As I mentioned in a brief introductory speech I recently gave in Tokyo, at the Communication Association of Japan's annual conference, our association used to be a little like the World Series in baseball. By just focusing on the name, someone who didn't know anything about baseball might believe that many international teams are competing with each other in this championship. But, as many of us know, what is called the "World Series" in baseball could actually be called the North American Series, since only American and Canadian teams are allowed to contend - as Japanese people know all too well, given the vibrant and dynamic baseball teams and players they also have.

ICA indeed was once a little similar: Although the adjective "International" was definitely present in the name, for a very long time the only international character of the conference was really coming from 20% of our membership representing 50 countries around the world: A bunch of Canadians like me, some Europeans, some Australians, a few Asians, and that was pretty much all. It was, in other words, the world series of the communication field-a mainly U.S. communication field.

In retrospect, I think the turning point was the International Communication Association conference that took place 10 years ago in Acapulco for ICA's 50th anniversary. Although at the time I was a young scholar who was quite disconnected from ICA's political affairs, I clearly remember that the buzz then was that ICA could not fairly keep claiming to be international with a membership mainly composed of Americans. It had to reach out to other scholars from around the world or simply change its name. Happily for us, the people who then constituted the executive committee - Peter Monge, Howard Giles, Linda Putnam, Joseph Cappella (all Americans, by the way) - decided to actively work on this issue and initiated various taskforces in charge of finding solutions to promote the international character of the association.

Ten years later (and through the active leadership of all the past presidents who served throughout this decade), I think that today we are in a much better shape (even if there is still room for improvement). The 2002 ICA conference took place in Seoul, South Korea; the 2006 one, in Dresden, Germany; and the 2010 recently took place in Singapore. Although the attendance used to be very low when ICA went to a non-North American destination - I remember that there were only 1,000 attendants in Seoul - this changed in 2006 when almost 2,000 people showed up in Germany. Although Singapore did not break Dresden's record, a little less than 1,700 people attended this conference, which is quite remarkable. What is also noteworthy is that currently, 42% of our 4,300 members are non-North American (double what we had in 2000), and that we had 80 countries represented in Singapore.

So what can be done to make ICA even more international, innovative, and visible? In my presidential candidate statements, I identified three areas of action to develop should I be elected. These three areas were 1) reinforcing the international character of our association, especially by developing more links with regional, national, and continental associations of communication; 2) reinforcing the circulation of knowledge at the international level, especially by reflecting on ways to increase the accessibility and visibility of work that is traditionally underrepresented in our journals; and 3) working on ICA's international visibility.

Regarding the first agenda, i.e., reinforcing the international character of our association, I asked the Membership/Internationalization Committee, chaired by Boris Brummans, to work at least on three items that I think could increase our international membership.

First, I asked them to work on a formal procedure that would allow national, regional, or continental associations to submit conference proposals that ICA could then sponsor and help organize. Right now, there is no such procedure, which means that the executive committee is always making case-by-case decisions regarding what specific regional conference should be sponsored. I believe that this type of conference constitutes a great opportunity for ICA to develop connections with other scholars from around the world and to increase its visibility, but I also think that we need to be more transparent and systematic regarding the process through which such connections can be established. By setting selection criteria, specific guidelines, deadlines to submit proposals, application forms, etc., this type of procedure will hopefully encourage the submission of regional conference proposals that will be strategically appealing and productive.

Right now, for instance, our membership tends to be very low in Latin America, Latin Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. By encouraging and selecting conference proposals in these regions, it is my hope that we will increase the representation of these parts of the world in our membership.

Still in connection with the first agenda, I also asked the Membership/Internationalization Committee to work on the possibility of establishing international quotas for the ICA conference paper review process. As pointed out by several members, some improvement still needs to be made to increase the number of non-North American scholars in this process, so that ICA remains as open as possible to all epistemological orientations and research traditions, while still maintaining the standards of quality that made its reputation. Although I realize that the questions of quota always are sensitive issues, we will see what could be done in this regard. Finally, with the recent launching of the "virtual overlay" initiative, led by ICA president-elect Larry Gross, I also asked this committee to think about possible ways to take advantage of this new option to attract more members at the international level.

