 1½-day conference: Living Cultures - Contemporary Ethnographies of Culture Date: Monday March 30 (pm) 2009, Tuesday March 31 (full day) 2009 Location: The University of Leeds, UK Keynote speakers: Professor Les Back (Professor, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London), author of The Art of Listening (2007) and New Ethnicities and Urban Culture: Racisms and Multiculture in Young Lives (1996) Professor Georgina Born (Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music, University of Cambridge), author of Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC (2004) and Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (1995) Conference theme: The ever-increasing importance of the cultural to the social brings with it a vital need to investigate the processes implicated in contemporary meaning making, symbolic consumption, production and mediation. Recent scholarship from across the social sciences has sought to take up this challenge by examining the multifariousness of cultural materials-in-use, continuities and ruptures in the production/consumption of culture, the expanded purview of cultural policy and the effects of an expanding 'cultural economy'. Through its careful attention to the irreducibility of human experience, ethnography has revealed an enduring ability to usefully intervene in debates within these arenas, making explorations into culture and cultural practice a quasi-specialism of ethnographic study. Yet how might 21st century ethnography better attune itself to the opportunities and challenges implied by attempts to understand contemporary culture and cultural experience 'from the inside'? Indeed, what limitations or boundaries are implied by efforts to study different cultural practices through ethnography and what might this mean for ethnography's contribution to social theory? Contributions are invited from ethnographers willing to reflect on such questions and to share the methodological, substantive and theoretical insights gleaned, as well as the problems encountered, in the course of their own ethnographies of culture. The conference should be of interest to scholars and particularly ethnographers from within sociology and social policy, media and communications studies, cultural studies, social/cultural anthropology and other allied disciplines. Proposal deadline: abstracts (250 words max) should be sent, by Tuesday 20th January 2009, to the organising committee at: email: ics-conferences(a)leeds.ac.uk <mailto:ics-conferences@leeds.ac.uk> or mail to: Dr Eleri Pound, Living Cultures Conference, Institute of Communications Studies, 16 Clarendon Place, The University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK Organising committee: Dr Mark Rimmer (convenor), Professor David Hesmondhalgh, Dr Chris Paterson, Dr Eleri Pound, Anna Zoellner, all of the Media Industries Research Centre, University of Leeds.

1 0

Most popular news sites worldwide
by Elad Segev 13 Jan '09

13 Jan '09

Dear AIR-ers, I am currently designing a cross-national comparative study based on the most popular online news sources around the world. Does anyone know of a good source ranking the most popular news sites in different countries (other than Alexa)? Particularly, if you are from Japan, China, Germany, France, Spain, the UK, Iran or Egypt, I would be very interested to know what are the most popular news sites in your country. Many thanks! Elad Segev (e.segev(a)keele.ac.uk) _______________________________ Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice Keele University, Staffs ST5 5BG

