Annual Meeting News, November 2024
ASIS&T 2024 Annual Meeting Recap
We had another well attended Annual Meeting in Calgary, Canada with 421 individuals attending. There would have been more, but unfortunately many colleagues from around the globe were unable to obtain a visa into Canada. Of these, 395 were ASIS&T members. Registrants from 20 countries came together to engage in learning, research sharing, meeting new people, and reconnecting with friends and colleagues. The majority, as expected were from the US and Canada.
One virtual workshop was offered prior to the meeting, and the rest of the meeting was in person.
The theme for this year’s conference was “Putting People First: Responsibility, Reciprocity and Care in Information Research and Practice.” The strength of the technical presentations at this year’s meeting is a testament to the ASIS&T mission to advance the information sciences and related applications of information technology by providing focus, opportunity, and support to information professionals and organizations. We hope you all agree that this Annual Meeting is no different.
There were near-record numbers of submissions this year, which resulted in well-rounded and diverse presentations. We thank each of our over 320 presenters giving 252 presentations, recognizing that the meeting would not exist without their excellent presentations. Attendees enjoyed 6 pre-conference workshops, 115 posters, 80 papers, 27 panels, and 3 alternative event which were selected through a rigorous peer review process, conducted by over 520 reviewers and meta reviewers.
Attendees enjoyed the opening plenary which featured Lerato Chondoma. Lerato hails from the Batuang Clan of ba ha Moletsane from Lesotho in Southern Africa and lives as uninvited guest on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people, where she works and raises her children. She is currently the inaugural Associate Director for the Indigenous Research Support Initiative at the University of British Columbia. Lerato is a proven strategic leader, public sector administrator and employment equity lawyer- deeply rooted in racial equity and anti-racism, DEI, decolonization and reconciliation. In her work at UBC, Lerato champions and supports scholarship and discourses in Indigenous community-based research, intersectional equity, decoloniality and critical race theory, that focus on the interests and priorities of Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities and researchers. Her presentation was entitled, “Towards Equitable, Decolonial and Anti-Racist Futures in Research.”
The closing plenary featured keynote speaker Ranjit Singh is a senior researcher at Data & Society, conducting qualitative research for the Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab. With a particular focus on research equity, he also helps guide the organization’s commitment to equitable research practices both internally and with its external partners. Singh’s work examines the everyday experiences of people subject to data-driven practices and follows the mutual shaping of their lives and their data records, aiming to understand how data is increasingly used to imagine and develop new digital solutions for democratizing inclusion. His research sits at the intersection of data infrastructures, majority world scholarship, and public policy, and uses methods of interview-based qualitative sociology and multi-sited ethnography. His presentation was entitled, “The Ordinary Ethics of Putting People First.”
Thank you to our Program Committee, Exhibitors, and Sponsors
We can’t give enough thanks to the members of the AM2024 Organizing Committee. First and foremost, we would like to thank Conference Program Chair, Heather O’Brien, University of British Columbia, Canada, and June Abbas, University of Oklahoma, USA, for their hard work and contributions which resulted in an outstanding meeting. They were instrumental in keeping our focus on both the conference theme and mission. The success of ASIST24 is a result of the tireless work and dedication of the Program Committee:
Paper Track
Chair: Annie T. Chen, University of Washington, USA
Vice Chair: Jenny Bossaller, University of Missouri, USA
Panel Track
Chair: Alex Poole, Drexel University, USA
Vice Chair: Daqing He, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Poster Track
Chair: Dana McKay, RMIT University, Australia
Vice Chair: Syeda Hina Batool/Shahid, University of British Columbia, Canada
Doctoral Colloquium Co-Chairs
Denise Agosto, College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University
Howard Rosenbaum, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
This year’s Annual Meeting Award winners were:
Best Long Papers
1st place. Xiaochuan Zheng, Hao Fan
Honorable mention. Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou, Chunyu Liu, Jingwen Shan, Devorah Kletenik, Rachel Adler
Best short papers
1st place. Carole Palmer, Sebastian Karcher, Miranda Belarde-Lewis, Sandy Littletree, Nestor Guerrero
Honorable mention. Angela Murillo, Ayoung Yoon
Best Poster Awards
1st place. Yingying Han; Ruohua Han, and Karen Wickett
2nd place Tanja Merčun, Maja Kuhar, and Tjaša Jug
3rd place Richmond Yeboah
Best Poster Reviewers:
1st place. Cameron Moy
2nd place. Xiaoyu Chen
3rd place. Boegum Choi
Best Paper Reviewers:
1st place. Jesse Dinneen
2nd place. Manman Luo
3rd place. Devon Murphy
Global Awards
Many ASIS&T members were recognized during the Awards Banquet held on October 28th, among them Marcia Zeng who received the Award of Merit.
Pictures of the award winners can be found in the meeting photo album and a complete list of award winners is available HERE.
Thank you to all who attended this year’s conference! We also want to say thank you for the generous contributions from our sponsors and exhibitors. Your continued support of the ASIS&T allows us to deliver on new and existing initiatives at the core of our mission.
The meeting evaluation was sent to all registrants with a deadline of November 22. We will include a summary of the evaluation in the next edition of Inside ASIS&T.