February 7, 2012
Dear members and friends of the Media Ecology Association,
As those of you on the MEA’s electronic mailing list already know, at the meeting of the Board of Directors on January 28, I was honored by being elected President for the current calendar year. At that meeting, we made some important decisions that will directly affect all of us. I would like to report on these decisions so that you may know the direction we are taking in the development of the Association and gauge ways in which you may participate in it.
Constitutional Review
We formed a constitutional review committee to present the Board a choice of proposals to amend our constitution and by-laws. We will present our chosen proposal at the General Busi-ness Meeting of this year’s convention for explanation, discussion, and feedback. After taking under advisement the comments and suggestions of members attending that meeting, we will finalize the proposal and place it on the ballot in our regular election of Board members in the fall. At that time, all Association members in good standing will have the opportunity to ap-prove or reject the proposal, which will require a two-thirds majority of votes cast to pass.
While not presupposing the results of the constitutional review committee’s deliberations, I can say that the aim of the review is to have our organizational structure and election process more closely resemble those of other affiliated communication associations. Those of you familiar with the procedures of such associations as NCA, ECA, and NYSCA will likely not be surprised by what will be proposed. The goal of the review is to encourage involvement by the member-ship in the operations of the MEA and increase incentives for becoming a member.
Changes in Communications
Members of long standing may have missed in the past two years the regular publication of In Medias Res, our newsletter. We are pleased that Ed Tywoniak has agreed to be its Editor and has already come up with an exciting new design that we are sure will be appealing. Ed has already started on a pre-convention issue, which will be available as a PDF to members only. If you want to receive IMR regularly to keep up with what’s happening with the MEA, now is the best time to initiate or renew your membership.
Paul Grosswiler, Editor of Explorations in Media Ecology {EME}, our journal, presented us with an exciting schedule of publication for this year, and we are looking forward to further engaging articles, probes, suggestions for pedagogy, and reviews. But what is most exciting about the journal is the ability of our new publisher, Intellect Ltd., to make EME available electronically through library databases such as Ebsco, starting in 2013. Both current and back issues will then be available online, to complement our continuing print publication. We are also making ar-rangements with Intellect to make electronic issues available to individual members who do not have access to a library database, at no extra charge beyond the fee for MEA membership. When this facility is in place, we will make an announcement.
We have also decided to make the 2011 volume of our Proceedings the last year of publication. As old-timers will remember, for our first two years, the Proceedings were our first and only ve-hicle for scholarly publication. We have concluded that the expansion of EME to cyberspace makes the Proceedings further redundant, and that we can better manage our resources by focus-ing our scholarly efforts on the journal. We are also very pleased that Phil Rose has become our new Internet Officer, in which position he is online publisher of the Proceedings. Phil and I will be working together to complete posting of past volumes, which being a one-person operation on my part has regrettably delayed.
Fernando Gutiérrez, our Executive Secretary and overseer of our Web site, is working on the development of a members-only section of the site, which will include a way for members to access their record in the database and update their membership information directly. Stay tuned for further developments.
While the following item does not concern a decision by the Board, it does involve an enhance-ment in our communications. Last year, Facebook changed its policy regarding Groups, choos-ing to deactivate and archive existing Groups in favor of Pages. Peter Fallon had formed a Me-dia Ecology Association group, and was put in the position of having to resubscribe all its members individually himself. Seeing this as an opportunity to stake our claim to our Facebook identity, I started an MEA Facebook page [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Media-Ecology-Association/133093046779982] with Peter and me as administrators. We also invited all the for-mer Group’s members to visit the new page and Like us. I encourage everyone else to do the same–I’m sure you like us already!
Other Organizational Changes
Sheila Nayar has been elected our new Historian, and we are already benefiting from Sheila’s talents in taking wonderfully full and precise minutes of our last Board meeting.
Phil Rose has agreed to meld the role of Electronic Mailing List Manager into the position of In-ternet Officer, taking over from Janet Sternberg, who has been such a wonderful list manager for the past nine years. Janet has agreed to help Phil, Fernando, and me out in navigating the shoals of the list management interface and adding list members to our database of members and friends.
Janet Sternberg has been appointed Chair of the Elections Committee, and members will be hearing from her in mid-May regarding nominations and self-nominations for election to the Board. She will also be working closely with Fernando in constructing this fall’s all-important online ballot. A reminder: In order to run for the Board, you have to be a member in good standing before you can be nominated and placed on the ballot. Nominations will be closed as of the end of the General Business Meeting at the convention.
Brian Cogan has been selected to receive the torch from Lance Strate as Chair of the MEA Awards Committee, starting in 2013. Lance will conduct the awards ceremony at this year’s convention, after which Brian will begin the exhaustive (and exhausting) process of selecting winners of the MEA Awards for next year.
The 2012 Convention
This brings me to the last, and far from the least, important announcement, regarding the up-coming convention, being held at Manhattan College, in Riverdale, New York, June 7-10, coor-dinated by our Vice-President, Thom Gencarelli. Thom has been arranging for an exciting lineup of featured speakers, with more news to come. Among those who have agreed so far is Jaron Lanier (http://www.jaronlanier.com/), a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author. His most recent book is You are Not a Gadget (Random House/Vintage, 2010), and he was chosen as one of the 2010 Time 100. Also featured are Douglas Rushkoff, an old (well, not that old) friend and former MEA Board member, whose most recent work is a graphic novel titled A.D.D.; and Terence Moran, the last remaining faculty member of the NYU Media Ecolo-gy Program. We will also have plenary panel sessions celebrating the centenary of the births of both Walter J. Ong and Jacques Ellul. Check out the Web site for more information about the convention and when and how to register in the coming weeks.
My thanks go to all of you who have been members of the MEA and supported our activities. My special thanks go to those who have already renewed their membership for 2012, and I urge all others to either renew or initiate their membership as early in the year as possible [http://www.media-ecology.org/joinmea/index.html].
I’m looking forward to serving the Association in my new capacity and to a sizzling convention at Manhattan College in June.
My best wishes to all,
James C. «Jim» Morrison
President
Media Ecology Association
membership@media-ecology.org
http://www.media-ecology.org
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