[SIGCIS-Members] SHOT 2012 CfP update

[James Sumner]

Dear SIGCIS members

Just a brief update on the much-discussed SHOT call for papers. The 
website at <http://www.historyoftechnology.org/shot2012cfp.html> is 
still saying that "detailed submission instructions will be available by 
13 February", but it looks like the information has in fact been 
released in full on those pages. There are links to submission pages 
explaining the procedure.

Cheers
James

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[SIGCIS-Members] CFP: SHOT 2012 Conference, 4-7 Oct in
Copenhagen. Deadline 31 March.
Date: 	Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:16:18 -0600
From: 	Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org>
To: 	<members at sigcis.org>



Hello SIGCIS members,

The dance of the heavens and progress of the Earth have brought us once
again to that special time of year: the SHOT annual meeting call. Well,
technically the “pre-call,” as so far there’s been a limited
announcement with a promise of details to follow “By 13 February 2012.”
Below this message are pasted the current details from the SHOT website
at http://www.historyoftechnology.org/shot2012cfp.html.

Note: this is NOT the call for the annual SIGCIS workshop, which usually
takes place on the final Sunday of the conference. Our call will follow
and will have a much later deadline.

SIGCIS generally organizes one to three panel proposals for the main
SHOT conference, and individual members sometimes also use the email
list to put together panel proposals with SIG sponsorship. These
proposals are reviewed like any others by the SHOT program committee.
Sponsorship doesn’t guarantee acceptance, but working with the SIG
raises the chance of your paper being part of a coherent, relevant, and
polished proposal.

If you are interested in being part of such a panel please send me an
informal expression of interest with a brief description of your
possible contribution. I then try to find common themes to develop in
the topics that could tie them together into a coherent looking
proposal, and work with the authors to refine the individual abstracts
to meet the expectations of historians of technology.

SIGCIS members are also encouraged to develop their own panel proposals.
These can also be sponsored by the SIG. Feel free to reply to the list
(members at sigcis.org <mailto:members at sigcis.org>) to find additional
panel members.

Certain things are common for history conferences but can confuse those
from other disciplines. SHOT isn’t usually as explicit about some things
in its call as it could be. What you need to know:

·Panels generally run for 90 minutes and consist of three panelists, a
commentator, and a chair. Speakers get about 20 minutes each, with 10
for the commentator, 10-15 for questions, and the rest wasted. Most
people now use PowerPoint. Many historians still read papers word for
word. Some panels are proposed as a whole. Others are assembled by the
program committee from papers submitted individually.

·Reviewing is based on a one page abstract and one page cv, and thus is
obviously not double blind. Usually about 1/3 of submissions are
rejected, but you will never know why as you do not receive comments
from the reviewers. Selection is done by the program committee members
themselves, with program balance and session coherence a concern.
Therefore the odds of being accepted are generally higher as part of a
coherent panel than as an individual paper.

·The full paper is never reviewed or published, but you are still
expected to write out some version of it for the commentator to read
prior to the meeting. The commentator is supposed to weave together
useful common threads in the papers, add context where missing, and make
suggestions on possible improvements. This role is known as a
“discussant” in some disciplines. SHOT commentators generally err on the
side of niceness, particularly versus some discussion I’ve seen in
business schools.

·All the chair does is to introduce the speakers, moderate the question
period, and make sure that everything runs to time. It’s a good way to
get yourself onto the program if you don’t have any new work to present.

·Only one paper submission per person per year is allowed. SHOT
discourages people from speaking two years running, but that rule does
not apply this year because this is an “overseas” (i.e. not the USA)
meeting.

·Connecting your paper or panel to an official conference theme is
helpful, but not usually essential. The East/West Cold War theme should
be an easy one for many of us to address.

·SHOT usually has travel money from the NSF and other sources to help
graduate student presenters and those “between jobs.” This is applied
for separately after acceptance of your paper.

