VP Meetings -- annual report

International conferences:

2007 has been the biggest and most successful event in the history of international conferences, in terms of attendance, paper submissions, and sponsorship. Thanks to the organizing team.

The 2008 conference will take place in Athens, Greece. The local team is currently trying hard to resolve any remaining issues as discussed in the PC meeting this summer.

In 2009 the conference will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. An enthusiastic team is working to organize this event.

The 2010 conference shall be held in Asia. At the Boston conference, representatives of the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese chapters met to discuss the possibility of a joint conference in one of the countries. They will finally decide on a proposal in October 2007.

Other events:

In addition to the annual international conference a variety of "smaller", more focused events are constantly happening all over the world. Examples are local conferences organized by chapters, special interest group meetings, the simulation winter camp in the US, the European SD Workshop series, etc. Thanks to all of you who are involved in the organization of these meetings. They are a valuable addition to our conference.

Andreas Groessler

VP Member Services Report
Summer meeting of the Policy Council 2007
Submitted by Deborah Campbell

New personnel:

  1. Peter Hovmand has agreed to succeed me as chair of the Diversity Committee.  The Diversity Committee will continue as a committee associated with the VP Member Services.  Peter has been a tremendous asset to me as a member of the committee and I look forward to the renewed focus and support for the PC and Society that will come from his leadership.
  2. Agata Sawicka agreed in February to become my Assistant VP.  She was a member of the dues structure committee, and played a critical role in the analysis work of the committee.  I look forward to a great partnership!

Three projects have been completed:

    Updated dues structure for the Society.  An ad-hoc committee met several times since the winter meeting, and based on research, membership feedback, and committee analysis, developed an income-based, tiered dues structure for the Society.  The committee’s proposal has been emailed to voting members of the PC, and will be presented to the Administration Committee and the Policy Council at the summer meeting.

    July 2007

    Report of the Vice President—Publications

    Deborah Lines Andersen
    Associate Professor of Information Studies and Informatics, College of Computing and Information, University at Albany, Albany, NY 12222 
     
    518-442-5122

    A. Items of interest are covered by the individuals listed below in their separate reports. Please see their individual reports in the Society’s “Reports and Discussion” section at   In lieu of urls below, please find that email address for each person involved.

    2)   Report by the Webmaster: Jack Pugh

    3)   Report of the Editor of the System Dynamics Review: Brian Dangerfield

    4) Web Repository for Models and Other Electronic Venues: Bob Eberlein

    5) Newsletters and Additional Society publication venues: Roberta Spencer

     

    B. The 50th Anniversary Celebration

    1) The Electronic Oracle: Computer Models and Social Decisions (Donella H. Meadows J. M. Robinson; original publication Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, 1985)  has been republished with a new introduction and will be available at cost at the conference.  After the conference the Society office will continue to sell the volume at a profit. (N.B. Amazon was advertising (July 23, 2007) three copies of the 1985 volume starting at US$469.96!)

    2. Scanning Dynamica. John Sterman and Laura Taranto at MIT have completed their task of turning the issues of Dynamica into scanned copies that can be accessed by all. These issues will be/are available on the “Publications” page of the SD website as part of the 25/50 celebration.

    The issues of Dynamica (1975-1984) are as follows: Vol 1, Number 1
    Vol 2, Numbers 1, 2, 3
    Vol 3, Numbers 1, 2, 3
    Vol 4, Numbers 1, 2, 3
    Vol 5, Numbers 1, 2, 3
    Vol 6, Numbers 1, 2
    Vol 7, Numbers 1, 2
    Vol 8, Numbers 1, 2
    Vol 9, Numbers 1, 2
    Vol 10, Numbers 1, 2

    3. Fireside Chat of Jay Forrester and George Richardson: This DVD will be available for sale during the conference at the Pegasus booth.

    C. Additional Society publication venues include:
    SD Bibliography: The System Dynamics Bibliography is updated every six months (over 7,800 entries in the most recent version), and is now open free of charge to individuals and libraries. (There are places where the Society’s website will be updated to reflect that there is no charge or licensing fee for the bibliography.) There is a specific call on the Society’s website for updates to the bibliography at http://www.systemdynamics.org/biblioupdate.htm As of July 1, 2006 the new bibliographer for the System Dynamics Society is Lauren Sinacore, a MSIS student in the Department of Information Studies at the University at Albany ( ). 
    Membership Directory: An online, password-protected resource for members at http://web.memberclicks.com/mc/prelogin.do?hidOrgID=sds

    D. General topics and changes for publications for this year are as follows:
    1. Indexing and Abstracting:  It is important to note the number of services that have picked up the Review.  The Review is abstracted in Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, CC/Social & Behavioral Sciences, Computing Reviews, Geobase, Geographical Abstracts: Human Geography, Research Alert (ISI), and the Social Sciences Citation Index (ISI). These are an indicator of journal strength and visibility.

    2. Scanning the System Dynamics Newsletter. The next publications project will be to scan and make electronically available paper-only back issues (pre 1988) of the System Dynamics Newsletter/President’s Newsletter.  This is the next online initiative for publications. There appear to be about 9 linear inches of newsletters available for scanning at MIT.  Some individual newsletters run in excess of 150 pages. We will need to catalog and fill in where needed to create a complete run. Deborah Andersen will be soliciting information from individuals about this initiative at the 2007 Boston conference.

    4. Digitization of the pre-Wiley System Dynamics Review.  This has been accomplished through Wiley.  Access is online with user name and password through the Wiley Interscience link on the Society’s webpage. In our agreement with Wiley to create Wiley access to pre-Wiley issues we agreed to only sell issues to members of the society.

    5. New Conference Proceedings. The conference proceedings are now published on the System Dynamics website (as of 2006) with a printable ISBN label for individuals to download.  This is a change from the society publishing actual CDs for conferences. 

    Additionally, the society office is retyping the indexes and abstracts for the conference proceedings of 1996 and earlier. 1996 and 1995 are available.  1994 and earlier will appear some time after the 2007 Boston conference in reverse chronological order.  This is definitely a long term project that will benefit members of the society and the authors of conference papers.

    6. Web Repository for Models and Other Electronic Venues: These items continue to be under the guidance of Bob Eberlein, the VP for Electronic Presence of the Society.  See his report on the discussion board website.

    7. Continuing Discussion: What is the role of open source information for the Society? This topic continued during the online policy council meeting winter 2007.  The scanned copies of Dynamica will be available to members, and according to the desires of Bradford University, will be available open source.  The bibliography is now available to all. This will be a continued topic of policy discussion as models and the System Dynamics Newsletter become available online.