November 17, 2002 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 2002 Conference Coordinator: Monica Murero 2002 Conference Program Chair: Klaus Bruhn Jensen 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 Maastricht was a blast - one more round of thank-yous to Monica, Klaus, and the myriad others who made it happen, as well as the myriad who attended. Next up is the meeting in Toronto, October 16 - 19, 2003. Planning is well under way, and to join in on it here is the information to sign on for the discussion: List-Help: <mailto:air-meet-request@aoir.org?subject=help> List-Post: <mailto:air-meet@aoir.org> List-Subscribe: <http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-meet>, <mailto:air-meet-request@aoir.org?subject=subscribe> List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-meet>, <mailto:air-meet-request@aoir.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://www.aoir.org/pipermail/air-meet/> There are a number of working groups doing their thing, too. For information about what each group is up to please contact the respective working group chair. Note that one of the working groups is helping AoIR come up with a means of streamlining the election process and ensuring representation. Elections will be coming up in a few months, and I'll take this early opportunity to encourage you to consider running for office or serving in some other capacity. Please note too that a "Call for Hosts" was recently issued for AoIR conferences in 2004 and beyond. If you are interested in hosting a future AoIR conference please contact me. 2.2 Vice President (Baym) 2.2.1 I have been doing my small part in the preparations for next year's conference ,planning and working on publicizing the benefits of membership to air-l subscribers and members themselves. <subliminal message> join join join </subliminal message>. and otherwise keeping busy with many ongoing aoir discussions. 2.3 Secretary (Bunz) 2.3.1 Since the fabulous conference in Maastricht, I have written a variety of reports (detailed executive meeting report, summary of executive meeting report, general meeting report) and have shared them with the appropriate audiences, including air-l. I also did a quick country overview and sent an accounting of how many people of what countries participated in the conference (based on the conference listing, which didn't include on site registrants). I have been active on the air-meet list, chirping in on discussions regarding keynoters, scheduling, etc. Finally, I've been contributing to the discussions on air-exec and air-l. Summary October 18 - November 13, 2002 This month on the executive list: . Finalizing of scheduling for an executive committee meeting in April, 2003 . Discussion regarding other listserves connected to the AoIR mission, stimulated by Lisbeth Klastrup's idea to form an AoIR grad student list. Creation, discussion, amendment, and final agreement on criteria such lists would have to fulfill (posted to the website). . Discussion on amending membership fee collection scheduling (i.e., everyone renew at the same time once a year), but decision to stay with current way of doing things (rolling membership). . Conversation about member benefits and access to conference papers (for various reasons pointed out on air-l, papers are available - if presenters provide them - to members only, but everyone is welcome to contact presenters personally and request copies) . Creation and editing of various outreach email messages that will be posted to air-l and members on a regular basis . Discussion about possibly instituting a research annual out of selected AoIR conference papers. More information will be made available once final decisions have been made. . In the process of setting up a complaint list. More information available soon. 2.4 Treasurer (Bates) 2.4.1 Nothing to report. 2.5 Open Seats (Silver, Wellman) 2.5.1 Silver: I've been staying busy with participating in various executive committee threads, and taking part in a number of discussions on the conference committee list. 2.5.2 Wellman: Continuing to work on Toronto AoIR conference. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Allen, Shade) 2.6.1 Allen: I have been devoting my time to background preparation for the program at the AoIR conference in Toronto in 2003. I have facilitated some discussion on air-meet about the structure and nature of the program (timing, type of papers etc), and have been greatly impressed by the quality of discussion and the helpful suggestions from all. Over the next month or so, following the release for the Call for Papers, I will be working with co-Chair David Mitchell and the Conference Chair Liss Jeffrey, to finalise arrangements for managing and finalising the program. I will indicate now that soon I will be asking for people who wish to be on the program committee to contact me; I will also be approaching people to be sub-chairs, responsible for areas of internet research that will form part of the program. 2.6.2 Shade: Nothing to report. 2.7 Student Seat (Klastrup) 2.7.1 Participated in discussions on the exec-list and continued networking with the graduate students I met in Maastricht. Currently setting up a graduate student list serv which will be launched very soon. 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: it has been fairly busy month, and I've been working on the lists and web primarily, but I'm also doing some conference things as they come up. I am still receiving papers at papers@aoir.org and am putting them up bi-weekly now. 2.8.2 Breindahl: I still read your e-mail - i.e., I monitor our mailinglists and filter out spam and unwelcome subscribers. I have done very little to improve the usability of aoir.org, mainly because I maintain two-three other sites that need my attention from time to time. One beautiful day, it will happen. 2.9 2002 Conference (Monica Murero, Coordinator; Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Program Chair) 2.9.1 Murero: Thank you all for giving me the chance to chair such a great conference in Maastricht. A fabolous experience! I have received many messages of appreciation and I'd like to thank again each one of you for it, and every single person that has contributed to this success. I am still working on conference related matters and will be happy to contribute to AoIR 's growth in the future. In other words, I'll stay around!!! I'd also like to send my best wishes to the teams that are working on the organization of AoIR 4.0 in Toronto, and in particular to Liss, Barry, Matt, David. All the best and see you soon ! 