Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting

(November 12, 2004 " Chicago, Il)

2004 HCTD Business Meeting
Friday, November 12, 2004 3:30-4:45p

Officers in Attendance
Dennis Wignall and Tasha Van Horn - Immediate Past Presidents
Lori Charron & J.D. Wallace - Co-Chairs, President 2004
Noemi Marin and Mary Wiemann - Co-Chairs, Planning
David Foulger - Co-Chair, Publications
Scott D'Urso and Yun Xia - Co-Chairs, Membership
Kerk Fong Kee - Student Representative

Absent
Andrew Finn - Co-Chair, Publications

J.D. Wallace called the meeting to order at 3:30p
- An agenda, the 2003 minutes, and a list of this year's divisional panels and papers were made available to those in attendance.

- A motion to accept the minutes was made and seconded. Minutes were approved unanimously.

- Status reports from each of the HCTD areas were then presented

Student Representative Report
Kerk Fong Kee presented the Student Representative report.

- The 2004 Graduate Student Panel was again a big success. The diversity and quality of the work presented continues to improve demonstrating the continued and growing interest in the division.

- Scott D'Urso acted as the panel respondent.

Membership and Recruitment Report
Scott D'Urso presented the Membership and Recruitment report.

- Membership has continued to increase according to the official roles. Current membership role lists 476 members as of September 2004. This was an increase of over 15% in the last two years. Flyers were distributed at the conference.

- In addition, electronic calls for membership were also distributed via CRTNET (Communication Research and Theory Network) and AOIR (Association of Internet Researchers).

- Davis Foulger noted that membership may be higher than the official role indicates due to the numbers who are receiving the newsletter. During the coming year, an attempt will be made to consolidate the official and unofficial lists of members.

- If the division reaches 500 members, it will receive an additional voting member in the Legislative assembly.

Publications Report
Davis Foulger presented the publications report.

- He informed the membership that the electronic mailing list consists of 350 members. Additionally, he reported that 65 additional individuals registered for the newsletter via the division website, bringing the total to 415. As noted earlier, this mailing list and the official list need to be reconciled to target unofficial members for official memberships.

- Two newsletters were published online. The first was released in January 2004 and the second was released prior to the current convention.

- Davis also noted that he continues to manage the division website with timely updates.

Planning Report
Mary Wiemann presented the Planning Report.

- 92 papers were submitted this year. 69% of these were accepted along with 45% of the panels submitted.

- There were 27 reviewers this year.

- There were 21 programmed sessions scheduled from November 11th through November 14 th.

- In keeping with the conference theme, many of the programs looked back at where we have been and ahead towards where we are going. This years programs looked at issues such as deceit in technology, security, and the role of technology in the creation of public memory. Other programs focused on the creation and maintenance of the self through technology, how we create and define environment in these contexts, and how competencies are viewed in social contexts.

- In keeping with the new NCA conference format, 30% of this years panels were in the discussion panel format.

Presidents'’ Report
J.D. Wallace presented the Presidents' Report.

- There was a poor response to the NCA submission system. NCA has a contract with All Academic. In order to improve the system, members need to let NCA know what problems exist so that they may be resolved. All Academic has promised that the next version of the product will be much better.

- Financial report - NCA is in a strong state financially. They are taking in more money than they spend. The property in Washington D.C. has been paid off. There was a general sense that NCA is going to be moving away from the current 60-70% dependence on membership dues. It is currently looking for other avenues for revenue. Agreements with EBSCO and journals led to more revenues.

- Undergraduate Program Certification - A first draft proposal went before the legislative board. The debate centered on the issue of whether or not this program should be a certification program or an accreditation program. A vote was held until more of the membership is made aware of what this program will be. J.D. noted that we should all be aware of this offering, as it is an important issue for where we live and work.

- The NCA is seeking to create an experts list for various areas of communication research. J.D. suggested that we need to develop a list of areas/categories of topics where experts could be contacted by the media. The Executive Committee will pick 5. It was suggested that large fields should be designated that the media will have access. The division membership will contribute ideas and these will be forwarded to the selection committee.

- EBSCO is looking to create an index of keywords for our field of research. J.D. asked the membership to contribute 1st and 2nd order terms that could be used in research. Many issues/topics are out there that need to be recognized. Suggestions should be sent to J.D no later than November 17th . This will be announced to the division membership at large via e-mail.

HCTD Officers for 2005
HCTD elects two officers each year to serve as Membership Co-Chairs. Then each year those two officers advance to become Publication Co-Chairs, the Program Co-Chairs, the President Co-Chairs, and finally in year five, Past President Co-Chairs. In addition, two student representatives are also elected.

Following a brief description of the Membership position, nominees were accepted from the floor. The nominees for the 2005 Membership Co-chairs were Nick Bowman, John Spinda, Ulla Bunz, and Nanette Hogg. Ulla Bunz and Nanette Hogg were elected to serve as Membership Co-Chairs for the coming year.

The nominees for the 2005 Student Representatives were Nick Bowman, Dan McRoberts, John Spinda, Ann Greenleaf, Mike Zimmer, and Saman Talib. Dan McRoberts and Saman Talib were elected as the Student Representatives for the coming year.

Due to other commitments, Andrew Finn is no longer able to continue as an HCTD officer. Dennis Wignall offered to take his place and the current HCTD officers approved it. [PLEASE NOTE - Though at the time of this meeting it was thought that Andy would be unable to serve in his capacity as an HCTD officer, this turned out not to be the case. Andy is continuing his service this year alongside Davis Foulger as the Co-Chairs of Planning.]

Accordingly, the new HCTD officers for 2005 are:

Other Items of Business
Awards
HCTD gave awards for the Top Three Papers and the Top Student Paper submitted to the 2004 Annual Conference. This years recipients were:

- Jennifer E. Good - "Internet Use and Environmental Attitudes: A Social Capital Approach"

- Julian Cortese, Mihye Seo and Ioana Sipos - "Opinion Expression in FTF and CMC Contexts"”

- Carlos Gustavo Godoy - "Assessing the Legality of Integrated Works: The Future of Counter-voices in a Media Convergent Environment"” [TOP STUDENT PAPER]

Certificates of Appreciation were handed out to all of the reviewers for the 2004 NCA Convention

In addition, current officers were acknowledged for their efforts, especially to Lori Charron and J.D. Wallace for their service as Presidents of HCTD.

New Business
The issue of the position of HCTD Webmaster was discussed. Currently, Davis Foulger is undertaking the unofficial position for the division. It was decided to open up this as an official position in 2005.

Ulla Bunz made a suggestion that the division should create a Top Paper panel where the top papers could be showcased at NCA. This suggestion was well received. Davis Foulger would look into the matter as part of the 2005 program planning.

Noemi Marin brought up the idea that abstracts of submitted papers be archived through the division's web site archive. Abstracts will be solicited via the divisional newsletter.

The 2005 NCA Convention will be held in Boston on November 17th through 25th.

If you see anything in the current draft of the minutes that needs to be corrected, or something you believe is missing, please contact either Scott D'Urso or Yun Xia.