April 2010 letter to the members from Helen Kennedy, DiGRA President.
Dear DiGRA Members,
You may not be aware that DiGRA now has a new board elected at DiGRA AGM in September 2009 which took up office in January 2010.
The Executive Board of the Association, 2010 – 2012
President: Helen W. Kennedy (UK)
Vice-President: Esther MacCallum-Stewart (UK)
Treasurer: Jussi Holopainen (Finland)
Board Secretary: Bob Appelman (US – Indiana)
Gordon Calleja (Denmark)
Annika Waern (Sweden)
Bart Simon (Canada)
Open Seat: Patrick Crogan (Australia)
Open Seat: Marinka Copier (Netherlands)
Open Seat: Dan Pinchbeck (UK)
Open Seat: Torill Mortensen (Norway)
Open Seat: José P. Zagal (Chile)
Open Seat: Jesper Juul (Denmark)
Board Appointed Members:
Petri Lankoski Webmaster
The minutes of the AGM 2009 are available at digra-old-site.local
So what have we been up to so silently for these past few months?
We have two ongoing projects to manage:
1. Chapter Development:
At the AGM in 2009 it was agreed that in the absence of a full conference for 2010 DiGRA would support some National Chapter Events. A call for submissions was sent out in 2009 and the first action of the new board was to review and agree the funding for these proposals.
The Nordic Chapter was successful in gaining full DiGRA support for their event: Nordic DiGRA: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players August 16-17, 2010 (full details of how to participate are available at digra-old-site.local.)
DiGRA have provided sponsorship to support travel grants for Ph.D. students who present at the conference.
An Italian DiGRA chapter has also just been approved.
DiGRA will also be providing sponsorship for a range of international events throughout the coming year – see digra-old-site.local for more details.
We are still very interested in hearing from groups who wish to set up National DiGRA chapters. Please see the website for details of how to apply.
2. Conference Planning and Management
DiGRA 2011 will take place in Utrecht (main organizer: Utrecht School of the Arts). We are currently improving our systems of conference submission, review and publication of proceedings. See below for more details.
Future Planning:
We have set ourselves a number of priorities for the immediate future and in order to manage these successfully they are being coordinated by specific working groups. The priorities are:
1. Updating our mission and reviewing our services to members:
Helen Kennedy, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Gorden Calleja and Jesper Juul are currently working on this. We are working with the existing mission statement and my presidency proposals. Suggestions or further proposals from members would be very welcome. Send these to president@digra-old-site.local.
2. Updating and improving the DiGRA website
Dan Pinchbeck, Jose Zagal and Petri Lankoski are working on this.
3. Conference Guidelines:
Helen Kennedy, Jose Zagal, Jesper Juul, Marinka Copier, Bart Simon and Annika Waern are currently working on this. They are particularly concerned with the following: standardising submission and conference management system, developing DiGRA standard peer review management protocols, improving status of publication opportunities.
We have longer term goals that address the ideas emerging through mission and services to members discussions but we will update you on these next time.
In the meantime, please contact me at president@digra-old-site.local if you would like to contribute some ideas in any of these areas of priority.
Helen Kennedy
President
Digital Games Research Association