2.10 2003 Conference (Liss Jeffrey, Chair; Matthew Allen, David Mitchell, Program Co-Chairs) 2.10.1 Jeffrey (with her team: Katherine Parrish, Jason Nolan, Alex Kuskis, and steering committee chair Barry Wellman) 1. We have completed the call for papers draft, with the theme set out and explained in terms of ways IR4.0 will broaden the band of the internet research community and its topics, good input from Matt on review criteria,attention to French papers, to the use of technology to work on technology at the conference, and (Katherine Parrish leading this one) on the inclusion of creative works and presentations. 2. We have continued discussions with the Hilton Hotel, and are working with them as partners so that everyone will want to stay there and use our time most effectively by allowing the happenstance of meeting in the same environment. We are working on the room plan, rough conference program outline, cyber cafe, and other questions. 3. We submitted the Toronto committee list of potential keynotes to Air-Meet (which I convened last month) and have just confirmed the list of our first and second selections in a video conference with David Mitchell (co-program chair) from Calgary. We are very pleased with this list and guarantee that substance will be the order of the day for keynoters. The original suggestion that we had made to invite Steve Jones to be one of the keynotes is repeated and affirmed by all of us. 4. We have an events program in prep, that will include techno-artistic performances and other interventions: a preliminary list of those we have in mind include Steve Mann (Cyborg and Counter-Surveillance), David Rokeby ( major international techno artist), Cory Doctorow, and others.... 5. The SSHRC application went in on November 1st. No idea what the outcome will be , however it certainly consumed one plus days for my busy byDesign eLab and eCommons/Agora project, and I thank my office admin Graig Kent for his support. The Knowledge Media Design Institute at U of Toronto is now our lead organizer (in addition to adjunct faculty, McLuhan Program, I am a senior researcher there) and we thank Barry Wellman (my fellow steering committee member on KMDI) our steering committee chair for all of his support. 6. On Nov. 28 we will hold a volunteers meeting, after we do a visualization of the conference and a divide and conquer session on the activities we now face. The web site will get more advanced later next week <http://www.ecommons.net/aoir> 7. Finally we have plans for pre-conference events, and the Toronto committee welcomes all suggestions and ideas, so that we can start figuring out ways to place people in locations, formalize these events, and add some substantive themes as well as hands on workshops. More to come.... 2.11 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.11.1 The ethics working group has finalized its statement on Internet research ethics, revised in light of both aoir-list comments and comments received during the panel presentation on the statement at AoIR 3.0: please see <http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf>. We are placing the statement before AoIR members for their review and, we hope, their endorsement. Voting will begin soon. We will continue our work in the coming year - in part, by continuing to respond to queries and suggestions from the aoir membership on how to expand and refine the statement and its resources in ways that will be helpful. As always, my thanks to the members of the ethics committee for all their hard work, cooperative and critical discussion, insight and experience. 2.12 AoIR Elections Working Group (Mia Consalvo, Chair) 2.12.1 We are in the process of scheduling a live meeting to wrap things up, and make a final recommendation to the executive board. That should appear by the end of this month. Here's the scoop: --We believe that a better version of the nomination and voting procedure should be written up for our elections. These new procedures and guidelines should be posted to air-l before the procedure begins; they should be available as a document on the aoir web site, and they should also be printed out and available as a handout at aoir conferences. --We also support gathering more information from candidates running for various posts. We suggest having the general membership contribute ideas for questions, which could be general to all categories and/or specific for some (treasurer: how good are you with money?). --We are still debating how candidates are identified. Current ideas being tossed about include: nominations and self-nominations remaining the norm; adding to the above, a nominations committee that would identify potential candidates that have shown excellent service to the organization, but are too shy to self-nominate; finally, going to a system of nominations only by a committee, but this doesn't seem to have wide support as a system. --The voting process: we seem to be in agreement to limiting people to running for only one office-otherwise their votes can get split. Additionally, we are considering a "weighted voting" system. --We are also considering recommending expanding the executive board--particularly in the area of open seats. Alternately, the executive board has proposed (and we are talking about) having an "Advisory Board" that people could (volunteer or be named) to participate on, having more of a say in aoir business, but not burdening the exec board w/too many chefs. --Regarding elections, we are talking about having some sort of "event" for candidates- the idea of a synchronous chat was proposed, but due to our wide geographic boundaries, seems burdensome. Alternately, a specific time period for an asynchronous talk/Q&A has been floated. 2.13 AoIR Net Resources Working Group (Charlie Breindahl, Chair) 2.13.1 The AoIR Net Working Group has been dormant over the summer, but we have recently begun discussion of the future of aoir.org as content management system (audience oriented) or groupware (author oriented). ------------------------------------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