Minutes of the meeting of the ECIS Standing Committee held in the Council Room at University College Cork on Wednesday June 18th at 3.30PM and continued at the Students Union Refectory on Friday June 20th at 8AM. 1997
1 Apologies
Present: Edgar Whitley, Helmut Krcmar, Niels Bjorn-Andersen, Bob Galliers, Georgios Doukidis, Ciaran Murphy, Wolfgang König, Hans Hansen, Claudia Loebbecke, Ramon O'Callaghan, Markku Saaksjarvi, Sven Carlsson, Jacques-André Bartoli, Agneta Olerup, Wim Van Grembergen, Jan Pries-Heje, J Dias Coelho, Philip Ein-Dor, Dirk DeSchoolmeester, Karlheinz Kautz
In attendance: Ron Weber to speak on item 6.
Apologies: Michael Smirnow
2 Minutes of the previous meeting
2.1 Noted
That Midsummer's day (Wednesday June 23rd) is not a holiday in Denmark, although traditionally there are many social events on the day and bonfires in the evening.
2.2 Resolved
That the minutes be accepted
3 ECIS 97 Cork
3.1 Reported
Ciaran Murphy began by thanking his fellow members of the organising committee, particularly Hans Hansen, for all their work in making ECIS 97 such a success.
The draft accounts were presented
That as of Tuesday 17th, 305 delegates had registered, of whom 300 came from outside Ireland.
That 3Com and EMC were the main conference sponsors. It was noted that they had initially been contacted to provide possible keynote speakers and had then agreed to be sponsors.
That chasing institutions which had requested invoices was particularly problematic.
That the cost of producing the proceedings was approximately £20,000
That staffing had been one full time person for seven months and part time / temps for the last few weeks.
That the costs of the conference had been covered and it would now be possible to remove the restrictions on social events for students. The organisers felt it was more appropriate to differentiate between students and others and then remove the distinction at a later stage, if possible.
3.2 Noted
That a series of lessons were learned (copy below) and presented to the committee.
3.3 Resolved
Ciaran Murphy and his colleagues were thanked for organising what looked likely to be a very successful conference.
4 Proposals for future ECIS conferences
• Copenhagen 1999
4.1 Noted
An excellent proposal from Copenhagen to organise the 7th European Conference on Information Systems
That Jan Pries-Heje would be the conference and organizing chair, with Niels Bjørn-Andersen providing a supporting role.
That the Copenhagen Business School had agreed to pay for the proceedings which would help keep the costs low.
That previous conferences had had a separate conference and organizing chair. However, now that ECIS was established it was not felt as necessary to have a 'big' name to draw in participants.
Some concern was raised about having a broader organising committee, although it was also noted that this increased co-ordination problems. Having the financial controller from a different institution, however, was considered beneficial. This point was considered by the Copenhagen organising committee and they came back with a revised proposal whereby Claudio Ciborra would act as overall programme chair and Sven Carlson would act as financial controller.
4.2 Resolved
Unanimously, that Copenhagen be invited to organise ECIS 7 in Copenhagen, 1999.
• Future conferences
4.3 Noted
That representatives from Poland had expressed an interest in making a proposal
4.4 Resolved
That they be invited to make a formal proposal for hosting ECIS 2001/2
That an announcement for proposals for future conferences be made and that a decision on future conferences be made in Aix
5 State of preparation for future ECIS conferences
• Aix en Provence 1998
5.1 Noted
That the call for papers had been distributed to the organising and programme committee and that the website was up and running.
That the rooms had been booked and plans for the conference dinner were well underway.
That a reasonable price for the proceedings had been obtained, requiring two months to process the papers
• Vienna 2000
5.2 Noted
The dates for Vienna were July 3-5
That Hans Hansen was aiming for future oriented industry based tracks rather than the traditional research papers / research in progress and case studies, with mini programme committees for the tracks consisting of academics and practitioners
That each track would be responsible for its own 'publicity', in terms of drafting the first announcement and the call for papers etc., programme selection and structure etc.
