Many things have happened in December. We had a wonderful GLOWing lecture by Charles Reiss and discussant Hedde Zeijlstra (thanks again!), and two very productive town hall meetings with the GLOW community where we heard many interesting ideas about what GLOW could be doing to strengthen generative linguistics. Thank you all for coming to these events and providing your input.
The main points of discussion of the town hall meetings were as follow.
GLOW manifesto
- Who are we? How do we define ourselves?
- What unites us? What creates the “We” feeling?
- What is our collective expertise?
- Where do we see us/generative linguistics in 10 years?
GLOW as a learned society, trade union, political organization
- Strengthen generative linguistics
- Engage in lobbying (funding agencies, other organizations)
- Outreach, Networking
- Financial and educational support
- Expand geographically
- Connect with other organizations: SLE, CIPL, NYI Universe, summer schools, ConSOLE
- Provide hub for resources: online lectures, lecture series, summer schools, training possibilities, many more
Membership
- Lifetime membership
- Free student memberships
- Fund drives, donations, institutional memberships, increase fees for senior members (with positions)
GLOW conference
- Goals: Remain a strong, prestigious; increase number of participants; more support for early-career researchers
- Shorten the length of (some) talks
- Parallel sessions
- Large(r) number of posters
- Invited speakers
- Main talks in hybrid form (online free for GLOW members)
- Proceedings
- Travel support, student prize
The next steps
The GLOW board will hold several meetings to discuss the issues raised and options suggested, and weigh the points of disagreements. For some of the issues we will create task forces and/or standing committees for which we will seek participants from the GLOW community (e-mails regarding this will be sent in the new year). Some issues may also involve voting by the members. Our general goal is to maintain the strengths of the organization and anything that has been working well, but change areas that are obsolete, require improvement, or should be approached entirely differently. Some changes may be gradual, and in particular for points where we saw major disagreements, we may make initial decisions (if compromises are not possible) but re-evaluate those in the future. Continued feedback from the community will be essential and highly welcome throughout the next year (we want to hear everyone’s concerns and try to implement them within our goals and means).
Lastly, I can report that the GLOW community is growing and we are very happy to be a connection point (and more) for our exciting generative field.