One month now separates us from the Boston conference, and it is time for me to write my final column as an ICA president and to check with you what was accomplished while I was in office.

When I started my term last June, I had three priorities in mind: 1) reinforcing the international character of our association, especially by developing more links with regional, national, and continental associations of communication; 2) reinforcing the circulation of knowledge at the international level, especially by reflecting on possible ways to increase the accessibility and visibility of work that is traditionally underrepresented in our journals; and 3) working on ICA's international visibility.

Regarding the first agenda item, related to the international character of our association, I was lucky enough to rely on a very dynamic ICA membership and Internationalization Committee, chaired by Boris Brummans. This committee worked very hard to find practical solutions that could help our association move forward on its way to more internationalization.

Their final report, which will be discussed in May in Boston, makes three concrete recommendations that I think will contribute to the internationalization of our association:

1. Encouraging Divisions and Interest Groups to broaden their reach for members. In order to meet this objective, three concrete actions are recommended:
   1. reminding the Division and Interest Group chairs each year that they should include a fair number of non-North-American conference paper/panel reviewers, panel chairs, and respondents. Although it is out of question to impose quotas, I think that a real work has to be done every year to increase awareness of this issue of international representation.
   2. encouraging Division and Interest Group chairs to develop a set of clear reviewing guidelines (or tutorials) for current and prospective conference paper/panel reviewers and to communicate these guidelines in their e-mails to paper reviewers and on their division websites. These guidelines/tutorials should not simply include a set of evaluation criteria, but also advice against trolling, and remind reviewers that they don't have to agree with what they read and that communication is a methodologically diverse field.
   3. asking Division chairs to ensure that each panel offered at the ICA conference contains participants (i.e., presenters, chair, and/or respondent) from at least two countries-currently, only single-institution panels are discouraged, not single-country ones.
2. Creating an online document that would be titled "ICA for Newcomers." This document would provide detailed information about the Divisions, examples of conference papers for each of the Divisions, and other useful information for anyone who is interested in ICA but is not familiar with our association. Currently, some of this information can be found under the FAQ section on the ICA website, but it would be a good idea to expand this page (or to transform it into a downloadable document). Although I cannot reproduce all the details of the committee's recommendations regarding this publication, I think their report includes excellent suggestions that will allow this document to be extremely helpful to newcomers.
3. Designing guidelines for ICA regional conferences. As you know, these conferences are meant to increase ICA's visibility and attract new members. They are organized across the world, particularly in areas where ICA is not very known (e.g., South America, Africa, certain parts of Europe, such as France). What were missing so far were clear guidelines that would help the organizers submit their proposals and the ICA executive committee make decision about which conference to sponsor. Here again, some very specific recommendations were made by the committee, which will be voted at the board meeting in Boston.

Regarding the second agenda related to the reinforcement of the circulation of knowledge at the international level, I asked the Publication Committee, chaired by Amy Jordan, to develop a standardized form that will be used by ICA journal editors for their year-end reports to the ICA Board. The creation of this standard report, which will be presented at the board meeting, will help us know what type of scholar gets to be published in our journals, especially in terms of nationality, divisions and gender. It will also allow us to compare ICA journals with each other and have a way to identify where some progress could be made, for instance in terms of international representation.

Finally, on the question of ICA's international visibility (my third agenda item), I am happy to report that some very good progress has been done on two important items:

1. The International Communications Director taskforce, chaired by Alison Bryant, will soon submit a strong job description for this position, as well as an evaluation tool and a proposal for funding. This proposition will be voted at the board meeting in Boston and should allow us to have a job opening by July-August 2011. If everything works according to our plans, our new director could start working in January of February 2012. This new position should increase the visibility of our association at the international level, since ICA will be benefiting from the full time involvement of a staff member whose responsibility will be to increase the public visibility of our association and our field among key publics and network at the global level.
2. The liaison committee, chaired by Noshir Contractor, will also soon make propositions that will help us redefine the role of our regional board members-at-large. Until now, these members, elected for 3 years, are only supposed to be present at the board meeting to represent five different regions of the world where ICA is (more or less) represented in terms of membership. In addition to this function of representation at the board level, they would now be asked to serve as ICA Ambassadors in the regions they represent. This means, for instance, that these persons could become key intermediaries between ICA and regions of the world where our membership is historically underrepresented. Although I will not list here all the strategies that will be recommended by this committee, I can tell you that they should help us make this functions of representation more effective for ICA.

In addition to these three key agenda items, I am also happy to report that ICA should soon have clear policies for all questions related to our association's political engagement. Thanks to the hard work of the ICA Political engagement taskforce, chaired by Sandra Braman, some key recommendations were submitted to our mid-year board meeting, which will allow us to vote on policy items related to this question in Boston. With this new policy, ICA executive and board members will be in a better position to make decisions related to the political engagement of our association.

Also, the Taskforce on New Possible Formats for ICA Conferences, will recommend that ICA members be invited to contribute ideas about possible formats. Specific questions on conference formats will be included in the annual members' survey. Finally, the Taskforce on Greening ICA, chaired by Chad Raphael, will also make concrete propositions that should allow us to make ICA even greener.

See you in Boston!