Looking Forward: Changes in Store for ICA's Seattle Conference
Although Seattle may not be the bustling metropolis that London is, it nonetheless has its own unique attributes that render it an equally superb location for a conference like ours: Nestled in Puget Sound, a picturesque inlet in the United States’ Pacific Northwest region with views of Mount Rainier to the southeast and Vancouver Island to the northwest, the so-called “Emerald City” is a perfect venue for the next ICA Annual Conference in May of 2014. We’ll be meeting at the Sheraton in downtown Seattle, which is easily reached from the airport via a fast train. There are restaurants, bars, and museums just around the corner from the hotel, and if you walk midtown, you’ll find a “real city” with outstanding seafood. You can also head south to the shore and have a meal in any number of restaurants that offer a spectacular view of the Sound. Not bad at all.
The conference theme will be “Communication and the Good Life.” Hua (Helen) Wang (U at Buffalo, The State U of New York), who is particularly interested in new technologies, social networks, and health/wellness, will serve as the Theme Chair. We hope to bring together scholars of both social scientific and humanistic traditions, discuss the role of new media in our lives and what it means to have a good life at this time in history, and explore the challenges we are facing as well as strategies to resolve complex issues in contemporary societies and improve the well-being of individuals, communities, and organizations. Any questions or suggestions about the conference theme may be sent to hwatica@gmail.com.
This year, ICA is also taking new steps to support members who’d like to meet with colleagues for international research collaboration. We’ll provide space for meetings of small groups (up to 8 participants) as well as midsize groups (up to 20 participants). Special conference rooms with tables and comfortable seating will be available for time slots of 2 hours and 45 minutes (i.e., two regular session slots plus the intermediate coffee break). Members are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to connect with existing and future research partners at the conference, and to conduct meetings for the planning and management of existing or future international research projects. Reservation and use of these rooms will be free of charge; however, all attendants of these meetings must register for the conference in order to participate. Drinks and catering will not be provided, but session hosts can order them directly from the conference hotel at their own expense. After confirmation of a room reservation and assignment of a time slot, session chairs will inform the participants of the time and location of the meeting. To ensure confidentiality, no public announcements of such international research meetings will be made before or during the conference. Reservation requests may be sent until 31 December 2013 to the work team at meetings@icahdq.org.
In addition, in order to promote a culture of active debating and productive exchange among all members, ICA is also introducing “Blue Sky Workshops”: open conversation meetings that session chairs dedicate to specific (future) research challenges. The session format is flexible and can be individualized by the chairs; the objective, however, is not to replicate the standard format of single presenters and a listening audience, but rather to facilitate active contribution by each attendant. For this reason, participation is strictly limited: Approximately 20 to 40 attendants, depending on room capacity, will be admitted to session rooms on a first-come, first-served basis.
Sessions will typically last for one standard time slot of 75 minutes, although they can be prolonged to two time slots (2 hours and 45 minutes) upon request. Blue Sky Workshops might engage in critical discussions of current concerns within the discipline; exploration of theories, concepts, or methods; or the collective development of new research strategies or best-practice recommendations for a particular subfield of communication.
Proposals for Blue Sky Workshops are not bound to ICA divisions or the regular submission system, but are managed by a separate work team. Each proposal should contain a session title, the name and contact information of the proposing session chair, a brief summary of the workshop (a 120-word abstract for the conference program) as well as a longer description of the session’s topic, goals, and planned schedule (up to 500 words, to be published on the ICA website). This long description should also include requirements or instructions, if there are any, for interested participants (e.g., a condition that members interested in attending must submit their own thematic statements to the session chair prior to the conference, a suggestion of what core knowledge in a field or about a method is required for productive contribution, or an invitation to bring computers for joint text production).
In order to enable as many fruitful discussions as possible, proposals will not be peer-reviewed; they will instead simply be assigned a room and timeslot by the work team. In case the number of proposals exceeds the amount of available rooms, proposals will be selected randomly for room assignment. Proposals for Blue Sky Workshops can be submitted until 31 December 2013, to the work team at bluesky@icahdq.org.
Lastly, please keep in mind that proposals for preconferences must be sent to me at pvatica@gmail.com by the 1st of September. All other proposals will follow the usual calendar: The full call for papers, panels, and sessions will be available online starting August 1st, with the submission system opening on September 3rd. The deadline for submitting papers, panels, and approved preconferences for all divisions and groups, including theme session proposals, will be November 4th.
I hope to see you all in Seattle!