That £50,000 had been arranged for sponsorship and Sony had agreed to publish the CD-ROM proceedings.
6 Links with other organisations
• AIS
6.1 Noted
Ron Weber spoke about the need for a strong international organisation which is the role AIS tries to play.
That AIS has no intention of taking over local arrangements in the various regions, rather it intends to cooperate and support these other organisations.
That AIS and ISWorld are combining to provide mutual support.
That AIS is proposing to launch two electronic journals:
Journal of AIS which is a traditional journal
Communications of the AIS which is a broader journal, with regional editors, multiple languages etc.
(The meeting broke up at this point and resumed on the Friday morning. As Helmut Krcmar was unable to attend the Friday meeting he handed over chairmanship of the standing committee to Bob Galliers at this point. He was warmly thanked for all his work over the previous year as chair of the standing committee)
Suggestions for ways in which AIS could assist ECIS included: announcing the full conference programme in (A)ISWorld, mailings to all AIS members (at present AIS only sells labels).
That AIS would like to continue supporting the PhD consortium.
• European Institute for Advanced Management Studies
6.2 Noted
Bob Galliers described the role EIAMS and explained how it wanted to add an information systems focus to its work.
That this was part of an on-going strategy by EIAMS, as they already had existing streams on IT and strategy.
That Bob and Niels would explore possibilities for an ongoing relationship with EIAMS further and would report back at the next meeting.
7 Organisational issues for future conferences
• Degrees of freedom about financial control in case of a deficit
7.1 Noted
The principal that all decisions were left to the organisers of the conference was reiterated, as was the norm that a proper financial report was forwarded after each conference.
That this issue should be revisited in a few years time.
• CD ROM versus paper for proceedings
7.2 Noted
That CD ROM has a longer 'shelf' life
That the logo of sponsors is more visible on books
That this was, again, an issue for the organisers of the conference
That George Doukidis would look into on-line (web based) publishing
• Logo
7.3 Noted
That a tradition had evolved whereby each conference developed its own logo, based on a national symbol and stars for Europe.
7.4 Resolved
That the all future conferences should develop their own logo.
8 Membership of the standing committee
• Regional representatives
8.1 Noted
That there was not time to discuss this matter at the meeting, but that the regional representatives would be sorted out by e-mail
• Secretary
8.2 Noted
That Edgar Whitley was willing to continue to act as secretary
8.3 Resolved
That Edgar Whitley continue to act as secretary to the working group and he be thanked for continued support of ECIS
9 Date of next meetings
9.1 Resolved
That there be a breakfast meeting at 7.30AM on the Tuesday of ICIS in Atlanta
That there be an afternoon meeting on the day before ECIS in Aix.
NB Because Bob Galliers is also chairing the PhD consortium, it is proposed that colleagues arrive in Aix for lunch at noon, with the meeting starting at 2.30PM.
Reminders about the next meetings will be sent well in advance
10 Any other business
10.1 Noted
Hans Hansen noted that following discussion with colleagues he had revised the structure of the Vienna conference so that there were industry based tracks (with no distinction made between research papers and research in progress) with one or two issue based tracks for work that does not fit into the more industry organised structures.
Lessons learned from ECIS '97
1. No conference officer should have his/her name on a paper
2. Instances of similar papers coming up (by the same authors) in different conferences
3. We need to differentiate between people who pay direct (e.g. cheque, credit card and bank transfer) and those who ask to be invoiced. The latter group should be charged more. For example, as of 17.6.1997 we had fifty attendees paying by invoice for which we have received no payment as yet.
4. Rogue authors (will they present?)
5. Too many authors too slow in returning corrected papers (We received some in April). Should we select slightly more than is required and accept only the ones returned on time?
6. The main problem was with the programme. We got a draft programme out in early April but that is still too late.
7. Smaller committees in terms of the organising committee.
8. Charging authors for going over the page limit has the potential to work.