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Just to add a bit to Dave & Alex's nice accounts.

1. The original name was The Sunbelt Social Network 
Conference.
Various uni admins balked at paying for what was so obviously a holiday, 
so we put the word International up front, and let people know they could 
leave out the word Sunbelt when applying to their unis for reimbursement.
The early Sunbelts had a 2-3 hour break at lunch, the bright thought of 
Russ Bernard, which was variously called Peak Tanning Time or Informal 
Networking Time. The weight of more sessions has killed that.
For laughs, Bonnie Erickson and I would sometimes suggest we meet in 
Toronto in February, which always got shouted down. Even without PTT.

2. I recall that the first non-American Sunbelt was earlier than in 
London, but in Paris/Sorbonne -- courtesy of Alexis Ferrand, Alain 
Degenne, Karl van Meter, etc.
Indeed, one of the things that I am most proud of as the founder of INSNA 
(and head for 12 years) is that with a lot of good will, we evolved a 
rotation system that kept European scholars as part of INSNA. Next year, 
we are not only in Hamburg but having our first Asian conference in Xi'an 
China thanks to the efforts of Yanjie Bian
I think we have a good system now, with both the rotating unified 
conferences and regional conferences, altho it will be a challenge to work 
into the rota: Asia and Australasia.
  Barry Wellman
  _______________________________________________________________________

   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
   Department of Sociology                  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
   University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
   http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman             fax:+1-416-978-3963
   Updating history:      http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
  _______________________________________________________________________

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