October 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: Ulla Bunz (Matt Stoner, outgoing) Treasurer: Benjamin Bates (Wes Shrum, outgoing Interim Treasurer) Open Seats: David Silver and Barry Wellman (Beth Kolko and Sean Cubitt, outgoing) Appointed Seats: Matthew Allen and Leslie Shade (Diane Witmer and Fay Sudweeks, outgoing) Student Seat: Lisbeth Klastrup (Matt Williams, outgoing) Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl 2002 Conference Coordinator: Monica Murero Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess 2001 Conference Coordinator: John Logie 2001 Conference Program Chair: Leslie Shade 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 Well, we had a conference, didn't we?! The reason I put it that way is that I am still ever so slightly disbelieving that we pulled it off under the circumstances, and that we pulled it off two years in a row. But the truth is that from my perspective and from that of many conference-goers it went off without a hitch. Now, whether John Logie and Leslie Shade think it went that way I can't be sure! I saw them both running around constantly making sure that we would have a great conference, and to them I and the members of AoIR and conference attendees are enormously indebted, as we are to the myriad people who assisted (not least of which includes conference participants - thank you for turning out and attending!). 2.1.2 While on the topic of conferences, planning is now well under way for next year's conference in Maastricht, and has begun for the 2003 conference in Toronto. I encourage all of you to join in and present your research, review submissions, etc. Further information will be provided shortly in the form of calls for participation. 2.1.3 On a different topic, allow me to thank all those who voted in our elections, and all who stood for election. The energy and effort people are devoting to AoIR is steadily increasing, to my delight. I'm pleased to be able to serve another term as president, and while it will be my final term, I'm absolutely confident given the aforementioned energy and effort that the association will be in good hands for a long time to come. 2.1.4 I have invited each officer to provide a report, including the ones who are leaving the executive committee (with particular thanks to them for their work for AoIR). We are all looking forward to working together the next couple of years, and hope that we can create opportunities for you to join us and assist us. As ever, we are an open association, and if you have any questions, please feel free to direct them to any of us. 2.2 Vice President (Baym) 2.2.1 I want to take a quick line or four and say thank you to everyone who cared enough to vote. We had a real glut of excellent candidates for the board, and I am excited to have such a diverse and energetic group together for the next two years. I've been offering my assistance to the coordinators of the next two years' conferences and enjoying discussing the association and its aims with the new members of the executive committee and those conference attendees I got the chance to speak with. It has been a while since we discussed membership benefits on air-l, and our membership's needs may have grown or changed or been reprioritized as aoir has grown and evolved, so we need to assess the kinds of benefits we should add as we grow. I want to encourage anyone with ideas about what they wish this association could do to share them with me. At some point, this question will get somewhat more formalized with surveys and what not, but in the meantime, please help brainstorm: what are the very best things this association could do for you to improve your life as an internet researcher? 2.3 Secretary (Bunz) 2.3.1 A posting of the minutes from the executive committee meeting in Minneapolis is forthcoming. 2.4 Treasurer (Bates) 2.4.1 Thanks to Steve Jones for preparing the interim Treasurer's Report. When the mechanics get transferred over, I'll start regular reports on memberships and finances. 2.5 Open Seats (Silver, Wellman) 2.5.1 Silver: Bringing myself up to speed with respect to Board duties, conference planning, the ins-and-outs of the AoIR bylaws, etc. Brainstorming with Jeremy Hunsinger a collaboration between AoIR and the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies to provide a dynamic and searchable syllabus archive. Proposing with Matt Allen an annotated list of mailing lists devoted to Internet Studies. Soaking in all I heard and learned at 2.0. 2.5.2 Wellman: No report. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Allen, Shade) 2.6.1 Allen: I am delighted and honoured to have been appointed to the AoIR executive committee. Coming from Australia, I can confirm that Internet research and studies is wonderfully global and I will be focusing, in 2002, on assisting the development of AoIR via membership and conference attendance from Australia. One exciting development downunder is the ::fibreculture:: list - a list designed to increase the debate around internet and similar issues in Australia, fusing both practitioners and researchers within a national context. Its first conference will be held in December at which I hope to spread the word about AoIR. To find out more about me and the program I run visit http://smi.curtin.edu.au/internet 2.6.2 Shade: Nothing to report. 