[Sigwac] Finally: SIGWAC elections

[Roland Schäfer]

Dear SIGWAC members,

I’m glad to announce that we have finally managed to find candidates willing to pick up the torch and keep SIGWAC alive. Egon and I hereby endorse the following people as Presidents and Secretaries to be elected for a first term from January 2023 until December 2025. They have decided to share the respective offices in order to be able to make efforts to revive SIGWAC with increased person power and standing. Neither Nikola and Benoît, nor Veronika and Pedro are thus running against each other. They’re all running together as a team.

Candidates for President (shared) of SIGWAC (alphabetically by last name):
– Nikola Ljubešić (Jožef Stefan Institute)
– Benoît Sagot (INRIA)

Candidates for Secretary (shared) of SIGWAC (alphabetically by last name):
– Veronika Laippala (University of Turku)
– Pedro Ortiz Suarez (Mannheim University)

They have informed us that they plan to continue developing SIGWAC by primarily endorsing, and being endorsed by, existing projects, corpora and events, thereby further expanding the SIGWAC community. At a later stage the candidates will focus on organising SIGWAC-specific events, such as the SIGWAC workshop.

As required by the Constitution of SIGWAC (see https://www.sigwac.org.uk/), you – the members – have four weeks until Sunday 22 January to (a) consider the suggestion, (b) ask the candidates about their plans, or (c) propose alternative candidates. We suggest (but by no means require) that all discussion be made public by posting to this list. As has been customary, if you don’t oppose the election (typically by proposing alternative candidates), your silence will be counted as an 'aye' vote, and the four will consequently be elected into office.

We’re really happy to see such a strong group willing to work on reviving SIGWAC, and we’re looking forward to remaining part of the community under new leadership.

Best regards,
Roland Schäfer (Jena University, acting President of SIGWAC)
Egon Stemle (EURAC, acting Secretary of SIGWAC)