June 15, 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. The executive committee is working on a revision to the AoIR bylaws to make them better reflect the shape the organization has taken. We will, of course, share the proposed revisions with the membership, ask for comment, etc. This is an important matter. We have been operating under essentially "draft" bylaws. I encourage your participation and discussion of the revisions when they are posted. 2. Along with that revision I have asked the executive committee to draft new descriptions of their roles, now that they've had some time to work in them, in advance of upcoming AoIR elections. 3. An important point follows, which is that since we are now a paid membership organization, and according to the bylaws, only members who have their dues paid up at the time of a vote are in fact eligible to vote. 4. There is planning afoot for the 2002 and 2003 conferences, and I hope to have an announcement soon about those. 5. For those of you keeping score... :-) As of a couple of weeks ago on air-l there are 773 people. There are 358 paid members including people from AoIR 1.0 whose membership was included in the registration for the conference. 279 of those expire on October 1. We have 79 members who paid apart from AoIR 1.0. 2.2 Vice President (Baym) 2.2.1 We (Ben Bates, Steve Jones, and I) met in DC [SJ note - at the International Communication Association meeting] where we discussed the upcoming elections, bylaws revisions, and a few other lesser topics. No decisions were made. The two are somewhat interdependent, since election procedures and elected positions are set forth in the bylaws. I have been trying to get and keep some of this discussion going. 2.3 Secretary (Stoner) 2.3.1 Nothing to report. 2.4 Treasurer (Shrum - interim, Bates) 2.4.1 Shrum: No report. 2.4.2 Bates: Will get back to work after research trip to NZ for the next month or so. 2.4.3 S. Jones addendum: As you may recall Ben was on a Fulbright to Finland the past year. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Wes Shrum for standing in, particularly during the conference in Kansas, and helping us out. 2.5 Open Seats (Kolko, Cubitt) 2.5.1 Kolko: No report. 2.5.2 Cubitt: Nothing to report. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Witmer, Sudweeks) 2.6.1 Witmer: Nothing to report. 2.6.2 Sudweeks: Nothing to report. 2.7 Student Seat (Williams) 2.7.1 No report. 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: Everything seems to be going smoothly on the server. I'm in preparation to upgrade several things in the members only section. I just received Manuel Castells' keynote back on two cdroms. I should be making that stream soon, but it is currently not compressed as much as it could be, so I have to do that also. I think other than that we're good. John is generating some bios for this year's keynotes, once we have those we'll put those up. I may be migrating the conference material and picture archives over to the aoir server sometime soon also. 2.8.2 Breindahl: No report. 2.9 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator and Leslie Shade, Program Chair) 2.9.1 Logie: As of today, June 15th, there are 29 registrants for the conference. We expect a significant spike in registrations in the coming weeks, as scheduling within the conference is finalized. Roughly half of the registrants have "opted in" for the Friday night dinner. We will continue to monitor registrations and evaluate whether the dinner is beyond the means of a significant number of registrants. U of MN's Professional Education and Conference Planning department has produced a detailed timeline for their share of the conference responsibilities. Meanwhile, I have been working on five core issues: 1) Formalizing arrangements with D'Amico, caterer for the Thursday night reception; 2) Establishing a working relationship with local bookseller Ruminator Books to handle the book exhibit room. 3) Working with the local Apple representative to maintain the high standard of technical support found at IR 1.0 4) Revising the Conference webpages to answer still more frequently asked questions and to provide more information about our keynoters. 5) Locating additional space for the conference should the number of confirmed continue to outpace the totals for IR 1.0. I had hoped for #4 (the revised site) to be up and running by today, but it now seems clear the task will extend into the weekend. Look for the revised site Monday. 2.9.2 Shade: Paper and panel acceptances have been sent out in May and I am doing an e-mail follow-up, this next week, for those folks that haven't responded as to whether or not they're coming. Then the jig-saw of putting together the panels starts. Meanwhile, summer's here and I'm taking advantage of that. 2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.10.1 No report.