2008 Sakai Fellows Program

2008 Schedule

Nominations due by April 30th.
Selections completed on May 23rd and winners notified.
Awards ceremony at the 9th Sakai Conference in Paris.

2008 Selection Committee

The committee consists of volunteers from the Sakai community.

Kate Ellis
Clay Fenlason
David Haines
Peter Knoop
Michael Korcuska
Seth Theriault
Anthony Whyte

2008 Selection Criteria

There were neither formal rules about who could be nominated nor criteria for selecting the winners. Nevertheless, the committee articulated a variety of different principles. Here are a few important criteria that emerged:

Overall contribution to the community, especially contributions beyond their local contexts
Length of contribution to the community. Some of the nominees newer to the community were strong but some felt it was appropriate to wait a year to see how their work matures.
There was a desire for a fresh slate of fellows. This wasn't a hard and fast rule, but if there were 6 nominees who were very qualified then it would be preferable to have 6 new fellows.
There was a desire for diversity, both in the role the individual plays in the community and in geographical distribution.
Helpful to others in addition to doing good work themselves. The notion of leveraging their abilities across the community was important.
Innovation was mentioned as a factor by several committee members.
Some favored those who proposed doing new things rather than continuing what they had been doing already. Some favored those where they felt the award would make the most difference.

It is important to note that not all committee members agreed with all of these and there were other factors that counted heavily for individual committee members but weren't necessarily broadly shared.

Most of the committee agreed that next year there should be some rules about who can be nominated and, perhaps, a more formal set of selection criteria. The most obvious rule is that the current slate of fellows would not be eligible again next year. This is not a decision at this point but had broad support amongst this year's committee members.

Reports

Alan Berg
Nuno Fernandes
David Horwitz
Beth Kirschner
Maggie Lynch
Stephen Marquard