Publishing SIG BOARD REPORT: JUNE 2000

PUBLISHING SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP REPORT
Submitted by Robert Casler, Chair
June 30, 2000

What were SIG goals for the year?

 These goals stated on the Publishing SIG website are:

1. Maintain PubSIG Webpage. (Meg Ashman, University of Vermont, and Sue Keller, University of Alaska, are working together on the content, and Kim Parker, University of Vermont, is handling the technical side. Progress: ongoing.)

 

 
 
 

2. Add electronic publications to our C&A category. (Evie Liss, Oregon State University, will co-chair a committee to get the classes established and judges' forms developed. We hope to have this adopted in time for the year 2000 C&A. Progress: completed.)

 

 
 
 

3. Pilot PubSIG electronic newsletter. (Robert Casler will take leadership for producing a periodic newsletter. Progress: Two newsletters have been issued.)

 

 
 
 

4. Develop a good program for SIG day at the U.S. Agricultural Communicators Congress. (The SIG leadership--chair, vice-chair and vice-chair elect; regional reps; and others in leadership positions--will take responsibility for this.)

 We were successful on the first three goals. We have been gradually adding content to the website that seems to be of interest to the membership. Much of this has come from discussions on the listserv, but also includes the SIG newsletter.

 Through the efforts of a number of people from multiple SIG's involved in crafting and reviewing the guidelines, the new electronic publications C&A class was unanimously approved by the board and received a respectable number of submissions this year.

 We instituted the SIG newsletter this year and had positive comments. Three issues were distributed and placed on the web site. Unlike some SIG's, we did not solicit articles. Instead these were a collection of updates that accumulated over 3-4 months. This gave them some archival value and reduced the number of email messages that some people come to resent.

What barriers kept you from achieving goals?

 Goal number 4 was not achieved due to the nature of the DC program. Because of time constraints, time could not be set aside for SIG programming.

What would you have done differently?

 In retrospect, I would recommend having another SIG leader take over the newsletter duties. It seemed appropriate that I handle it during its first year, but this might not be the most effective approach.

What can the Board do to make SIG leadership more effective??

 I think some consideration should be given to rethinking C&A duties. In a SIG with as many classes as ours, C&A becomes a major time commitment at the expense of other efforts. But the Board has always been very supportive.

Any other thoughts you want to share with the Board?

 This was an odd year. The vice-chair was on extended leave for the first half of the year, and then decided to resign soon after she returned. Luckily I had a vice-chair elect who was willing to move up, but we lost some opportunities for cooperative planning while waiting for this person to return. In addition, the new C&A class was a major organizational time commitment early in the year in order to have it approved by submission time. Happily, we still had submissions on par with previous years (7 more than last year), as well as a good showing for the new class (5). Still, there are a few anemic classes that will be reconsidered at the business meeting in DC. Out of eleven classes, I was pleased that we only had complaints about one, and this seems to be due to some misunderstanding over guidelines with a particular judge. I was also pleased that the board approved our petition to allow a retired ACE president, who is a life member and technically ineligible, to serve as a judge this year.

We made good use of the listserv this year for discussions and surveys, and I have been encouraging members to share their survey results via the newsletter and the web site. We had good input from the regional reps, and a good response to a call for nominations for the award of excellence. Some voiced disappointment about the lack of opportunity for input as a SIG in planning the DC meeting, since it broke the momentum from previous years, but this was generally accepted as inevitable.

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