While a majority of our organization’s efforts lie in planning and conducting our spring get-together, we also take to heart the highlighted phrase (below) from the NCTE constitution that authorizes the CCCC:

Conferences are authorized by the Executive Committee of the Council for specific or indefinite terms with the principal responsibility for holding meetings for exchange of views on specific professional topics…. A conference when authorized shall have the responsibility for planning its meetings and interim activities, subject to the approval of the Executive Committee of the Council…. All individual voting members of a conference shall also be members of the Council.

Those interim activities are quite robust:

• Overseeing our academic journals, College Composition and Communication and College Composition and Communication Online
• Managing our book series Studies in Writing and Rhetoric
• Sponsoring FORUM
• Awarding research with our CCCC Research Initiative, which funded 13 research projects last year
• Finding and recognizing winners for our ~20 research, travel, and service awards and grants.
• Researching issues in the field and developing position statements
• Participating in NCTE advocacy efforts at the federal level
• Working with our newly created CCCC Policy Fellow
• Issuing statements about timely issues
• Coordinating with other learned societies
• Supporting innovative projects proposed by our members
• Developing and housing databases of living and relevant information for our field

So we take to heart the etymology of “conference” (L conferre,  con– + ferre to carry or bear) as a sense of conferring/working together throughout the year in addition to convening or coming together at our spring convention (L convenīre, con– + venīre to come).

In this election season, it’s tempting to ask CCCC or NCTE to issue a statement for or against a presidential candidate. Don’t count on it. We are organized as a 501(c)(3) organization, which means is that we should not do the following:

• carry on propaganda
• attempt to influence legislation
• participate in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office (and this includes publishing or distributing statements)

The good news is that while we are utterly forbidden from participating in any political campaign, we are allowed some degree of lobbying (trying to influence legislation). But the tax code makes it very clear that such activities can’t be a substantial amount of our activity (it’s safe to say we stay well below that limit). Please see the NCTE Statement on Lobbying for full information.

In talking with lawmakers and regulators, what do you think our organization’s priorities should be? What are your personal priorities? What about the broader field’s priorities?

NCTE sponsors an annual Advocacy Day, where members are invited to Washington to meet their legislators and tell them about issues of literacy and education they care about. The next such event is Feb 25, 2016, and you’re all invited to participate.

Just don’t ask us to contribute to a campaign or write an endorsement for a candidate (or group of candidates). As tempting as that is, we just can’t do it.

At our annual CCCC convention, we typically register 3000-3500 people. While most of those registrations take place in advance of the convention, quite a large number of registrations take place on-site. This probably means that while long-term members register in advance, people near convention cities attend because it’s a big convention that’s close.

We have felt, therefore, that keeping the convention moving every year increases access, on average, to all attendees. Depending on where you live, two-thirds of the time the convention city ought to be no further than one airline hop (or, if you’re so inclined, a reasonable drive). Unfortunately, the other third of the time, you may have quite a commute. We’ll talk about this in later blog posts, but the available of travel moneys is a major factor in enabling members to attend the conference. The other economic factor is the cost of housing. Actual registration costs represent a miniscule portion of a member’s convention budget.

There may be alternative meeting structures that can mitigate those costs to our members, and it’s worth exploring those alternatives. But I also think the bell will not toll for face-to-face meetings any time soon, as too many of us value the camaraderie, collaboration, and improvisation between members as we share ideas, argue with each other, and work through the issues of our discipline in real time.

While the C’s held its first conventions in the 50s in the Midwest or New York City, we have been moving around ever since the 60’s, generally in a pattern like this: East, Central, West, Central, East, Central, and so on…. After this year in Houston, the sun also rises on our future meetings as they go west to Portland (2017), then central Kansas City (2018), then east Pittsburgh (2019), then central Milwaukee (2020). We are set to choose the west city for 2021 in the next few months.

