April 19, 2003 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 Treasurer: Benjamin Bates Open Seats: David Silver and Barry Wellman Appointed Seats: Matthew Allen and Leslie Shade Student Seat: Lisbeth Klastrup Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl 2003 Conference Chair: Liss Jeffrey 2003 Conference Program Co-Chairs: Matthew Allen and David Mitchell Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess Elections Working Group Chair: Mia Consalvo Net Resources Working Group Chair: Charlie Breindahl 1. Introduction & General (Jones) Below is the monthly report from AoIR executive committee members. If you aren't reading this...well, you ought to be. I know it can get lengthy, and it can get detailed, but it's the single best way to know what AoIR is up to, and to find ways to get involved with it (in any number of ways from contacting the people who report to volunteering to work on something you see mentioned to making suggestions to...). 2. Executive Officers' Reports 2.1 President (Jones) 2.1.1 The proposed dues increase passed the AoIR membership with 108 votes "yes" (86%) and 17 votes "no" (14%). I greatly appreciate the votes and have engaged in email dialogue with several members concerning the difficulty of keeping up memberships in multiple organizations, rising costs, benefits vs. costs, graduate student concerns over rising fees, etc. But as one member put it, "this is the only way to grow into a scholarly organization." AoIR is still in its infancy, and without financial support it will not get much farther, so the early support that its members are providing is one of the cornerstones of the foundation on which its future will indeed be built. Another cornerstone is participation. Elections are upcoming for AoIR executive offices. A call for nominations will soon be distributed, and I urge you to consider running for office. Yet another cornerstone for us has been our annual conference. As I write this I am told that any moment in the next 24 - 48 hours notices of acceptance of conference submissions will be going out. I can quite confidently say after looking at the planning that is going into this conference, at the quality of the submissions, and having stayed at the conference hotel (Toronto Hilton) that this year's conference will continue the AoIR tradition of indelibly memorable meetings. 2.2 Vice President (Baym) 2.2.1 I worked on our pieces for the aoir annual, planning upcoming elections, and future conferences. 2.3 Secretary (Bunz) 2.3.1 I have done my secretarial duties and counted votes in both exec voting procedures and membership voting on the dues increase. I have kept track of various versions of various documents, and participated actively in their evolution. I shipped snow once again last week as we were hit by what will hopefully remain the last storm of this never-ending winter. Ulla Bunz Secretary March 13 - April 15, 2003 This month on the executive list: - The executive committee discussed the revised dues fee structure as proposed by Steve Jones. The executive committee voted unanimously to accept the proposed changes. The fees have since been put to a vote by the membership, which voted (by a large majority) to accept the proposed changes. - We continued a discussion on affiliation or a joint conference with IEEE ISTAS. - The exec provided feedback to program chair Matt Allen on conference program related issues, such as reviewing. - The exec discussed and revised a statement of principles concerning discrimination and harassment. The final version of the statement was unanimously approved by the executive committee and is available on the AoIR website. - The exec began discussing the vote call for the next elections, and election related issues, based on the recommendations of the election workgroup. More information will be made available soon. 2.4 Treasurer (Bates) 2.4.1 Keeping up with memberships, making lists for people, reports for the tax men (thanks Steve for actually doing the filing). 2.5 Open Seats (Silver, Wellman) 2.5.1 Silver: I was involved in early discussions regarding the upcoming elections process. 2.5.2 Wellman: Nothing to report. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Allen, Shade) 2.6.1 Allen: I have been 'programming' the conference, so to speak, coordinating the activities of 60+ reviewers and 16 subchairs (who deserve a big thankyou for their efforts too), and have now completed the first step of the Program Chair's task: selecting the papers and panels to accept and reject. I have also been liaising with the Conference Chair concerning the final shape of the program. 2.6.2 Shade: Worked on introductory section piece for the AOIR Annual with Logie. 2.7 Student Seat (Klastrup) 2.7.1 Nothing to report. (handed in thesis) [Congratulations, Lisbeth!] 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: helped matt with reviewing made sure all the techie stuff with reviewing went well, congrats to the program committee on that process began working on election stuff set up the vote list reset the members list etc. etc. all seems well. 2.8.2 Breindahl: Updated aoir.org - book list and Statement of Principles. Discarded massive amounts of spam. 2.9 2003 Conference (Liss Jeffrey, Chair; Matthew Allen, David Mitchell, Program Co-Chairs) 2.9.1 Dr Liss Jeffrey: The Toronto conference crew is hard at work. We are delighted to confirm the keynote speakers for AoiR 4.0 "Broadening the Band." Lucy Suchman, Pierre Levy, Steve Jones and Jane Fountain have all been invited to deliver substantive and inspiring talks based on their own research, and they have graciously agreed to participate fully in our conference. The conference hotel is the Hilton on Richmond Street West. It is a great spot for networking, and we encourage everyone to stay there (that is how we will obtain the well appointed downstairs conference rooms for our use.) Our official airline is Air Canada. Details on the pre conference workshops, the Saturday night banquet and a possible Sunday brunch will be forthcoming soon. www.ecommons.net/aoir 2.9.2 Mitchell: No report. 2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.10.1 Nothing to report. 2.11 AoIR Research Annual Working Group (Mia Consalvo, Chair) 2.11.1 This month the Research Annual working group finalized submissions from contributors, wrote section introductions, and prepared the manuscript for delivery to the publisher for copy-editing. The volume, titled "Internet Research Annual Volume 1: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conferences 2000-2002" contains 26 chapters, representing the work of 29 Internet scholars. 2.12 AoIR Net Resources Working Group (Charlie Breindahl, Chair) 2.12.1 There has been no activity in the 'Net WG. ------------------------------------end of executive committee report------------------------------ The Association of Internet Researchers is a scholarly association dedicated to the advancement of the cross-disciplinary field of Internet studies. It is a resource and support network promoting critical and scholarly Internet research independent from traditional disciplines and existing across academic borders. The association is international in scope. The association's web site is at http://www.aoir.org. Membership information is available at http://aoir.org/airjoin.html