At the time I am writing this column, I feel as though I have two very different headlines in mind. Fortunately, these different headline notions do not fall into good news-bad news scenarios but, rather, great news and some cautionary notes. I'll close with some updates on the upcoming ICA conference in Chicago (May 2009) and other items.
First, the great news is the headline you see-ICA is currently at our highest membership in the history of our association! We currently stand at 4412-a true cause for celebration and a hopeful sign that our desires to make global connections and impact are happening. Our largest area of growth has been in non-U.S. North American membership. The majority of our membership, at 2892 or 66%, still is U.S.-based. We realize that our membership will decrease in November when individuals who have declined our invitation to renew membership are deleted from our active ranks. But, for the time being, we can celebrate our membership figures!
Talking about global connections … It has been heartening to talk to scholars and directors of programs about ICA. It has been a pleasure to promote the work that our members have been doing on a variety of fronts during my recent travels to China and India and my upcoming trips to Europe. We had exciting discussions about some ways that we can contribute to and shape national/regional agendas, such as not-for-profit campaigns to curtail rural poverty, promote better health, and provide insight into "soft skills" and communication processes that complement technology development in India's Institutes of Technology and Science.
Yet, while we celebrate ICA membership and influence, I also am cognizant of the state of world's financial markets. Headlines range from effects of Wall Street layoffs on local businesses to projected lower demand for high tech products and multinational corporations' struggles to satisfy food safety concerns while also targeting consumer needs for less expensive product lines.
ICA is, of course, not immune to financial concerns. But we have two strategies that we are pursuing in both the short- and long-term. First, our financial portfolio is as diversified as possible. Past President and Chair of the ICA Finance Board, Jon Nussbaum, has consulted our financial experts and our Executive Council about strategies. We should fare well by investing less in stocks and more in our headquarters' property off Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, USA, since property values in this area are holding steady. If you have not visited our headquarters, it is featured beautifully on the front cover of our first annual report (on our website, www.icahdq.org, under "About ICA").
A second strategy has been to initiate a fundraising campaign for contributions that can benefit ICA as a whole and/or its divisions and interest groups. Our new fundraising button is easily located in the upper right-hand corner of our website (or you can simply go directly to fundraising information by going to www.icahdq.org/fundraising). We are sending out letters to our members about divisional and interest group initiatives to which they can contribute financially as well as other ways to support our association.
There are some other items that you might find interesting! There has been a flurry of email messages from Planners for the Chicago conference requesting reviewers for their units. Some divisions and interest groups stipulate that competitive paper and panel reviewers have their doctorates in hand but others do not. If you are unsure about signing up, please contact your unit planner. Having been a reviewer over (many) years, I can assure you that the system is easy to navigate, the papers/panels are fun to read, and your feedback is greatly appreciated by all.
As of today (October 1), we have 128 submissions on All Academic but know full well that our Chicago conference will draw much more interest than this submission figure portrays. Last year, we found the same pattern of low early submissions of competitive papers and panels with a spike in the last 24 hours or so of a couple thousand submissions. Our program is robust and handled the heavy traffic superbly but I encourage you to not wait until the very close of our November 3 deadline.
Barbie Zelizer, our President-Elect and 2009 Program Planner, has been reviewing our conference assessment statistics and open-ended responses from our conference last year for her planning of our Chicago conference. I'd like to thank the hundreds of Montreal conference attendees who took the time to provide us with feedback. We appreciate knowing your views on the speakers, hotel, AV equipment, sessions, and so on. It was gratifying to learn that our members enjoyed the new feature of miniplenary sessions but not a surprise that the two-level Scholar-to-Scholar interactive (poster) display was not as well received. As always, we try to design a conference that meets our members' expectations and interests but explores some new options.
As a closing thought, please consider voting in our election if you have not already done so. Your last chance to vote for our future President and some of our division/interest chairs and secretaries is October 17!
