August 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 AoIR bylaws have been revised to make them better reflect the shape the organization has taken. They are available on the members web site for review and comment, and will be made available generally for review and comment. Please look them over at your earliest convenience. Our next election will operate under them. Speaking of which... 2.1.2. AoIR elections are also upcoming, and the call for nominations will issued soon. Remember that only members who have their dues paid up are eligible for nomination, to vote, etc. 2.1.3. Without stealing anyone else's thunder, because the credit is all theirs, we have made tremendous progress over the past couple of months. The members web site has undergone a major overhaul thanks to Jeremy Hunsinger, the conference program and planning under the auspices of Leslie Shade and John Logie are going swimmingly, Nancy Baym has continued to work with publishers to secure member discounts to journals, Charlie Breindahl has assisted with air-l and web-related matters, and while I could go on and on I suspect there are many others who have helped AoIR of whom I'm unaware -- thank you all for your efforts! More information about these follows below, and has been posted to the web site. 2.1.4. I'd also like to thank all those who have been posting to air-l of late, particularly those who have provided some excellent suggestions about things we can do with the web site. And I'd like to add my $.02 that we continue with only one air-l for the time being. One of the wonderful, albeit not very easy, things about last year's conference was simply listening to people from different disciplines talk to one another and come up with translations, if you will, for conversing about Internet research. I learned a lot by lurking at the conference, in a sense. Most disciplinary associations end up sub-dividing themselves to the point that there's very little such interaction. With the conferences we've divided panels by theme/topic, so some division does occur. And of course people do tend to flock together, and I suspect there's some "flocking" off-list. To me, it's a sign of interest and vitality that we can accommodate as diverse a group as we are. And it's a sign of the collegiality and professionalism of all those on air-l that we've made it a relatively low-traffic, high-info and flame-free list. Someday we may end up with multiple lists (or threads on the web site, or...), but I, for one, will stay subscribed to air-l, and hope that it will continue to be the "melting pot" of interests that it has become. 2.2 Vice President (Baym) 2.2.1 No report. 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: Created new membership management system, new members portal system, replaced static pages. It has news sections for: research news job announcements conference announcements etc. Web site now has: a calendar a synchronous chat system an asynchronous chat system a faq system a glossary system a polling system a members listing Members should feel free to use it at your leisure as you see fit. It is not anonymous. Ported information on old members page to new members system. Helped John, Leslie, Charlie 2.8.2 Breindahl: I have taken part in the bylaws revision and the aoir.org members area discussion. In the next couple of months, I will try to devote more time to supplying content to the members area. 2.9 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator and Leslie Shade, Program Chair) 2.9.1 Logie: I'm pleased that, according to Jeremy, we're now fifteen days ahead of last year's schedule. The conference web pages are at http://aoir.org/2001/program.htm et seq. Leslie will also be sending out a mass e-mail shortly to alert folks to the program's availability. Registration is strong to date. We have 80 registrants. 2.9.2 Shade: (See above.) 2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.10.1 : The group is concluding its discussion of a case study provided by Malin Svenningson and the "Guidelines for research ethics in the social sciences, law and the humanities" recently released by the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH - Norway) <http://www.etikkom.no/NESH/guidelines.htm>. Members of the committee attending the aoir conference in Minneapolis this October will meet the evening of October 9 to finalize their comments to the conference and plan for subsequent work.