This page describes the governance structure of EUSSET in closer detail, including the Steering Committee and the General Assembly. Formally, EUSSET is an institute of Social Computing e.V., a German non-profit association.

Steering Committee

The EUSSET Steering Committee comprises three elected positions (chair, chair-elect, treasurer), and a flexible number of appointed positions to cover the diverse tasks that EUSSET wants to achieve.

EUSSET Steering Committee members will hold office for 3 years. Office holders can nominate themselves for a second term and be re-elected/re-appointed. Two consecutive terms is the limit.

Only EUSSET members (who have paid their fees) may volunteer, vote and hold elected offices.

Core Team (elected):

The EUSSET Steering Committee consists of a core team (chair, chair elect, and treasurer), who are elected every three years by the EUSSET members, and officers who are appointed by the Steering Committee.

Officers (appointed):

Below are the additional roles appointed for the current Steering Committee.

  • Community building: Defines the way to have on-going research presentation sessions to get feedback from our community, to make the papers better, unfinished work, virtual pre-exploratory paper sessions, i.e. normally early drafts; defines rules re. confidentiality, timing, conflicts etc. Schedules sessions, publicizes them. Does the same for sessions dedicated to projects/grants discussion: To get feedback and/or to find academic/industrial partners.
  • Future research: Engages with new communities and develops the EUSSET ‘Family’, shares the wealth of content, knowledge, expertise, keeps community interesting, open and alive.
  • Conference planning: Updates the list of affiliated and friends conferences; clarifies the relationships and regulations; lists duties of conference/program chairs: be part of the competence network, share feedback and names… Receives the proposals from conferences who would like to be affiliated or friends, and prepare the decision for the SC.
  • Conference support: Manages the services for affiliated conferences: Offers service related to a Conference Management/ Registration Tool, building up on the experience in Siegen for registration, etc.- subcontract, ask 5% of the conference benefits, and give back 2% to the subcontractor. Put the conferences’ chairs in contact with the DL Management chair.
  • Circles: Defines (in collaboration with the core team) the services EUSSET could give to Circles; defines and distributes Call for Circles (to reflect and include emerging fields of research); prepares the decision for the SC; interacts with publicity chairs for distributing calls and publicizing the work done by the Circles.
  • Valorization: Defines areas for literature surveys that could be offered as work for Master students, asks the EUSSET community to choose areas and supervise one of their students, or asks students to position themselves on one topic, and distribute this information so that supervisors can offer their help. Interviews people to deliver podcasts. Explores new publication formats like catchwords in BISE or MISQ. Defines a task force to reach out to practice. Organizes the writing of magazine articles (like Interaction for instance).
  • Digital Library: Runs the DL. Structures it as the content evolves. populates it with papers from the conferences. Provides stats to SC meetings for strategic discussions.
  • Publicity/Website and social media: Updates the website regularly by asking the other SC members and interacting with the chairs of the EUSSET conferences and Summer School; delivers content regularly on social media: features old and recent papers regularly, and point to the DL; publicizes the news; points to contents on the website; interacts with the other publicity chairs to define actions.
  • Publicity/Blog: Sets up the blog; defines the target group; defines the subjects to discuss; writes blog entries that could be based on already published papers: it is easier and would promote the good research of our community; interacts with the other publicity chairs to define actions.
  • Publicity/non-EUSSET conferences: Defines actions that can be done to make EUSSET visible at non-EUSSET related conferences, for instance: Ribbons, party, leaflet. Interacts with the publicity chairs to define actions.
  • Competence Network: Recruits members, publicizes the competence network, clarifies the kind of activities the CN can provide and how they can be supported; builds a DB with volunteers willing to review, or students willing to be SV based on the return on experience from conference chairs: sharing data… (process has to be defined, and the access may be restricted to EUSSET members).
  • Lobby: Defines a plan of action for EU, defines a plan of action for companies, defines local actions that can be done in EU countries (on national level).
  • Summer school: Issues a call for scientific chairs of the summer school (who are the organizers of an edition of the summer school), prepares the decision for the SC. Is the liaison with the scientific chairs, and report to the SC about the actions done.
  • Travel Grants: Interacts with the treasurer to identify the amount of money available each year; defines the type of travel grants (starting from what has been done at C&T 2019): For conferences, summer schools, short-term scientific travels, and the criteria to award the grants; prepares the decisions for the SC.
  • Academic mobility: Defines and puts in place a space on the website + publicity on social media to list “positions”, that could be very diverse: PhDs, postdocs, but also just welcoming younger colleagues for some weeks/months; define a procedure on how to populate that; keeps it alive.
  • Early Career: Organizes regular surveys on what EC people need from the community; organizes and funds lunches during EUSSET conferences so that people can meet; define a letter for conference chairs to invite sponsors which young people could meet and give their resume.
  • ACM liaison: Interacts with ACM about conferences schedule, events, publication politics… Reports to the SC.

