ICA San Diego is fast approaching and we are looking forward to seeing your presentations and hearing what your latest results and plans are!

This newsletter contains a number of important points: election of a new vice-chair and a new secretary, the upcoming CMM and AJoC special issues, conference update, and the agenda for the business meeting.

Call for nominations, vice-chair and secretary

We need to elect a new vice-chair to take office immediately after the October elections and a new secretary to take office at ICA 2018. Both positions are for two years. The vice-chair will be in charge of conference planning for the 2018 and 2019 conferences and will then assume the position of chair for another two years. The secretary will be in charge of communication which is a great way to getting to know the group (and to get known by the group). The deadline for nominations will be in the summer and self-nominations are welcome. Feel free to approach us in San Diego for more information.

Special issues

As a reminder:  Communication Methods and Measures will have a special issue coming up on computational methods. It is an open call, but we hope that you will consider submitting your best work from this ICA to the special issue. See http://ica-cm.org/cfp-computational-methods/

Asian Journal of Communication will have a special issue focusing on computational communication research in Asia-Pacific contexts. See http://weblab.com.cityu.edu.hk/blog/blog/2017/04/13/call-for-papers%EF%BC%9Aa-special-issue-of-asian-journal-of-communication/.

Conference update

A lot of you will be presenting papers at the conference in San Diego. All chairs are requested to mail their participants with a deadline for circulating their updated papers, especially for the people who submitted an (extended) abstract. Make sure to note whether you are presenting in a regular panel or in a high-density sessions.

Business meeting

Below is a preliminary agenda for the 2017 business meeting. Please mail us if there are any additional points you would like to add to the agenda.

1. 2016-2017 Interest group report and finances
2. Conference evaluation: which panel types did we like best, and which can be improved? Was it a good idea to accept abstract submissions?
3. Membership recruitment: we are delighted to have well over 150 members now! However, if we want to be recognized as a division, we will have to continue our drive to recruit members, both within ICA and outside.
4. Plans for the coming year(s):
   1. Review process: we would like to make some changes to the review process, in particularly to (1) make every submitting first author automatically a reviewer; and (2) organize a paper bidding process where reviewers can select which papers they would like to review based on the title (this is common in computer science conferences and ensures that you actually get to review interesting papers!)
   2. Best article/dissertation/reviewer award. We should have some budget next year to instate rewards, but this will require someone volunteering to form an awards committee.
   3. Regional conference(s) and preconference(s). If you have any plans to organize either a regional conference or a preconference, please let us know so we can help you get setup.
   4. Setting up a working group for starting up tool repository. We aim for a group of three people that will manage things in collaboration with the (vice)chair and secretary. Feel free to volunteer or approach us in San Diego for more information.