Standing Committee of the European Conference on Information Systems

Minutes of the meeting held at Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, 16.30 on Sunday June 13th 2004

In attendance: Tapio Reponen, Marting Hughes, Fons Wijnhoven, Florian Allwein, Dieter Bartmann, Hannu Salmela, Karl Kautz, Marco De Marco, Ernesto De Niro, Gianluigi Mangia, Paolo Canonico, Robert Winter, Eph McLean, Reima Suomi, Chrisanthi Avgerou, Hans-Dieter Zimmermann, Stanislaw Wrycza, Jan Ljunberg

Apologies: Marcello Martinez, Ricardo Mercurio

2 Minutes of the last meetings (attached)

2.1 Resolved

That these be accepted

There were none

4 ECIS 2004 Review

4.1 Noted

That there had been 383 research papers, 67 research-in-progress, 12 cases and 6 panels submitted, with 153, 18, 2 and 9 accepted, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 38%. The largest tracks were MIS, KM and ISDM.

That there were a large number of "research-in-progress" papers at various stages of being "in-progress" and that it might be helpful to have clearer guidelines of what was expected in future calls.

That about 700 reviewers had been involved in evaluating the papers.

That by registration the largest nationalities were Finland, UK, Netherlands, Australia and Italy.

4.2 In discussion

That there were some parallel events that might in the future be better organised as pre/post events.

4.3 Doctoral consortium

4.4 Noted

That the doctoral consortium had gone well, although with a limited number of nominations.

That when asked "should I submit?" by students outside AIS region 2, the response was that the consortium "was happy to consider all applications, but that priority was given to region 2 applicants".

That future organisers might wish to consider accepting 'weaker' applications from emerging regions.

5 ECIS 2003

5.1 Noted

That the conference had almost broken even, with the €5000 loss would be covered by the regional government.

That €100K had been received in sponsorship.

That a full set of accounts was available for review

6 ECIS 2005

6.1 Noted

That a working committee with 5 colleagues and 7 assistants had been set up.

That the conference would feature 16 tracks, including a new one e-cultural heritage

That there were three possible locations for the doctoral consortium and a decision would be taken soon.

That six alternative review management systems were currently being evaluated by students as well as the recently rewritten (in ASP) Program Review software from AIS.

That the German IS community would be actively involved in the conference.

7.1 Noted

That the local organizing group had been set up

That there would be an advert in the 2005 brochure

That Erik Stolterman would be a faculty member of the Regensburg Doctoral Consortium

8 Proposals for future ECIS conferences

8.1 Noted

That two outline proposals for ECIS 2007 had been received

That attempts had been made to resolve the fact that two countries were volunteering to hold the conference in the same year informally before the meeting but this had not been possible.

8.2 Outline proposal for ECIS 2007 in Galway

8.3 Noted

The benefits of holding the conference in Galway

That the National Science Foundation could provide €50K in conference sponsorship but, at this time, was not due to be in existence in 2008.

That the conference theme would be Innovation and IS

8.5 Noted

That ECIS had never been in Switzerland

The benefits of holding the conference in St Gallen

That the university was due to undergo major refurbishment in 2008 and that this would take a few years before it was again a suitable location for hosting a conference.

That both groups come back with full proposals in time for the next meeting of the standing committee and that a decision be taken at that time.

Since the meeting, I have learned that Galway has been able to move its proposed bid to 2008. Thus St Gallen will be expected to present a proposal for 2007 and Galway for 2008.

9 Formalising the links with AIS

9.1 Noted

This minute should be read in conjunction with this briefing document, given as part of the agenda.

That this issue had existed "informally" for a number of years

That the issue had come to a head at the planning meeting in February, where the issue of compulsory inclusion of AIS membership in the ECIS registration had been discussed.

That the local organisers, as a matter of principle, had disagreed with compulsory membership

That, after the February meeting, a compromise with AIS membership optional but strongly encouraged had been agreed.

That all members of the standing committee were very supportive of maintaining and strengthening links with AIS.

However, the issue of how this was to be implemented was precisely what the standing committee was being asked to decide.

9.3 Decisions

That there was no support for option 1 in the briefing document

That there was limited support for option 3.

The final decision of the standing committee was to accept the wording proposed by Eph Maclean:

'The ECIS Standing Committee agrees to have the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) affiliated with the Association for Information Systems (AIS). In exchange for financial and administrative support from AIS, ECIS will provide reduced registration fees--"discounted registration"--to current AIS members. It will also provide the opportunity for registrants to become AIS members as part of the ECIS registration fee. This agreement will remain in force until terminated by either party'

Implicit in this understanding is the (previously agreed) norm that each local organising committee has the primary responsibility for both the content and financial content of each ECIS. Any conference losses will be absorbed by the local organizing committee. Surpluses, if any, will be forwarded to the ECIS office to be used for the betterment of the information systems community in Europe. The standard AIS conference reporting spreadsheet would be used for these purposes.

Following this decision, there are a number of implementation decisions regarding: the Euro price of AIS membership, how to check AIS membership, how to address any differences between the discounted and regular price of the conference. A further document on this is to be prepared.

ECIS 2005 agreed to have the same fee structure as was used for ECIS 2004, namely one (discounted) fee for current AIS members (i.e., the conference registration fee), one for those who wish to become AIS members (i.e., the conference registration fee, plus 80 euros), and one for those who choose not to become AIS members (the conference registration, plus 40 euros). The extra moneys are to be forwarded to AIS in exchange for AIS's support for the Doctoral Consortium

10 Date of next meeting

10.1 Agreed

After discussion, that the second standing committee meeting per year be held at the ECIS planning meeting

11.1 Agreed

That a small working group be set up to discuss the options

Dr. Edgar A. Whitley

Secretary, ECIS standing committee.