President's Message: Participation on the Rise
As I am writing these lines, the deadline to submit paper and panel proposals is slowly but surely approaching and I am sure that many of you are currently busy trying to meet the 1 November closing date. My hope is that the Singapore conference will have contributed to attracting more international members and that we will have some good news in terms of worldwide representation for the Boston conference.
As you will learn with this issue of the Newsletter, the results of the 2010 elections are now out with a very impressive participation of 1,234 ICA members who cast their vote electronically. This means that almost one third of our membership (31.1 %) voted, which is the highest percentage of participation ever (it was 29.7% last year and 27.36% in 2008, marking a 2% increase each year, which is excellent). This outcome is all the more interesting given that it was the closest presidential race in ICA history. As it happens, 62 people who cast a ballot did not vote for any of the two presidential candidates, which makes us wonder what would have happened had they done so, given such a tight result!
In general, I would say that these election numbers show that members appear to care more and more about ICA and its future. They also show how any vote can make a difference, which should hopefully encourage more and more members to cast their vote each year.
Hoping that this trend in participation will continue, how can we encourage it by making ICA more accessible to newcomers and prospective members? In my previous newsletter, I spoke about the various projects and ideas that are currently being examined by the internationalization/membership committee in order to address this question of accessibility. One of the particular challenges we are facing is to make ICA less opaque to our new and potential membership.
For instance, we currently have a very useful FAQ page on our website (http://www.icahdq.org/faqs/frequent.asp), which allows potential members and newcomers to get to know better what ICA is all about. However, as is often the case with websites, the information is not necessarily easy to find if one is not looking for it; we might question whether we should make it more visible, not only in our website, but also through our call for papers, for instance.
Furthermore, we might also wonder if we should not be more proactive in explaining or publicizing events that for us are obvious, such as preconferences; Division business meetings and receptions; the New Member and Graduate Student Orientation to ICA and the Conference (which typically takes place during the first day of each conference, but tends to be relatively poorly attended); or even the Annual Award Presentation and Presidential Address.
All these events are key moments for getting to know our colleagues, but very few newcomers happen to know that and run the risk of attending our conferences without doing what most participants come to our conferences to do, i.e., networking. One idea we are currently exploring is how to do a better job at identifying newcomers in general (and not only students) in order to send them special announcements and information about the conference, so that they are better prepared when they arrive.
Again, if you happen to have more ideas to make ICA less opaque to newcomers and potential members, please do not hesitate to contact me (f.cooren@umontreal.ca) or Boris Brummans, chair of the Internationalization and Membership Committee (boris.brummans@umontreal.ca).