This is an exciting time in conference planning as reviewers from our divisions and special interest groups are evaluating submissions and as we are juggling numbers to accommodate a wide array of interesting panel, paper, and abstract proposals.
Already, this conference is a bit different from those in the past. Submission flow up through the last week that All Academic was open indicated that the Montreal conference would be somewhat smaller than the one we just had in San Francisco. But an unusual spike in submissions—over 2000 in the last 48 hours—prompted some rethinking of conference planning! We ended up with 354 panel and 2464 paper submissions which is about 95% of our largest conference submission pool ever (i.e., the submissions for our San Francisco conference last year).
One change we’re making for the Montreal conference is that we are going to have two clusters of concurrent miniplenaries. These miniplenaries will take the place of a plenary session or a single miniplenary scheduled against half of our program slots (as we’ve seen in the past). We are working to make miniplenaries exciting so that they'll attract different ICA constituencies. Some miniplenaries are still in the works and will be featured in a future ICA Newsletter column!
We will, of course, host our Interactive Poster Sessions on Sunday, May 25, as a plenary session with refreshments and awards for our top posters. We also are taking seriously the conference feedback that indicates that our members want more opportunities to network socially and professionally. To do so, we are reconsidering our Presidential Address session and are continuing ICA President Sonia Livingstone's idea to have a cybercafe centered in the book exhibit area so that conference attendees can have wireless internet access for their personal laptops as well as a place to catch up with each other. We'll also continue the cybercafe refreshments in the mornings and afternoons of our conference.
We are planning a Film Series that will have sessions interspersed throughout the program, rather than on a single day. We are lining up documentaries from film companies, such as the Canadian Film Board and Discovery Films, on topics related to the theme of "Communicating for Social Impact." In addition to film session participants who can discuss documentary production and related details, we also are programming scholars who can talk about research relevant to the documentary topics.
We will inaugurate a "'Last Lecture' Series: A New ICA Fellows Forum" as miniplenaries in which several ICA Fellows are asked to distill a lifetime’s worth of scholarship and wisdom for our future. I would like to thank Peter Monge, ICA Fellow and Past President of ICA, for working with me on this idea!
Here are some ICA conference planning deadlines:
December 6, 2007: Each unit completes its review process.
December 13, 2007: Unit planners accomplish the paneling process: assigning papers to sessions, assigning chairs and discussants, estimate attendance at each session, ranking sessions. All this will be done via the online system.
January 15, 2008: Notifcation to unit planners by the program chair of sessions accepted for the conference. Any final questions need to be resolved.
January 16-20, 2008: Notification of acceptance or rejection by ICA Executive Director Michael Haley to all submitters.
January 31, 2008: Notification of Chairs and Discussants to which sessions they have been assigned and what their duties are to be during the session.
Early February 2008: Allocation of sessions to time slots, finishing the program.
March 1, 2008: Program posted on ICA website.
See you in Montreal!
