A Short Note on the Creation of the USIH 4.0 Conference Program

On behalf of the other members of the Conference Committee–Committee Chair Mike O’Connor and Ray Haberski–I just wanted to publicly thank everyone who submitted papers or panels to this years conference. We had a dramatic increase in the number of submissions this year, which was both a blessing and a curse. Mike, Ray, and I strove, first and foremost, to create the best conference we could. This involved creating coherent panels, while making sure that a wide diversity of scholars working on as wide a range of topics as possible were represented.  We’re very happy with the result, but we know that many excellent proposals couldn’t be fit into the program.  Those accepted–and rejected–from the conference received private notice of their fate a couple weeks ago. But as we are finally able to publish the schedule today, I felt that it was worth adding this little note on the process.