Regarding the second agenda, reinforcing the circulation of knowledge at the international level, I have tasked the Publication Committee, chaired by Amy Jordan, with developing a standardized form to be used by ICA journal editors for their year-end reports to the ICA Board. The creation of such a standard report could help us have a clearer idea of who gets to be published in our journals, especially in terms of nationality, divisions, and gender. It would also allow us to compare the different journals and identify where some progress could be made, for instance in terms of international representation, in these academic outlets. If ICA wants to continue to internationalize, it also needs to provide all its members with journals whose editorial boards reflect the growing diversity of its membership, without, of course, sacrificing the quality of its publication. Again, such a balance is not always easy to obtain, but the recent success of our new journal, Communication, Culture and Critique, certainly proves that it is possible.

As for the third agenda, working on ICA's international visibility, I renewed the International Communications Director taskforce that my predecessor, Barbie Zelizer, successfully initiated last year. Now that the ICA board has voted in favor of creating a new International Communications Director position, this taskforce (chaired by Alison Bryant) is developing a very strong job description as well an evaluation tool to assess what the position allows us to accomplish. It was Barbie's conviction (and mine) that such a position will increase the visibility of our association at the international level. ICA will now benefit from a full-time staff member whose responsibility will be to increase the public visibility of our association and our field among four key publics at the global level: prestige news media, higher-education associations and publications, foundations and donors, and policy-making agencies and research centers. Note that the Liaison Committee, chaired by Noshir Contractor, will also be in charge of finding strategies that will increase the visibility of our organization, not only vis-à-vis our affiliated associations (AMIC, ECREA, IAMCR, etc.), but also international organizations such as UNESCO or WHO.

Beyond these agendas, three more taskforces were also asked to work on specific issues raised by your representatives during our last board meeting in Singapore. The ICA Political Engagement Taskforce, chaired by Sandra Braman, will be in charge of defining any specific guidelines that might help ICA board members make decisions regarding political questions that are regularly addressed to our association. I am thinking especially of situations where some members may question a specific conference location that ICA is discussing, or when members ask ICA to sign a petition to help, for instance, a colleague who is personally attacked by his/her government because of the ideas s/he is defending. Each time ICA has been faced with such situations in the past, the board always made ad hoc decisions, but we have concluded that it may be time to define some principles to represent where we want to stand as an association.

A Taskforce on New Possible Formats for ICA Conferences, chaired by Stephen McDowell, was charged to brainstorm on new possible configurations for our upcoming conferences - especially in terms of presentation length, professional development, session type, and submission limitations. Although the format of our conference has certainly evolved over the years (with new types of programming such as birds-of-a-feather, high-density sessions, and the miniplenaries), we do tend to reproduce the same type of 75-minute sessions, with 12 minutes or less given to each scholar. Do we want to keep this as is, or invent new formats to deepen our exchanges? This is the kind of question that this taskforce will tackle. Coordinately, I've also asked the Student Affairs Committee to come up with some conference-format proposals that would make our conferences more attractive to students around the world. I am especially thinking of the possibility of scheduling master classes (that would be taught by top ICA scholars) and professional development sessions that students might find relevant in preparing for their academic career.

As for the Taskforce on Greening ICA, launched last year by Barbie Zelizer and chaired by Chad Raphael, it will be in charge of making more recommendations that could make ICA even greener. Although the board ratified most of the proposals made by this taskforce last June, we think there is still room for improvement, especially given the success of the virtual overlay that was tested during the Singapore conference.

As you can see, we have a lot of work this year, but I am confident that with these committees' and taskforces' diligence, we will continue to make good progress in innovation and internationalization. So, as I recently enjoyed seeing Isanori Takahashi, a famous Japanese baseball player, playing for the Mets against the New York Yankees, I look forward to a World Series where we could see, say, the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants competing against the New York Yankees. Although this might not happen tomorrow, the equivalent is happening right now for ICA, which is the best thing that could happen to our association - and to the advancement of knowledge in the field of communication.