On 20 August 2010, seven Big Historians met at the Geological Observatory at Coldigioco in Italy (http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~dbice/OGC/index.html), which is run by Alessandro Montanari and Paula Martello. At this field station, we voted to establish an international Big History association.

The Big Historians who met were David Christian of Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia), Fred Spier of the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Walter Alvarez of the University of California at Berkeley (USA), Craig Benjamin of Grand Valley State University in Michigan (USA), Cynthia Brown of Dominican University in California (USA), Lowell Gustafson of Villanova University in Pennsylvania (USA), and Barry Rodrigue of the University of Southern Maine (USA). We constituted ourselves as a provisional executive committee and voted unanimously in favor of the following initiatives to:

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Establish an international Big History association.
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Investigate the possibility of an institutional home at the University of California Berkeley, Grand Valley State University, or another university.
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Establish an international Big History journal. We plan to have both an electronic and a print journal, and felt that a creative journal name would serve us best. Walter Alvarez is investigating the possibility of it being published by the University of California Press.
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Establish an international Big History website. On this website, we will include an active discussion board and an electronic library/archives of Big History. In the meantime, until we get this up & running, we voted to continue to use our Big History website at USM.
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Hold the first international Big History conference in 2012. We will hold this conference at Grand Valley University (Michigan, USA) and thought that late July or early August would be a good date to attract teachers and other educators. Craig Benjamin is organizing this further.
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The group decided over email after the meeting at Coldigioco to name the organization The International Big History Association.
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