Sam: On Oct 26, 2006, at 12:24 PM, Sam Tilden wrote:
Et Al,
Who were the orginal organizers of AOIR?
The story's been told in a couple of different places, including in the first AoIR Research Annual, but, in short...the idea for it came at a conference at Drake University (thank you Thom Swiss, Andrew Herman, and all of the attendees) in 1998. Greg Elmer, Stefan Wray and I were the ones who sort of "decided" that there should be an association. Greg and Stefan were both grad students at the time (or it may be that Greg had just earned his Ph.D., I can't quite recall at the moment, sorry Greg!) so as the more "senior" (I don't know why I put that in quotes, I expect I'm "senior" to them in age, perhaps I don't want to admit it) person I more or less took it upon myself to get the ball rolling. At the NCA conference that year about a dozen people (including Nancy Baym) got together for what might be called "the first AoIR organizational meeting" I suppose. But, IMHO, everyone who joined the AoIR email list prior to the first conference in 2000 is in some way an "original organizer," and so far as I'm concerned anyone and everyone who puts their shoulder to the wheel is an AoIR organizer, no matter the task (so long as it's related to the association in some way or another).
Was there a diad?
Nope.
If so who were they?
Who is the single most important person? (not necessarily the current leadership)
This is a really difficult question. Of course I wouldn't count anyone in the current leadership, though it might not be erroneous to consider that President Bush is probably quite important, for better or worse. It also isn't clear quite what the dimensions of "importance" are. I could approach it from the standpoint of science, but there are so many luminaries, and even if I were to constrain myself to living people...Hawking...Tarter...Wong- Staal...Dawkins...there are too many. I could approach from a spiritual standpoint but that's probably even more difficult than from science. I could think about it in terms of family but there's more than one family member and they're all most important. So, I'm stumped. Unless, of course, you mean this in terms of the original organization of AoIR, in which case...I guess it would have to be me. (Alas, poor hubris, I know you well.) Sj