2.6.3 Sudweeks: Nothing to report, but I would like to thank AoIR for the opportunity of serving on the committee and wish you every success. I'm happy to assist in any way I can in the future. 2.7 Student Seat (Klastrup) 2.7.1 I am new member of the commitee and look much forward to collaborating with the great people in the commitee. I work as a phd.student at the IT University at Copenhagen, Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication (DIAC). Currently I am a visiting scholar at University of Bergen and in collaboration with ph.d. student Jill Walker of University of Bergen, organising a seminar "Cyber.*" to be held at the University of Bergen, October 24 &25th 2001. The seminar is an informal gathering of phd.students and researchers in the Nordic countries, working with various aspects of cyber.life and aesthetics. Games, gender, learning, IT-rhetorics are among topics presented. If any A.i.R members happen to be in Norway at this time, please feel free to stop by! http://cmc.uib.no/jill/seminar/index.html 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: Nothing to report. 2.8.2 Breindahl: The pre-conference workshop "Critical Choices in Web Research Design" went really well. The effort is going to continue in the members area and I will be taking part as a kind of topic editor. I really enjoyed IR 2.0. The diversity is amazing - from spoken words to online surveys. 2.9 2002 Conference (Monica Murero, Coordinator) 2.9.1 Murero: I'd like to start my contribution with simple but basic information, which is next year conference's dates: 13 October (Sunday) pre-conference workshop 14-16 October 2001: AoIR 3.0 conference 2.10 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator) 2.10.1. We had a big honkin' conference that a lot of people seemed to enjoy. Almost everything seemed to work. The technology room buzzed. Presentations flowed. Food was tasty. The hotel was capacious and reasonably comfortable. Final tallies are still unavailable. My guesstimates are: 300 attendees. Close to 200 presentations At least 60 no-shows half of whom offered no notice, and some of whom had not paid their conference fees. I now begin the process of settling the conference accounts. The preliminary picture is good, but the bottom line has been damaged by the number of no-shows. The conference is likely still in the black, but not nearly as far as it ought to be. I will be drafting a "lessons learned" (positive and negative) for future organizers. But for the moment, I wish to reiterate my verbal and program-based thanks to those who helped make this year's conference happen. The comments I'm receiving suggest that our hard work resulted in a conference which merited the effort it took to travel halfway around the globe, or even from Eau Claire. Those who contributed should feel very proud. 2.11 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.11.1 Eight members of the ethics working committee met for the first time face-to-face on Tuesday, October 9, prior to the aoir 2.0 conference. Our conversations proved what is now a truism: online discussions are indispensable - especially for a group of 21 people scattered across the globe - but we got more done in five minutes of conversation with one another sitting at the same table than we would have accomplished across several days of e-mail (a rough quote from committee member Amy Bruckman). These conversations allowed us to substantially improve on a draft version of the report originally circulated via e-mail. The report is now online at http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.html. We hope the report is clear both about what we've accomplished - and what remains to be done. In particular, the report emphasizes a number of caveats about our modest first efforts at recommending guiding values for Internet research. As well, the report foregrounds the many _differences_ between traditional Human Subjects research and research conducted online, and some of the ethical consequences of those differences, including specific examples of arguable exceptions in Internet research to the general guidelines for Human Subjects research. The report will be updated in light of additional study and discussion over the coming year. We will ask committee members to develop and oversee discussion of a specific case-study, beginning with Brenda Danet's suggestions for ethical guidelines based on her recent research and experiences (included in the report as an addendum). Aoir members are encouraged to send their responses (including criticisms and counterexamples) to our report to the chair, Charles Ess <cmess@drury.edu>. We welcome your thoughts and comments as we continue to struggle with the ethical difficulties posed by new technologies.