[SIGCIS-Members] The pivot to positivity

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

 

Bernard makes a good point that we should be careful not to appear
curmudgeonly by focusing only on mistakes and problems made by non-members.
That goes not just for public outreach, which is a longer term project, but
also for new members who have joined the list over the last few days. Jason
Gallo, our VC of Operations, just shared the news that 34 new people have
joined in the past four days pushing our membership to about 400. Let's take
that energy and push it in a positive direction.

 

So here are some of the things SIGCIS is doing right now that we could use
your help with.

 

.         The annual workshop is coming up next month and our program is
online. http://www.sigcis.org/workshop14 Please attend! And please submit
something yourself for next year's workshop.

.         We are making ten travel awards to graduate students to help them
present at the workshop. http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward We don't have
much money to do this with. Please consider donating.
https://associations.press.jhu.edu/shot-app/contribute. For larger gifts,
particularly in support of our forthcoming Mahoney Prize for an outstanding
article, there is http://www.sigcis.org/mahoney. 

.         Another way we fund the student travel is by auctioning spare
copies of books at our annual lunch meeting. If you have any books that
could be auctioned please bring them to the meeting or mail them to me.

.         Our syllabus repository is a great resources for people teaching
in the area. http://www.sigcis.org/syllabi It also needs updating. If you
have taught any course with significant history of IT content please
contribute your syllabus by sending it to Chris Leslie along with permission
to post it on our site.  <mailto:chris.leslie at nyu.edu> chris.leslie at nyu.edu
Good for you, good for the community.

.         Evan Koblentz evan at snarc.net and  Rebecca Slayton
<rs849 at cornell.edu> have set up a working group to consider what SIGCIS can
do, particularly in terms of our website, to improve interactions between
journalists and the history of computing community. 

.         If you publish or discover something that our members would be
interested in, don't be shy. Tell them about it with an announcement to
members at sigcis.org.

.         Our resource guide at http://www.sigcis.org/resources is useful,
but also out of date and in need of broadening. Ramesh Subramanian is
coordinating a process to update and expand it. If you would like to take
part, contact  <mailto:ramesh.subramanian at quinnipiac.edu>
ramesh.subramanian at quinnipiac.edu.

.         Like SIGCIS on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SIGCIS) and
follow @SIGCIS on Twitter. Then post on our wall or tweet about us.

.         SIGCIS is always looking for new volunteers, for example to help
out with the 2015 workshop or to set up ad-hoc initiatives in particular
areas.

 

Last but not least, if you are a new member then welcome to SIGCIS!

 

Best wishes,

Tom

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20141014/18543965/attachment-0001.htm>