Dear SLW-IS Community,

Thank you! This year we had a record number of proposals submitted—nearly 250—with 100 volunteer reviewers. Based on reviewer feedback and your discussion during the Dallas convention regarding topics of interest, I have forwarded a recommended 46 concurrent sessions, six poster sessions, and two roundtable sessions to the central office for Portland. The 2014 TESOL convention will be packed with valuable SLW sessions!

I'd especially like to thank our chair-elect, Todd Ruecker, for his invaluable idea for creation of a Google doc where members could share and collaborate on proposal ideas. You will see the fruits of this work in Portland, as several proposals submitted from collaboration on the Google doc were accepted as sessions. I hope that in the future we can continue to collaborate on such a prolific and global level.

You may remember that this year we have been tasked by the TESOL central office with updating our Governing Rules. The Steering Committee worked hard in Dallas to update the rules to best represent our IS. We will be calling for a vote on the changes in the coming months. Exact copy of the updated (proposed) Governing Rules will available for review during the actual vote. While most of the changes were relatively minor (the addition of sections by the TESOL central office that all ISs must now include), the "major" changes are summarized here:

• "Webmaster" has been change to "community manager." This is a terminology change the central office has requested of all ISs;
• The office of historian has been retired. Due to the technological advancements making documentation widely available (e.g., Google Docs) and lack of duties completed in the past several years, the position no longer seems necessary to/for the running of the IS;
• A managing editor position with subsequent associate editor positions was created for the newsletter. This will allow the newsletter to have a broader, more inclusive range of content.
• The office of secretary is proposed as an elected rather than appointed position. This will allow more members the opportunity to express interest in serving in this position and becoming more involved in the IS.

Although we are still 6 months from convention time, SLWIS is still busy engaging in the second language writing community. Chair-Elect Todd Ruecker is conducting a survey about the current work and future directions of our IS; the survey will provide input from our members about what we're doing well, what could be improved, and what new initiatives we might consider. Past-Chair Lisya Seloni is preparing the SLWIS election ballot; please consider serving in one of the open positions! Many of you will also be gathering in China later this month to explore “Represented, Underrepresented, and Unrepresented Voices in the L2 Writing Global Context.” As always, the IS listserv is "open," and we look forward to continuing dialogue.