July 17, 2001 Report of the a(o).i.r. executive committee Prepared by Steve Jones AoIR Executive Committee President: Steve Jones Vice-President: Nancy Baym Secretary: Matt Stoner Treasurer (on leave): Benjamin Bates Interim Treasurer: Wes Shrum Open Seats: Beth Kolko and Sean Cubitt Appointed Seats: Diane Witmer and Fay Sudweeks Student Seat: Matt Williams Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl 2001 Conference Coordinator: John Logie 2001 Conference Program Chair: Leslie Shade Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess 1. Introduction & General (Jones) Below is the monthly report from AoIR executive committee members. 2. Executive Officers' Reports 2.1 President (Jones) 2.1.1. Revision to the AoIR bylaws to make them better reflect the shape the organization has taken are still under way. I am hoping to have proposed revisions ready for general discussion within the next couple of weeks. 2.1.2. AoIR elections are also upcoming, and the call for nominations will go out in the next couple or so weeks, too. Remember that only members who have their dues paid up are eligible for nomination, to vote, etc. 2.2 Vice President (Baym) 2.2.1 I've been adding my two cents on the revised bylaws, conference panel organization, future conference planning, and the wonderful forthcoming site for members that Jeremy has put together. 2.3 Secretary (Stoner) 2.3.1 No report. 2.4 Treasurer (Bates) 2.4.1 No report. 2.5 Open Seats (Kolko, Cubitt) 2.5.1 Kolko: No report. 2.5.2 Cubitt: No report. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Witmer, Sudweeks) 2.6.1 Witmer: Nothing to report. 2.6.2 Sudweeks: No report. 2.7 Student Seat (Williams) 2.7.1 No report. 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: Helped with conference stuff. Made an area on aoir.org for conference stuff so that all aoir.org stuff will be in one place. Helped with bylaws revision. Revised and updated current members website. Began working on a significant upgrade to members section that will go gold in august for the elections. 2.8.2 Breindahl: I have been on holiday for the last three weeks. I'll be trying to catch up over the next three weeks, I guess. :) 2.9 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator and Leslie Shade, Program Chair) 2.9.1 Logie: This months' core accomplishments for the "local team" centered around the near-total revision and expansion of the conference website, now available at http://www.aoir.org/2001. The site was reviewed and enhanced by the critiques of a number of members of the local team, especially Dan Burk and Gretchen Haas. The site now features full biographies for each of the keynoters, improvements to the local and registration pages (with a roommate finder supplied by Jeremy Hunsinger), a new page recognizing conference sponsors, and posting of a tentative program schedule. I also worked with the organizers of a pre-conference workshop entitled "Critical Choices in Web Research Design," to add their effort to the overall arc of the conference. This Wednesday programming can be reviewed at http://aoir.org/2001/workshop.htm. The remainder of the program is the core challenge of the coming hours and days. I, as conference chair, am working very closely with Leslie to match our various panels and presentations with the appropriate rooms at Gateway and Radisson. I contracted for additional space at the Radisson when it became clear that the number of submissions would be high. Room spaces vary dramatically in size, so we are working towards matching anticipated demand for particular sessions with available space. To that end, I am creating a database which, when completed, will greatly streamline the room assignment process. These assignments will be posted to the program page at the AoIR/2001 site as soon as possible. Negotiations with food suppliers are ongoing, but it is clear, based on their estimates, that we should be able to maintain the strong precedents estasblished by Nancy Baym at the first conference. Graduate students and international travelers on tight budgets (as well as the simply hungry) will be able to rely on breakfast foods and snacks provided by AoIR. Core concerns for the coming weeks include stablilization of our arrangement with Apple Computers to maintain the high level of technical support established at AoIR 1.0 and determining whether our assigned book exhibit manager (local bookstore Ruminator Books) will, in fact, be able to successfully handle exhibits for the conference. As of this writing, Ruminator has raised, rather than eliminated concern about its ability to do so. I will be working closely with Ruminator to improve the situation, or working closely with the Minnesota team to develop a viable alternative. 2.9.2 Shade: John and I are working on the panel times and venues. We've already configured the panels, and the schedule should be posted _______?????? 2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.10.1 Elgesem has posted some important comments and questions in conjunction with our linking the recent Guidelines approved by the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH) and (b) Malin Svenningson has provided us with a case study highlighting the arguments for _not_ requiring informed consent and insuring confidentiality in certain kinds of Internet research (primarily chatrooms).