For your visual enjoyment, here’s a map of all our conventions. Single red dots are cities that have hosted only one meeting. Darker red dots with numbers indicate cities that have hosted us multiple times. Green dots are the future meetings. As you can see, Chicago holds the record with 10 conventions, followed by St. Louis and New York with 5, and Minneapolis and San Francisco with 4.

Today is the shortest day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere. Here in Texas, the sun appears on the southeastern horizon, soars across the sky low in the south and, after a mere 9 hours and 55 minutes, dips out of view in the southwest.

Your experience varies, of course, depending on your location on the globe, but it seems to me this is as good a date as any to begin my work as chair by reflecting on our organization, our discipline(s), and the work that stands before us.

And my view from 33.582° N, 101.79° W, is that while time is short in many respects, there is also an incredible and expansive range of possible futures for us. The following is a list (in no particular order or comprehensiveness) of topics that are both challenges and opportunities for the C’s.

• Inclusiveness. The C’s has worked diligently for decades to create a welcoming and inclusive organization. From the creation of the Scholars for the Dream Award (1993) to the Luiz Antonio Marcuschi Travel Awards (2012), the C’s has been reaching out to underrepresented groups to join, participate, and help guide our organization. Challenge: this task is never complete, and we must continue to work to maintain an equitable and representative organization. Opportunity: new ways of engagement, more transparency of operations to encourage more participation, reach out to new and continually underrepresented populations (international teachers/researchers, contingent faculty, graduate students and retired members, to brainstorm a few)
• Definition. What exactly do we do and how should we do it? What about the line between spoken and written language? What about multicultural and multilingual approaches to composition? How does technology, social media, non-verbal communication impact our definitions? Challenge: harder and harder to promulgate a single vision of what it means to be literate, what good writing is, and how to adapt to changing expectations. Opportunity: create an organization and a culture that embraces all types of communication, representing new modalities in our governance, our scholarship, and our convention. 
• Organizational Actions. What should we be doing? Just meeting? Advocating? Publishing? Making the whole world a better place, or just focusing on the writing classroom? The mission statement gives us broad concepts, but no guidance as to how to be (conservative or progressive, growing or contracting, canonical or expansive). Challenge: organizational fragmentation with smaller and more specialized constituencies who want more focused action and direction—it’s harder and harder for such a big organization to maintain one coherent vision in that setting. Opportunity: while it’s not possible to do everything, we need to have a deep and honest discussion about what we can do and how we want to be, and then make the space and the exigency for those multiple voices and visions. It may mean inventing/experimenting with a completely different organizational structure or culture, but the mission should drive the organizational structure, not the other way around. 
• Playground issues. More learned societies out there, more competition for travel money and mindshare. But that means more opportunities for partnerships and coalitions. Can we work and play well with others? Challenge: we need to work harder to make the case that the C’s is worth joining and attending. Opportunity: more perspectives, cross-disciplinary opportunities, more diversity of background and opinion.
• Vertical Disintegration. Dual Credit and Advanced Placement is already eroding FYC, and will probably succeed in moving all first-year writing instruction out of higher education within the next 10 years. Do we fight to retain this market, or do we pivot to others, such as writing in the disciplines, advanced writing, writing in the workplace, etc? Challenge: we may be losing a key component of our long-held identity. Opportunity: composing and communicating happens everywhere, and not just in FYC classrooms.
• Location, location, location. Does the convention always have to be a big affair that has inherent financial burden on travelers? Is there room for virtual meetings or smaller, more localized meetings? Challenge: we’ve always done conventions this way. Opportunity: the world is filled with good models of participation that make use of alternative structures.
• Audience Awareness. With social media filled with hyperbole, lists of things (#10 blew my mind!), and light-speed refresh/update, how do we disseminate our carefully- (and slowly-) crafted position statements and other collective thoughts better and faster? Challenge: we’re not set up to do that. Opportunity: we can learn how to be more influential, more relevant.

What have I missed? What would you add to the list?