Board member benefits?
Althought I am an enthusiastic advocate of transparency and supporter of making anything "open-source," I intend to be discreet when personal information is concerned. So, I am not going to write down a list of candidates for the International Advisory Board.
In stead, I post an issue less (but not very much less) sensitive. What benefits should an International Advisory Board member should get? This needs to be made clear because we will be asking peoploe to become a member of the IAB. My answer (at this point, at least) is "virtually nothing."
True, when I was asked to be a member of the International Advisory Board of DiGRA 2005, an idea that I might at least get a waiver for the conference registration fee was not absent in my head. I didn't get it, of course, and I don't think that was necessarily bad. The members of the International Advisory Board were (and will be) mostly (myself being an exception) senior scholars and in a good position to get funding from their university. The only visible benefit I got at DiGRA 2005 was that I was invited to the VIP party. Of course, invisible benefits were far more important than some free drinks. I felt honored and delighted to work for the international community of game studies scholars. Of course, we might get enough funding to make up for registration fees of several people. But from the perspective of the conference organizers, it is not wise to make such financial commitment early on.
So, with this precedent in mind, our policy will be that members of the IAB will not be waived registration fees and will not get any financial support from the conference. Probably, we can do a VIP party at least. Also, we can certainly afford to make the color of their badges different (VIP badges?) or even provide a fast lane for their registration.
Same for reviewers. Reviewers will do more work than some of IAB members, but they will not get anything for their work. Success of an academic community can only be possible because of unappreciated hardwork of anomymous reviewers, and that is also the case with DiGRA 2007.

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