Best wishes,

Tom Haigh

SHOT CALL FOR PAPERS, on SHOT WEBSITE AS OF FEB 16, 2012

*Call For Papers:*
SHOT 2012: 4-7 October
Copenhagen, Denmark

Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2012

The Society for the History of Technology will hold its annual meeting
in Copenhagen, Denmark from 4-7 October at the Copenhagen Business
School. The Program Committee invites paper and panel proposals on any
topic in the history of technology, broadly defined. The Committee
welcomes proposals for individual papers or sessions, as well as
works-in-progress from researchers at all levels (including graduate
students, chaired professors, and independent scholars). It welcomes
proposals from those new to SHOT, regardless of discipline.
Multinational, international, and cross-institutional sessions are
particularly encouraged. We especially encourage proposals from
non-Western and Eastern-European scholars. Since this is a non-North
American meeting, the Program Committee will permit scholars who
presented at the 2011 Cleveland meeting to give papers in Copenhagen. It
is SHOT's policy to relax its rule about not presenting papers at two
consecutive meetings in order to attract as many people as possible to
meetings outside of North America.

For the 2012 meeting the Program Committee continues to welcome
unconventional sessions; that is, session formats that diverge in useful
ways from the typical three/four papers with comment. These might
include round-table sessions, workshop-style sessions with papers that
are pre-circulated electronically, or "author meets critics" sessions.
We also welcome poster proposals for presentation in poster sessions.

/THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS 31 MARCH 2012.
DETAILED SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE BY 13 FEBRUARY 2012./

SHOT 2012 SPECIAL THEMES*
*While paper and session proposals on all topics are welcome, the
Program Committee is especially interested in proposals that engage the
following themes:
I. /Technology, sustainability, and environment. /SHOT has a long
history of analyzing how technologies have interfered with or shaped
nature and our social or cultural environments. The search for
sustainable technology solutions has recently become a main
preoccupation of engineers, designers and tinkerers all over the world
and is high on the political agenda too. Possible themes to address are:

·Questions of scale: onsite, small- and community-scale technology as
challenges for large-scale and centralized models of technology design,
both in rural and new urban environments

·Smart design: ecodesign and sustainable industrial or product design as
evidence of smart solutions for an accountable handling of technology

·Natural infrastructures: infrastructures as “natural” environments and
nature (air, water, soil) as co-producers of large-scale infrastructures

·More with less: new technologies and the search for efficiency in
energy consumption or technologies of power saving in housing,
transport, and communication

II. /Technology, East-West relations, and the Cold War. /During the Cold
War, Europe was one of the central laboratories for experimentation with
ideological and political regimes, which deeply affected traditional
paths of knowledge and technology transfer in Europe. While the history
of the Cold War has mainly been told as a history of discontinuity and
fragmentation, we would especially welcome papers and sections dealing
with examples of successful co-operation or “hidden continuities” in
inter-European technology transfer during the 20th century. General
areas to be explored are:

·Changing times: continuities and discontinuities in the transfers of
knowledge and technology between Eastern and Western Europe and the rest
of the world from the mid-19th century to the present

·Negotiating identities: spaces and places of co-operation or
confrontation before, during, and after the Cold War

·Blurred boundaries: spill-over effects and holes in the Iron Curtain

·Trading zone: Europe as symbolic battlefield and diplomatic playground
for world hegemony

·Chilling effects: Technologies at war & wartime technology

·Secret stories: technologies of intelligence and espionage and their
staging in popular media (comics, films, magazines, television & radio)

·Competing Modernities: the uses of technology in a variety of economic
development and modernization schemes

Evaluation Criteria*
*The Program Committee's highest priority in evaluating paper and panel
proposals is scholarly excellence.

General ground rules/
/SHOT rules exclude multiple submissions (i.e., submitting more than one
individual paper proposal, or proposing both an individual paper and a
paper as part of a session). However, scholars may both propose a paper
and serve as a commentator or session chair.

Proposals for individual papers must include*
*1. a one-page abstract (maximum 600 words)
2. a one-page curriculum vitae, including current postal and e-mail
addresses

Proposals for complete sessions must include*
*1. a description of the session that explains how individual papers
contribute to an overall theme (300 words max)
2. the names and paper titles of the presenters
3. for each presenter, a one-page summary (maximum 600 words) of the
paper’s topic, argument(s), and evidence used
4. for the commentator, chair, and each presenter: one-page c.v., with
postal and e-mail addresses

/* Please note that in general we discourage panels with more than three
papers.
**Please indicate if a proposal is sponsored by one of SHOT’s special
interest groups./

DETAILED SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE BY 13 FEBRUARY 2012

For more information please see the Society's *Annual Meeting Webpage*
<http://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual_meeting.html>. For general
questions about the Society, please email SHOT Secretary *Bernie
Carlson* <mailto:shotsecy at virginia.edu>*.* <mailto:shotsecy at virginia.edu>