Policy and Submission Procedures for ICA-Sponsored Regional Conferences

by Boris Brummans, U of Montreal, Member of Membership and Internationalization Committee

During the 2011 ICA meeting in Boston, the Board adopted a new policy regarding ICA-sponsored regional conferences. In this brief article, we would like to make ICA members familiar with this policy and with the submission procedures (note that this information can also be found in the ICA Policy and Procedure Manual, available in the MyICA section of the ICA website.)

The main idea behind the new policy is that by sponsoring regional conferences across the world, particularly in areas where ICA is not very well known (e.g., South America, Africa, certain parts of Europe), ICA can increase its visibility and attract new members. ICA will sponsor a maximum of two regional conferences per year for a maximum of $10,000 USD (i.e., 2x $5,000 USD). This money should be used especially for bringing in and accommodating ICA keynote speakers. However, part of the $5,000 budget may also be used for promotional costs (flyers, posters, etc., as long as they include the ICA logo and as long as these costs stay within a reasonable range. Furthermore, given that the main rationale for supporting regional conferences is to increase ICA membership, these conferences should be held in ICA's official language (i.e., English), yet organizing bi- or tri-lingual conferences is possible.

Those who are interested in organizing this kind of conference are asked to follow these procedures:

  1. The main organizer, preferably an ICA member, contacts the ICA President and the ICA Executive Director, and sends an official conference proposal, explaining the rationale for organizing the conference and describing its theme in sufficient detail. Particularly important in this proposal is to specify why this should be an ICA-sponsored conference. Proposals should be submitted by a specific annual date-just like ICA paper submissions are due each November.

  2. The ICA President and the ICA Executive Committee evaluate each proposals based on the following questions/criteria: 

    3. - Does the proposal provide a convincing/compelling rationale?
    - Is it likely that the conference (theme) will attract a number of international participants?
    - Will the conference be held in a region where ICA is not yet very well known, thus increasing ICA's visibility?
    - What is the overall quality of the proposal (in terms of writing)?

  3. After the ICA President and the ICA Executive Committee have approved a specific proposal, the main organizer creates a structure consisting of different streams (e.g., by areas of expertise, such as interpersonal communication, health communication, philosophy of communication, etc.). Each stream is organized by two to three scholars with expertise in their respective streams. Preferably, at least one of them is an ICA member.

  4. Once the conference structure is in place, the main organizer discusses with the ICA President and the ICA Executive Committee who might be invited as the keynote speaker(s). This/these speaker(s) must be (an) ICA member(s). Based on this discussion, he or she develops a detailed budget, which must be approved by the ICA President and the ICA Executive Committee. Subsequently, both the ICA President and main organizer send out a joint invitation to the potential speaker(s).

  5. The main organizer then sends out a call for papers, which includes a description of the conference theme, descriptions of each stream, submission guidelines, etc. The call must state that this is an ICA-sponsored regional conference. However, both ICA members and non-ICA members are invited to participate. Obviously, the call will be distributed via the ICA newsletter, listservs, personalized emails, and at the annual ICA conference.

  6. Stream organizers' task is to find 10 to 15 paper readers who may also function as panel chairs and/or respondents. Ideally, at least 25-33% of them should be ICA members. Once papers have been accepted, stream organizers develop the stream program, consisting of several panels.

For questions and additional information, please contact the ICA President, Larry Gross (lpgross@usc.edu), or the ICA Executive Director, Michael Haley (mlhaley@icahdq.org).