The OAC is one year old and a buzzing community. The site is run by a team of administrators: Francine Barone, Keith Hart, Justin Shaffner and Paul Wren; but we are always looking for more input. Nathan Dobson joined us recently to help with redesigning the home page and he’s added a news section that the five of us will rotate editing. We also intend to make more changes to the home page, see below. Keith Hart was appointed chair of the team as a way of coordinating decisions and action.

We started out a year ago with a larger team, some of whom have subsequently left. We were not elected. This thread in the discussion forum would be one place for suggestions from members about possible arrangements making the team more directly accountable to the membership.

We welcome volunteers to share administrative tasks and even more to help with development of the site (in the way that Nathan has and others in various ways). We feel that we have adequate resources to keep the OAC functioning, but developing new initiatives takes energy and enthusiasm for which there is always a need.

Ning changes:

You all know that Ning has announced that it will be exclusively commercial from July. We are exploring alternatives, but are still waiting for information about the bandwith we already use, exporting data to another site etc. In the meantime we are building a backup platform which will increase the features and scope of the existing home page and might eventually provide an independent home for the OAC at our own domain. The cost of meeting Ning’s charges is low enough to be met for now by voluntary donations. We will eventually establish a means of making small payments to the OAC using Paypal or some such.

Achievements so far:

Reviewing our achievements in the first year, we survived a challenge to our name and since that time life has been rather quiet, perhaps too much so for some tastes. We now have getting on for 3,500 members worldwide and attract some 500 unique visitors a day. There is some scope for languages other than English, but around 40% of our visitors are from the US and UK and other languages are buried in underused groups. Even so we are already one of the largest and certainly the most diverse network of anthropologists in the world. 2009-10 has laid the foundation for a future with great potential. It is up to us to learn how to make better use of that potential.

Home page changes:

We intend to give more prominence to news on the home page. The Discussion Forum and Blogs will in future be edited to allow existing members and newcomers easier access to the variety of posts on offer, while retaining members’ freedom to post on either at will. We are aware that those who post regularly are relatively few and we need to find ways of increasing participation. Cross-posting from blogs elsewhere is encouraged. The standard of argument has occasionally lapsed into bickering. We are an open community and rely on members to police themselves in the main;but we will not allow any individual to bring the OAC into disrepute. Our rules are clear enough.

WE LOVE GROUPS:

One of the striking features of the OAC in its first year has been the proliferation of Groups, now well over 100 of them. They were at first the main location of activity here, but the energy level has fallen off substantially for some time now. Fran Barone introduced oac.collected which makes it easier to navigate the Groups. There are a number of factors involved, including the failure of Group owners to stimulate participation, the location of new posts in remote corners, limited use of email notification and so on. We could certainly use some creative energy here, if anyone is interested.

OAC Press and other branches:

The OAC Press has some limited accomplishments since its foundation in late 2009, but now seems set to expand its publications. A large editorial board found it difficult to reach effective decisions and recently a core team of editors was formed consisting of Justin Shaffner, Huon Wardle and Keith Hart with the board available for specialist contributions and general advice. We have launched a Working Papers series and have other productions in the works. Our method for now is to publish exclusively online without copyright restrictions and to link our publications to discussions in the main OAC site.

A series of online seminars was launched recently and these feed directly into the Working Papers series. Stacy Hope has agreed to act as OAC Reviews Editor after we were approached by publishers. News about book reviews can be found on the Press site here. Paul Wren established our online repository or wiki early on. The potential for building a valuable resource containing reading materials, course outlines and much more is clearly there, but so far only a few members have made use of it.

WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK:

It is perfectly OK for the vast majority of members to be largely passive, leaving a few activists to develop the OAC. But we do need your feedback. We really want to know what people think. What would you like to see more of here? Do you have interests that are only weakly catered for or not at all? The team of Admins can’t do a lot more at present without the help of additional volunteers, but please post your suggestions on this thread or write to us privately.

Thanks for your support.

The Admins