Dear DM-L,
It is my pleasure to announce the results of the Digital Medievalist Executive Board elections for 2011.
In this case re-elected were: Malte Rehbein Peter Stokes Torsten Schaßan
And newly joining us is: Dominique Stutzmann
The other candidates all scored very highly and it was a close run race. I would like to thank the other candidates for allowing their names to be placed on the ballot. Having such a good slate of qualified people wanting to assist DM to further its goals is demonstrative of its stability as a community. It is always hard to get the balance of continuity of service and new input, and the board will be discussing several possible changes that might benefit DM inthis area. Members of the public are always welcome to volunteer to assist DM in its various goals without being Board members, and I would encourage any of you who want to get more involved to email us.
These election results cannot be announced without mentioning the one DM Board member who chose not to stand for re-election. Daniel O'Donnell has been fundamental in progressing Digital Medievalist to its current state. It is he who set up a mailing list in 2003 on best practice for digital medieval resource creation with others such as Peter Baker, Martin Foys, Murray McGillivray and Elizabeth Solopova that eventually led to the creation of the DM-L mailing list. It was Dan who helped the DM Journal start and thrive, and helped us move towards a more open and fully-elected Executive Board. Although Dan was already DM's leader he served as its elected director from our first elections in 2007 until 2009. It is his continued ongoing commitment to DM that helps convince the University of Lethbridge to allow us to have a virtual machine which runs the www.digitalmedievalist.org website (and various other DM infrastructure). Simply put, without Dan, we wouldn't be here! Thanks Dan for your commitment to DM and continued support of it.
As part of the election survey we asked a question as to what DM could do in the future to serve you, the DM community, better. We received a wide and varied selection of comments, and the DM Board will be discussing these to see how we may act on them. But feel free contact us at any time with suggestions, proposals to host DM events, or similar via board _at-sign_ digitalmedievalist.org.
Thank you to all of you who voted, while the turnout was good compared to previous elections, it would still be better to get a larger turnout in the future.
Many thanks,
James Cummings (Director, Digital Medievalist) Marjorie Burghart (Digital Medievalist Board Member) election@digitalmedievalist.org