General Assembly

The general meeting shall be chaired by the spokesperson or deputy spokesperson. The management reports on the activities of the past year. It takes place at least once a year within the framework of a conference of the Institute and decides about:

  • Amendments to the Rules of Procedure (These amendments can not go beyond the purposes of the Social Computing e.V., cf. §2.)
  • Amount of membership fees
  • Measures of the institute and their implementation (working groups etc.)
  • Dissolution of the Institute

The invitation to a general meeting must be sent in writing (by e-mail) to all members at least four weeks in advance. 

The general meeting has a quorum if at least five members are present. If the general meeting does not have a quorum, another general meeting shall be convened which shall have a quorum irrespective of the number of participants. It decides by simple majority, whereby each member has one vote regardless of the amount of the membership fees. Institutional members send a representative to the general meeting.

Social Computing e.V.

For financial and legal reasons, EUSSET is an institute of Social Computing e.V. – a German non-profit association, founded on November 13th 2012 in Bonn, Germany and moved to Siegen on November 21st 2017 (Nordrhein-Westfalen Amtsgericht Siegen VR 6513). 

According to German law, the members of the board of Social Computing e.V. are personally liable for the institute EUSSET. Therefore, coordinated action is required between the elected chair of EUSSET and the elected board members of Social Computing e.V.. This coordination needs to cover decisions in mainly two domains:

  • Financial domain: the chairs need to coordinate those decision of EUSSET which involve risks beyond the savings of Social Computing e.V..
  • EUSSET Digital Library: The chairs need to coordinate action with regard to the publication strategies in the DL as long as it covers IP rights of other publishers such as Springer or ACM.

To ensure smooth coordination, EUSSET will include the chair of Social Computing e.V. into its steering committee.

The purpose of the association the promotion of interdisciplinary research, development and publication in applied information technology, particularly in the field of interdependency between technical applications and social systems. One core area of activities is in supporting European and international scientific cooperation. (§2(1) of the articles of association)

The board (and chair) of Social Computing e.V. is elected by the members of Social Computing e.V.

Membership in EUSSET is decoupled from membership in Social Computing e.V. – i.e. becoming member of EUSSET is not equivalent to becoming member of Social Computing e.V.

Currently the Social Computing e.V. board consists of:

  • Chair: Volker Wulf
  • Treasurer: Julia Krämer

Statutes

For even more detailed information, see the formal statutes of EUSSET.

Background

For the history of the movement behind EUSSET see:

  • Schmidt, Kjeld; and Liam J. Bannon (2013). Constructing CSCW: The first quarter century. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). Vol. 22, no. 4-6, August-December 2013, pp. 345–372 – http://bit.ly/2s8Ox4u
  • Schmidt, Kjeld (2012). Editorial: The CSCW Journal turns 20. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). Vol. 21, no. 6, December 2012, pp. 475-484. – https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-012-9176-0

For the history of the European Conference on CSCW (ECSCW) also see:
Editorial to the Proceedings of the First European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

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