Yes well, there has been for some time a push to standardize things, while allowing some freedom. The two axes seem to sway a bit, but one thing that I've found when the pragmatics of real labor are dropped at someone's foot, things do tend to get simpler. Personally, I support a standard format for the conference, much like we have now, where we'd then only have a program chair and locations would just be chosen by either the executive committee, or a committee based on guidelines that are similar the north america/not north america division we seem to be practicing now. the goal is of course to remove the work of the conferences, so that we can free up labor to do things that are also of interest to the association members. On Jun 29, 2010, at 2:06 PM, Alex Halavais wrote:
This is very helpful. Clearly, we need to steal Susan Patton (kidding!). We've been doing it largely with volunteer labor, and are on the cusp of bringing in someone salaried to do--among other things--much of this work. I become president of the Association next year, and so have all sorts of grand plans. Of course, I'm sure all of my predescessors did as well...
Thanks again,
Alex
Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Political Science Virginia Tech Information Ethics Fellow Center for Information Policy Research Everything you can imagine is real. --Pablo Picasso