Standing Committee of the European Conference on Information Systems

Minutes of the meeting held at Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, February 14^th, 2004

1 Apologies

In attendance: Stefan Klein, Edgar Whitley, Marco de Marco, Marcello Martinez, Hans-Dieter Zimmerman, Birger Rabb, Dieter Bartman, Florian Alwein, Barbro Back, Tapio Reponen, Reima Suomi, Hannu Salmela, Jussi Puhakainen, Timo Leino, Timo Kestilä, Eija Koskivaara, Taru Ala-Siuru, Birgit Haanmäki, Eph Maclean

2 Minutes of the last meetings (attached)

2.1 Resolved

That these be accepted

3 Matters arising

3.1 There were none

4 ECIS 2005 Regensburg plans

4.1 Noted

Professor Bartmann and his team presented details of the preparations for the conference

5 Presentation of current status of ECIS 2004 preparations

5.1 Noted

Details of the preparations for ECIS 2004 were presented.

The programme committee had made its final decisions on papers that morning and, subject to a few last minute reviews, were ready to begin preparing the programme.

6 Discussion on the final programme of ECIS 2004

6.1 Noted

There was some discussion about the structure of the programme and the selection of keynote speakers and panels.

7 Any other issues about ECIS 2004

7.1 Status of doctoral consortium preparation

7.1.1 Noted

That preparation for the doctoral consortium was going well

7.2 Comments on the review system

7.2.1 Noted

There had been significant problems with the AIS hosted review management system. These included the fact that the system allowed track chairs to inform authors of final decisions before the meeting of the conference committee, difficulties in sorting / filtering the reviews, problems with tasks like e–mailing all reviewers for the conference to thank them for their help.

That development of this system had been halted and that a new system had been developed and was being used for AMCIS 2004, meaning that requested changes to the Turku system were not implemented.

7.3 AIS fees as a part of the registration fee

7.3.1 Noted

There was some ambiguity about whether AIS membership fees be automatically included in ECIS registration. There was a lack of clarity as to how this would be implemented, for example, would it be a "discount" for AIS members, or would AIS members effectively pay the "true" cost of the conference whilst non–AIS members would pay the true cost plus AIS membership fees.

In addition, there was vocal concern raised about the compulsory nature of fee, with arguments made that if AIS was providing a good service then people would want to join, rather than being forced to join in order to attend the conference.

That, although there was a good representation of ECIS standing committee members, there had been no formal notice of a decision to make a major policy decision at the meeting.

7.3.2 Resolved

That AIS and the local organisers would speak informally after the meeting and come up with a compromise. In the end, AIS membership became optional but was strongly encouraged.

That further discussion of formalising the links with AIS be held at the next, full meeting of the standing committee.

7.4 Practices for best paper awards

There was some discussion about the practices for best paper awards. It was proposed that track chairs be asked for their nominations and the final decision be made by the conference organisers.

8 Any other issues

8.1 There were no other issues.

9 Next meeting

9.1 To be held at ECIS in Turku.

Dr. Edgar A. Whitley

Secretary, ECIS standing committee.