The phrases most often heard in the hallways and session rooms for our 2008 Montreal conference was that the quality of presentations was quite high and the engagement among session participants, including audience members, was among the best ever experienced by ICA conference attendees.

Not only was the quality outstanding but, with our final registration figures surpassing 2,050, our 2008 Montreal conference also was one of our best attended. We paneled 474 total sessions including paper, interactive display/poster, reception, meeting, panel, and roundtable discussions. Even with a 43% acceptance rate, the 2008 conference was our third largest conference in ICA history and our largest non-U.S. conference. Quite a lot has changed since we first expanded beyond North American borders in 1977 for the (West) Berlin, (West) Germany conference.

We now boast 43% non-U.S. membership, and 33% non-U.S. attendees for our 2008 conference. We also had 51 different countries represented in our program. In this column, I'd like to recap the 2008 conference theme, "Communicating for Social Impact," and discuss a few of the many conference highlights. There are, of course, far too many members to thank for making this such a successful conference.

Communicating for Social Impact

This theme was designed to reflect the recent questioning within ICA and other associations about the ways in which we, as a discipline and as individuals, meet society's most significant challenges. The purpose was to draw attention and bring together people interested in using our disciplinary knowledge and long-standing engagement in multidisciplinary efforts to change the world in positive ways.

As a result, our 2008 theme directs attention to the initiation and publicizing of communication research in different regions of the world through varied media endeavors and platforms. In addition, it challenges us to reflect upon and communicate the meaningfulness of our work and its translation into venues where the people who most need this research can access it.

Our theme and miniplenary sessions as well as committee/task force reports and development of new initiatives in Montreal reflected the 2008 charge. Our 2008 theme linked nicely to Sonia Livingstone's efforts to make ICA's worldwide work and affiliations transparent and productive-a charge that will continue throughout my own presidency in task forces; directives to existing committees; greater attention to our awards especially those promoting the visibility of communication in community change; and initiation of new projects. The new work will address many issues, ranging from assessment of divisional/interest practices to enhance value to our members, through creation of white papers to sort through how ICA might better react to and frame contemporary issues in which we should engage.

2008 ICA Conference Highlights

Our opening plenary featured the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada's award-winning "Filmmaker-in-Residence," an immersive multimedia social change project. Over 200 ICA members attending this opening session and many more returned from one of 8 preconferences or travels into Montreal to attend an opening reception that went well into the night! Tom Perlmutter, the Government Film Commissioner and President of the National Film Board of Canada, and Filmmaker-in-Residence producer Gerry Flahive provided an inspiring opening to our conference. We also would like to thank Andre Caron for facilitating this session and Francois Cooren and members of our local organizing committee for connecting with the NFB. As I am writing this column in June 2008, the Filmmaker-in-Residence website is receiving the prestigious Webby Award in New York City. Other entrants for the "Documentary Series" category were the M.I.T. Media Lab, PBS, and the National Public Radio.

Besides our opening plenary, the only other plenary session we included this year was our interactive paper/poster session, renamed Scholar-to-Scholar. This year, we expanded our poster displays to two levels to accommodate the 147 papers programmed to this session and to use the open atrium space with connecting elevators in Le Centre Sheraton. Scholar-to-Scholar had some of the most visually appealing research presentations ever displayed at any of our conferences. Our President-Elect-Select, Barbie Zelizer, added a new award for posters with visual appeal (see this ICA Newsletter article on award winners for this new, and our other, poster awards).

We retained the 9 am - 6 pm conference schedule instituted by Sonia Livingstone as well as the registration/book exhibit area circling around our wireless cyber cafe. Besides our book exhibitors, we also had booths showcasing the NFB; our upcoming Singapore conference in 2010; our new Encyclopedia of Communication, spearheaded by Past President Wolf Donsbach; and our first ever theme book based on the 2007 San Francisco conference theme, "Creating Communication: Content, Control, and Critique," and edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin de Cleen.

The morning and afternoon refreshments and free wifi access in our cyber café were greatly appreciated by attendees. Rather than having a single day for our film series, we interspersed films connected to our conference theme throughout our program.

Some new features in 2008 were the inclusion of seven miniplenary sessions scheduled at noon on Friday and Saturday. Most of these miniplenaries were packed with audience members and some had standing room only! They featured an inaugural ICA Fellows series on the future of our field and wisdom that these distinguished ICA members can provide for current and future generations. They are recapped in the next section of this column. We also hosted a reception in honor of all our plenary and miniplenary speakers-this reception was open to all conference attendees and their guests on Friday evening. It featured local foods from Quebec. The reception provided an informal but elegant conversational space in which attendees engaged in some lively discussions.

Following feedback from our last conference survey, we had recycling bins at the registration table and at other sites throughout the hotel for conference bag inserts. We also collected conference bags for redistribution since they could not be recycled.

We wanted to provide a gift from Quebec for our attendees that was uniquely Canadian and represented the atmosphere of French Canada. We hoped that you enjoyed receiving the pot of caramel in your conference bag!

Miniplenary Sessions

Let me just recap our seven miniplenaries!

