In this first Presidential column of 2009, I wish our ICA members a productive and intellectually stimulating new year! This year has begun with quite a lot of excitement, activity, and challenges for our ICA office, board members, and awards committees!

With our ICA offices located off Dupont Circle in the heart of Washington, DC, you may have received a message from us noting that the office closed on January 20th for Barack Obama's inauguration as President of the United States. Our Publications Manager, Mike West, attended as one of the 1.8 million people who lined up along the parade route and stood in National Mall as the first Black president of the United States was sworn in. Mike reported that it was "amazing" and would enjoy chatting online or by phone to members who would like to hear more! We can only hope that anticipated changes take place soon!

Conference planning is moving ahead very nicely. We thank all the Division and Interest Group planners for their hard work in managing the review process and organizing sessions for our May 2009 conference in Chicago. As those of you who submitted papers or coordinated preconferences and meetings know, Executive Director Michael Haley spent long hours sending out notifications for every decision regarding the status of papers, panels, and other events. If your submission was programmed for the 2009 conference, you should have received a second e-mail message that listed panel or meeting titles and participants. The process was centralized last year to insure that everyone received notices simultaneously. Of course, there is still much more to be done and feedback on submissions won't be available in mid-February but we are pleased by the quick turnaround and notification processes.

Now that the submissions have been processed, the ICA Executive Council (EC) and Board members are engaged in an online Board meeting. Topics under discussion include possible conference sites, as we try to plan out several years in advance to secure reasonable accommodation rates and meeting facilities. Reports by our Executive Director, our 2010 Conference planner and President-Elect-Select (Francois Cooren), task forces and committees, regional conference planners, etc. are included. Future columns will report on some of the discussion and other issues that will be discussed at the May Board and Division/Interest Group meetings.

We are also in the midst of ICA Awards nominations. Nurit Guttman of Tel Aviv University is overseeing the entire Awards Committee process and is working closely with specific Awards committee chairpersons and members. You'll note that an effort was made, as has been done in previous years, to develop committee memberships that reflect the diversity within ICA.

I would like to thank the following individuals for so generously and enthusiastically responding to my call for service in this important capacity. As I do so, I'd also like to encourage all members to support this process by nominating people. Excluding the Book Award for which books need to be mailed to our DC offices, all other award materials are submitted very easily online at: http://www.icahdq.org.

• Our Outstanding Book in Communication Award committee is: Clifford Nass (committee chair and 2007 winner), Ted Zorn, Philip Howard (2008 winner), Linda Aldoory, and Irina Rozina.
• Our Outstanding Article in Communication Award committee is: Cynthia Stohl (committee chair and 2008 winner), Carolyn Byerly, Hiroshi Ota, Daniela Dimitrova, and Jan Van den Bulck.
• Our Applied/Public Policy Research Award committee is: Dale Kunkel (committee chair and 2008 winner), Cees Hamelink, Anne Marie Bulow, Phyllis Bernt, and Pearl Wang.
• Our Young Scholar Award committee is: Claes de Vreese (committee chair and 2007 winner), Laura Guerrero, Hee Sun Park (2008 winner), Travis Dixon, and Karen Ross.
• Our Steve Chaffee Career Productivity Award committee is: Cindy Gallois (committee chair), Marshall Scott Poole (2008 winner), Joseph Chan, Sonja Foss, and Peng Hwa Ang.
• Our Fisher Mentorship Award committee is: Sandi Smith (committee chair and 2008 winner), K. Vishwanath, Liz Bird, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, and Shuhua Zhou.

We also have several relatively new awards for which some winners were announced for the first time in 2008. These awards are:

• The James W. Carey Urban Communication Award. The committee is composed of ICA members (Lana Rakow, committee chair, with Paschal Preston and Yong Jun Shin, the 2008 winner) and Urban Communication Foundation members (Leo Jeffres, Casey M.K. Lum, and Harvey Jassem)
• Communication Research as Collaborative Practice Award. The committee is: Donal Carbaugh (committee chair), Ingrid Volkmer, Bella Mody, Joe Karaganis, and Yoo Jae Song.
• Communication Research as an Open Field Award. The committee is: Sandra Braman (committee chair), Barry Wellman (2008 winner), Wenshan Jia, Rivka Ribak, and Catrin Johansson.
• Communication Research as an Agent of Change Award. The committee is: Margaret Peters (committee chair), Arvind Singhal (2008 winner), Ed Maibach, Myria Georgiou, and Ling Chen.

As you can see, we sponsor a wide array of awards covering research, mentoring, and engagement at the all-association level. I urge you to take a look at these awards since they represent incredible work on the part of our members and others who pursue a communication research agenda although they may not have affiliated formally with our field.

There are other activities in which the ICA EC and association members are involved over the next 3 or 4 months. One of these events is a day-long discussion about the future of publishing and its implications for the communication field and ICA, in particular. This meeting is hosted by Wiley/Blackwell and is designed to assist us in strategic planning for the next several years. We also will be involved, through the Council of Communication Associations meetings, in discussions about reputational surveys, quality indicators for our own and other communication journals, and other items. And some EC members are scheduled to travel to regional conferences and other events to further publicize communication scholarship in particular locales and foster productive connections with emerging clusters of communication researchers and with regional associations. December 2008 conferences in Shanghai and Hong Kong focused on intercultural communication in Shanghai and more broadly in Asia as well as research on discourse and business communication. We welcome the new ICA members from these and other conferences!

With our growing global presence, our newsletter content editor, Mohan Dutta, promises four columns starting next month on the ways that communication is constituted differently in diverse regions of the world. Mohan would enjoy hearing from other members who would like to contribute to this initiative with a column or report!

On the subject of hearing from members, we are in the process of installing a "suggestion box" feature on the ICA website. We would like to hear your thoughts on things you'd like to see changed in the association, or things we're doing well and should continue to do on behalf of our members. We look forward to hearing from you.

Finally, it's always a pleasure to work with our ICA staff in D.C. They, along with EC and Board members, are there for all members and would welcome the opportunity to talk about ICA news, to respond to questions, and to gather suggestions about our website or other processes. There are only five office members--Michael Haley and Mike West, as mentioned above--and Sam Luna (Member Services Director), Deandra Harris (Member Services Associate), and Tina Zeigler-Jones (Executive Assistant, Accounts Payable and Receivable). It is quite amazing to me that so few people handle so well an association with over 4,400 members located in 85 different countries. They would welcome your feedback and, if you are in the DC area, your visit to our offices. I wish you the best in 2009 and look forward to seeing colleagues and new members at our May conference in Chicago!