The Electronic Literature Organization seeks engaged members of the ELO community for three open seats on the ELO Board of Directors (BoD).

The BoD is a working board dedicated to developing and sustaining the creation, scholarship, exhibition, and preservation of electronic literature. Board members serve voluntarily for three-year terms, with the opportunity for renewal for additional terms. In addition to bi-monthly meetings (via Zoom) and an annual retreat, board members work in various roles or initiatives (such as coordinating ELO Prizes, MLA panels, coordinating ELO fellows, among others). As a working volunteer BoD, its members do not receive any kind of financial compensation for the work they do, and must maintain membership at their own expense.

The current board is especially interested in expanding the diversity of the board. We seek the nominations of active e-lit scholars, artists, archivists, and others who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and come from broad geographic and language backgrounds. Note that while we also wish to broaden the linguistic diversity of the board, all board business is conducted in English.

Here’s the process to fill board vacancies, amended to include community input:

1. The BoD has a conversation about current needs in expertise, representation, etc. that can be addressed with new members.
2. A nomination form is circulated to the ELO community.
3. Board discusses nominees in the context of its needs and produces a ranked list of candidates to fill vacancies.
4. The ELO President reaches out to the top candidates, determines interest, and discusses responsibilities.
5. If interested, candidates submit a letter of interest and CV for consideration by the Board.
6. The Board considers each candidate and votes.

Please use the nomination form embedded below (or here’s a link to it) to nominate yourself or someone else. Nominations will be open until September 19, 2021.

If you have any questions, please contact Leonardo Flores, ELO President at leo@eliterature.org.

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks proposals to host the ELO 2022 Conference, Festival, and Media Arts Exhibition (ELO Conference, for short).

Given the progress made with vaccinations and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic the ELO Board of Directors wishes to consider proposals for its 2022 conference and media arts show as a hybrid conference and festival, with live face-to-face and synchronous and asynchronous online elements. We recognize the importance of maintaining the tradition of an event that brings together scholars, artists, and other people interested in digital language arts from around the world, whether they are able to travel or not, and with attention to accessibility and inclusion.

For next year, we wish to consider innovative proposals from individuals or teams from a single or several collaborating institutions that wish to host our conference. We are happy to consider conference proposals from anywhere in the world. We are also open to joint conferences with organizations whose interests overlap with ours, such as ACM Hypertext, SLSA, and others.

Interested parties should contact the ELO President, Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org), for guidance on developing a proposal for the conference. We encourage sending a brief pre-proposal or statement of interest outlining your ideas for the conference no later than May 2, 2021 for feedback and assistance in working towards a full proposal. We will share the ELO Best Practices for Conferences document with those who have expressed interest, and teams interested in hosting the conference will receive support and mentorship from previous chairs. The deadline for complete proposals is May 23, 2021. The Board of Directors will consider proposals and make a decision in its May 30, 2021 meeting.

Conference events, including both physical and virtual spaces, need to follow the guidelines and policies established in the ELO Code of Conduct.

ELO Conference Policies

Future organizers of Electronic Literature Organization events, including the annual ELO Conference and Media Arts Show, will be required to adopt a version of the ELO Community Code of Conduct, appointing an appropriate team to address any reports that emerge from the event’s physical and virtual platforms.

In addition, all ELO events will adopt the following practices to strive towards inclusion and parity.

• Transparency and Inclusivity in Review Processes. The names of all reviewers and/or curators for any event should be publicly available prior to the submission process. Updates to the composition of the review team should be made public as soon as feasible as changes are made. ELO event organizers are responsible for working towards diverse review teams.
• Double-Anonymized Review. Wherever possible, conference submissions should be made anonymous for peer review, and the names of specific reviewers on a work-by-work basis should not be made public during the review process. In the case of artistic work (particularly work that is iterative or previously displayed), full anonymization may not be possible; however, the omission of identifying information should be the goal wherever feasible.
• Clear and Reasonable Deadlines. Deadlines for all stages of event submission should be communicated at least two months prior, with an emphasis on providing clarity and, whenever possible, translations of the call to circulate across the international community. While circumstances may occasionally necessitate closer deadlines, all consideration possible should be given to early communication to enable broader participation.
• Support for and Compliance With the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Consideration of the status of any potential host country with regards to support for human rights, as documented by the United Nations, will be taken into consideration when choosing organizations to host ELO events to ensure that all members of the community feel safe and welcome in those locales. All conference organizers commit to upholding those values as annotated above.
• Accessibility and Archiving. The shift to virtual conferencing has enabled the full participation of members of the community left behind by an emphasis on in-person events. Future ELO events should build on the inclusivity and accessibility enabled by virtual conferencing, prioritizing access in both physical and virtual venues, and following principles of universal design wherever possible. Events focused on physical participation should be documented, streamed, or otherwise made available through the ELO’s archival projects.