• Arthur Frank discussed healing, health, and narratives in the panel, "Narrating Our Health: A Discussion with Arthur Frank." Art's presentation is scheduled for publication in the theme book, Communicating for Social Impact, scheduled for release in 2009 (Hampton Press, coedited by Lynn Harter and Mohan Dutta).
• In "Regional Communication Scholarship for Social Change," Maria do Carmo de Souzo Reis, Adriana Machado Casali, and Claudio Cardoso from Brazil; Olga Leontovich and Irina N. Rozina from Russia; and Guoliang Zhang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the People's Republic of China discussed the history of and current communication initiatives within governmental and institutional programs to handle issues endemic to the specific regions they represented.
• In the first Fellows session, "Projections for the Future From Reflections on the Past: A New ICA Fellows Forum on Communication, I," Annie Lang, Jim Taylor, and M. Scott Poole (facilitated by Peter Monge) described and called upon the members of our field and our associations to design, use, and publicize in a more timely fashion dynamic communication theories and methodologies as well as how we add value to multidisciplinary collaborations. In part II of our Fellows' presentations, John Daly, Cindy Gallois, and Larry Gross spoke about pressing issues, such as medical concerns, and where our research has made and can make a tangible difference.
• Emily Russo and Sean Farnel (with Christian Christensen and Jeffrey P. Jones) discussed the surge of popularity in documentary films, describing this phenomenon as a movement that has prompted major changes in multinational corporations and environmental considerations in "Beyond Moore: Considering the Resurgence of Political Documentary Films."
• Michael X. Delli Carpini, Hope Cummings, and Russell Newman addressed issues in current media debates and multi-institutional collaborations in "Linking Scholars to Communication Policymaking: The COMPASS Experience."
• Susan Nosov, Daniel Cross, and Reisa Levine (facilitated by Katherine Baulu) linked the NFB work in creating and distributing community-driven projects, documentaries, and other media materials in "Engaged, Digital, Unique-Models for Community Media Initiatives."

Theme Sessions

Past President Ron Rice initiated the theme sessions and the idea of the theme book to capture cutting-edge thinking and interventions about varied topics. In keeping with this tradition, we hosted 13 Theme Sessions in Montreal that were scattered throughout the program.

On Friday, May 23, 2008, we had four sessions: "Preparing Students to Communicate for Social Impact in Jesuit Education," "Leading Communication Associations for Social Impact: CCA (Council of Communication Associations) Address the Future of the Field," "Re-Envisioning Research Methods to Communicate for Social Impact," and "When the Internet Reaches the Villages."

On Saturday, we programmed another four sessions: "Communications Scholars as Public Intellectuals: Challenges and Responsibilities," "Communication Innovation in Conflict, Collaboration, Deliberation, and Dialogue," "Top Papers Related to the ICA Conference Theme: Communicating for Social Impact," and "Documenting and Disrupting (Dis)ability Through Film: Communicating for Social Impact."

Our five Sunday theme sessions were: "Communication in Action: Scholarly Intervention at Local and National Levels," "Convergence and Collaboration: Communication Research, Activism, and Education for the Common Good," "The Social Impact of Networking the Poor for Development," "Communicating for Social and Occupational Change: Girls and Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)," and "Communicating for Social Impact in Public Discourse."

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank many more people than I can possibly list in this column. Foremost, our local planning committee was chaired by Francois Cooren and included Jim Taylor, Andre Caron, Jamie McDonald, Emilie Pelletier, and others from the University of Montreal. Vahe Kerametian, Michel Giguere, and others from Le Centre Sheraton were instrumental in helping us with everything from presentational equipment in all of our session rooms through selection of local foods, whenever possible, for our receptions and meetings.

Rather than listing all of the people involved in the design and implementation of our eight preconferences, let me simply say that the work that these individuals did to develop exciting venues for our preconferences was incredible. Not only did every single preconference we offered this year meet its registration requirements, but many exceeded projected figures. More importantly, the comments that I and others involved in the 2008 conference planning heard about the content and format of these preconferences attested to the innovative character and ideas in each and every preconference. We hope to share some insights from these preconferences in upcoming newsletters.

I would like to thank our Division/Interest Group planners for 2008 for their creation of exciting panels and events for their members, our paper readers who processed 2,617 submissions, and our 2007-2008 ICA President, Sonia Livingstone, who handled all business meetings, details, and issues with such grace and style. Her Presidential Address, "On the Mediation of Everything," was thought-provoking, aesthetically appealing, and simply fun!

Finally, the program planners for our conferences change every year. However, the people who keep everything running, who respond immediately to questions and problems, and who oversee every aspect-from working with our conference volunteers in stuffing conference bags with programs and other items of interest to handling last-minute requests deserve our gratitude: Michael Haley, our Executive Director; Sam Luna, Member Services Director and designer of our conference programs and other artistic endeavors; Deandra Harris, Member Services Associate and Office Manager; Tina Zeigler, Administrative Assistant; and Mike West, Publications Manager. Working with them has been such a pleasure!

In closing, no ICA President operates alone. We carry forward initiatives of our predecessors and look for comments and advice from all of our members. I have been blessed to be surrounded by a superb group of associational leaders, staff members, and many, many others who have volunteered generously to participate in continuing and upcoming committees and task forces for the upcoming year. I look forward to getting to know our members more in the coming year and working on issues central to the 2008 conference theme and beyond.