The following submission have been added to the shortlist. Voting will commence shortly.

One item which has been pending since the creation of the OAC one year ago is an iconic logo representing the Open Anthropology Cooperative. There have been debates about the form and function of our activities here and the atmosphere and structure of our discussions. The OAC potentially means something distinct to each of us, and we are now at an important stage in moving forward, with the aid of the entire membership, to solidify our role within the anthropological community. It seems fitting to launch a logo design competition to mark our one year anniversary and to give all members an opportunity to contribute to the identity of the site which we have each helped to construct.

The admin team would therefore like to encourage design submissions for a logo to represent the Open Anthropology Cooperative. If chosen, your design will appear on the header of this page as the official logo as well as on other OAC-related sites and initiatives, including the OAC Press. It will help to solidify our identity and recognition of the OAC and its 3,400+ members.

The theme and style of the design is entirely open. Feel free to be inspired by the Cooperative’s diversity of membership, its ambitious aims in promoting wider participation in anthropological discussion, encouraging cooperation and inspiring innovation, or any other experiences that you’ve had here. You are also welcome to share the “story” behind your design.

The deadline for submissions is July 28, 2010. Voting on the designs which meet the specifications detailed below will begin after that time.

Read the full announcement here.

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. Read the rest of this entry »