You can download a PDF of this CFP with this link.

Call for Proposals: Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations

The electronic literature community has developed many online publications (‘zines and similar resources) that feature Web-based technologies and have typically taken the form of websites. The ELO seeks to encourage the creation of new spaces (‘zines) in which to curate, promote, and explore a greatly expanded set of works on popular social media spaces online. These might include video sharing sites, mobile platforms, or social media networks. The goal of our initiative is to stimulate and support the creation and dissemination of quality electronic literature in a much greater variety of locations.

We are looking for proposals to create new recurrent publication spaces that:

• Are designed as fully integrated venues in app ecosystems and/or social media platforms. These publication venues can have a web component, but the primary means of distribution should be through these platforms.
• Consider the promotion of creative work a priority but are open for creative/scholarly combinations.
• Follow community credentialing standards, such as editorial oversight, peer review, juries, etc.
• Have a marketing and social media distribution plan to build up their audience.
• Publish at least two “issues” per year.
• Are team efforts with a clear work plan.
• Have an estimate of monetary needs.
• Have a sustainability plan that considers three aspects:
  • Financial: explains how they will generate revenue to sustain operations,
  • Organizational: has a plan for continuing beyond its founding publishers,
  • Preservation: has plans for maintaining publication in the long term, and documentation of ephemeral works.

Interested? Send us a 500 word proposal that addresses all the points above by November 1, 2020. If you have any questions or seek additional guidance, please contact ELO President Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org).

The ELO is prepared to fund one or more proposals in 2020-21, which will receive up to $1,000 in startup funds to cover licensing and developer fees, graphic design, software infrastructure, marketing, programming, etc. We can also help the team(s) with recruiting efforts, disseminating calls, and promoting it through our communication channels.

The winning team(s) will run the publication and prepare a report in which it shares its plans and processes, successes, lessons learned, and other insights from creating and running the publication. This report is to be presented in the ELO 2022 Conference.

ELO Board members are not eligible to apply to this initiative.

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks proposals to host the ELO 2021 Conference and Festival.

Given the uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic the ELO wishes to protect its community by planning its 2021 conference as an online conference and festival. We recognize the importance of maintaining the tradition of an event that brings together scholars, artists, and people interested in digital language arts from around the world. This year, we had to pivot from a traditional conference to an online, virtual one, and are grateful for Anastasia Salter and her team’s resiliency.

For next year, we wish to consider proposals from individuals or teams that wish to host our conference and are designing it to be online from the outset. We are open to consider innovative proposals from individuals or teams from a single or several collaborating institutions that wish to host our conference and are designing it to be online from the outset. We are particularly interested in conferences hosted outside North America, possibly located in two distinct time zones, or teams interested in running one aspect of the conference, such as the academic presentations, the arts festival, or the social spaces. We are also interested in joint conferences with organizations whose interests overlap with ours, such as ACM Hypertext, SLSA, and others.

Interested parties should contact the ELO President, Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org), for guidance on developing a proposal for the conference. We encourage sending a pre-proposal no later than August 31, 2020 to help develop it into a full proposal. The deadline for complete proposals is September 30, 2020. The Board of Directors will consider proposals and make a decision shortly thereafter.

Next year, we will reassess the state of the Covid-19 pandemic and decide if we continue with online conferences or return to a face-to-face modality in 2022. Those interested in hosting the 2022 conference (be it online or face-to-face) should also contact Leonardo Flores to discuss options.

Here’s a link to a downloadable PDF of the Call for Proposals.