[Sighfis-l] SIG CON Call for Speakers

[Richard Hill]

SIG-CON -- Call for Panel Speakers 

ASIST Annual Meeting 
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 
8:00 – 9:00 pm 
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Columbus, Ohio 
United States of America 
Third Rock from the Sun 
25,000 Light Years from the Galactic Center 

Introduction 
SIG/CON is an award-winning Special Interest Group of the
American Society for Information Science & Technology. The
function of SIG/CON is to "explore the fundamental notions
of information science, and expose them for what they are"
(C.D. Batty, Remarks at SIG/CON, 1987). 

SIG/CON has been in the forefront of research across all
areas of study, although the group is perhaps best known
for advancing the theories of baloonean logic and titular
colonicity. The roster of distinguished information
scientists who have made public (with startling and
refreshing lucidity) their research findings at SIG/CON
represent the diversity of national and international
institutions associated with this field. 

Further information on this important Special Interest
Group can be found at: 
http://web.simmons.edu/~schwartz/con/sig-con.html 

Speaker Proposals 
Proposals should reflect current research, or prospective
research. Originality is important, but creative
presentation styles are much more important. The proposal
should be three pages in length, single spaced, 12 point
Times New Roman font, with 0.75 inch margins, no footers or
headers, and headings of 14 point, Arial Black. You may use
blank pages in order to reach the three page required
length. Two pages is unacceptable, as are four or five
pages—the number is three. 

The proposal should address one of these Panel Session
Themes: 
- Information Seeking Behavior Models of the Dead and
Semi-Dead 
- Taxonomies and Ontologies for non-Homo sapiens Species 
- Alternate-Reality Historical Analyses of Information
Science 
- Frustration-Affective Relevance Feedback for Web 3.0 IR
Systems 

If you don’t like any of the themes listed above, please
feel free to suggest one of your own. 

Proposal Due Date: Friday, 12th September 2008 

Notification of acceptance will occur at the whim of the
session Chair—hopefully within a week, but you never know.
Feel free to bug him if you don’t hear back in a reasonable
amount of time. Potential speakers who annoy the Chair
increase their chance of acceptance. 

Please email your proposal to: 
Michael Leach 
mrleach at fas.harvard.edu 
or 
leach at simmons.edu 

Faxed or snail-mailed proposals will not be accepted.
Should you go ahead and send your proposal by any of these
methods, my 9 year old daughter will turn them into origami
animals. 

Questions, comments, suggestions, complaints and other
useless communications can be addressed to the same email
addresses listed above. 

Final Note 
This is a real Call for Speakers, notwithstanding the
content of this Call. If you’ve attended a SIG-CON session
in the past, you have great understanding of the
intricacies of this Universe in which we inhabit. If you
have never attended a SIG-CON session, you have my
sympathies—and I invite you to attend this year. 

Sincerely, 
Michael Leach 
Chair, SIG-CON 
Past President, ASIST 
Adjunct Faculty, Simmons College GSLIS 
Head of Collection Development, Cabot Science Library,
Harvard University 



Richard Hill
Executive Director
American Society for Information Science and Technology
1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510
Silver Spring, MD  20910
FAX: (301) 495-0810
(301) 495-0900