3 2

AoIR 11.0: Request for Site Proposals
by Mia Consalvo 13 Jan '09

13 Jan '09

++apologies for multiple posts++ hi all, Happy New Year! As you return to classes and work, please consider the following request, for hosting either AoIR 2010 or 2011. Please email me offlist (consalvo -at- ohio.edu) for more details on what would be needed for a proposal, and if you are considering submitting one. Best, Mia Request for Proposals The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) invites proposals from individuals and institutions interested in serving as the host site for Internet Research 11.0 or 12.0, the AoIR annual conferences for 2010 and 2011 respectively. The AoIR Internet Research conferences are among the most important venues for bringing together current research and reflection from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives - with a marked accent on interdisciplinary approaches - on the multiple social and technological practices that depend upon and shape the Internet. IR 11.0 will mark the start of the second decade of AoIR conferences. We look forward to an intellectually stimulating conference, and one that, in keeping with the distinctive spirit and hospitality of AoIR, will also be a heck of a good time ... (Previous conference cities: Lawrence, Kansas (2000); Minneapolis, Minnesota (2001); Maastricht, the Netherlands (2002); Toronto, Canada (2003); Brighton, U.K. (2004); Chicago, Illinois (2005); Brisbane, Australia (2006); Vancouver, Canada (2007); Copenhagen, Denmark (2008); and upcoming, Milwaukee (2009)). We ask interested colleagues to review the following general proposal requirements. Colleagues and institutions who would like to pursue developing a proposal are encouraged to contact Mia Consalvo (consalvo(a)ohio.edu) and/or Charles Ess (cmess(a)drury.edu) to indicate your interest and raise any immediate questions, etc., that you may wish to discuss. We will also be happy to send you a far more detailed Conference Planning Guide for your review and use. We would ask that a proposal address the following elements: DATES. AoIR conferences typically take place in early-to-mid-October - but depending only local calendars and requirements, we can be somewhat flexible regarding conference timing (i.e., from late September to late October). The AoIR conference typically runs over four days, beginning with 1) an initial day for pre-conference workshops and possible excursions. 2) the program proper, which runs over 3 days. Each day has 6 programmed sessions which require space. Of the 6 each day, three are sessions for papers, panels and roundtables, which require 8 parallel rooms. The remaining three include times for keynote presentations, the AoIR general meeting, Birds of a Feather sessions, etc. (The IR 8.0 / 2007 Program may be downloaded for review: <http://www.sfu.ca/~smith/AOIR-Program-OCT16.pdf<http://www.sfu.ca/%7Esmith/AOIR-Program-OCT16.pdf> >) LOCATION / TRAVEL / VENUE. AoIR members and conference participants are a diverse, international community: conference venues should be easily accessible from international travel hubs. Travel possibilities from international arrival points to accommodations (see below) and conference venue should be convenient and inexpensive. AoIR conferences typically attract 250-400 participants. Hence, there is need for one large auditorium that can comfortably hold ca. 300 people (or more), plus at least 6 smaller rooms for parallel sessions - as well as for requisite infrastructure (AV, wireless, computers and data projectors,etc.) (These may be at a host University and/or in the area (e.g., conference centers, a hotel, etc.) for the conference itself.) ECOLOGY / SUSTAINABILITY We encourage proposals that take into account the ecological impacts of conference arrangements (e.g., preferences for sustainable choices re. conference materials, catering arrangements, distances and travel possibilities, etc.) BUDGET - a _rough_ estimate of local costs, using the outline provided in the planning document sent out upon request. An economically viable conference will also require some level of local / regional / national sponsorships. Suggestions regarding e.g., possible grants, in-kind contributions, potential corporate sponsors, etc. would be helpful. ACCOMMODATIONS and related infrastructure. This should include information about a proposed conference hotel, whether or not it will serve as a conference venue (e.g., in Vancouver, we did _not_ use a hotel as the venue) - as well as information about alternative possibilities, including modest to low-cost possibilities, so far as these are available. CATERING - coffee/tea breaks + conference banquet LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: the Committee and its Chair are responsible for these and other important details (e.g., local registration process, accounting and documenting expenses and credits in the conference budget, etc.) and ensuring that "everything is in place" prior to and through the conference itself. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION - anything else that you think will enhance the conference experience. For example, host venues commonly organize one or more "getaways" that make local highlights easily accessible to conference participants. FOR OUR PART - AoIR will provide a great deal of assistance and direction, including registration and collection of conference fees through the AoIR website; recruiting a Program Chair who will take primary responsibility for soliciting papers and reviewers, oversee the reviewing and notification process, etc. (Organizationally, the Local Organizing Committee works with the Program Chair and AoIR Vice-President and President, who serve as liaisons with the AoIR Executive Committee.) We clearly recognize that hosting an AoIR IR conference is no small task. But as previous conference organizers and local committees will tell you - it is also a highly rewarding experience! Charles and I look forward to receiving your inquiries and proposals. -- Mia Consalvo, Ph.D. School of Media Arts & Studies (formerly the School of Telecommunications) Ohio University 9 South College Street Athens, Ohio 45701 USA 740.597.1521

1 0