Minutes of the meeting to be held at 2PM, June 22nd, Copenhagen Business School, Dalgas Have
1 Apologies
Present: Georgios Doukidis, Edgar Whitley, Jan Pries-Heje, Karlheinz Kautz, Bob Galliers, Harald Mahrer, Martin Bichler, Joze Gricar, Stan Wrcyza, Steve Smithson, Niels Bjorn-Andersen, Ellen Christiannse, Jacques-Andre Bartoli, Claudio Ciborra
Apologies: Lars Mathiassen, David Avison, Tawfik Jelassi, Leslie Willcocks, Hans Hansen
In attendance: Gordon Davis
2 Minutes of the last meeting
2.1 Resolved
That the minutes be accepted
3 ECIS 99 Copenhagen
3.1 Reported
That additional sponsors had been found and they were linked to particular sessions in the conference and their sponsorship would be mentioned at these sessions.
That there were about 280 paying participants, with around 40 more invited participants
That 90 people had attended pre-events: IIIS, EuroGDSS and a Danish Alumni group
That the main changes to the budget had arisen because there were more costs associated with the keynote speakers than initially planned
That there had been a special focus on quality in the reviewing process.
That the use of associate editors had worked well, with all authors receiving high quality reviews
The decision that at least one author should register by the end of April worked well, with only a few needing to be reminded of this
That there were 199 submissions. This year there was a marked drop in research in progress papers, although there was no obvious explanation for this.
That thought should be given to having a few "research in progress" sessions devoted to PhD students from the consortium
That there would be a new tradition--a prize (a lego robot this year) for the best associate editor
That the doctoral consortium was going very well with good discussions and happy faculty. There were 41 students and 12 faculty members, including the conference keynote speakers.
That the emphasis on quality was also made here.
That students were asked to 'review' two papers
All student papers had been on a web site since March and it was clear that students had read them, not only the ones from their own 'group'.
That the Information Systems Journal would be publishing the best papers from the conference and David Avison had been given a list of the best papers in January. The best papers from ECIS 2000 would be published in EJIS with JSIS picking up any 'strategy' papers.
Leslie Willcocks was thanked for his editorial as part of the JIT special issue of papers from ECIS 1998. The joint editors of the special issue were the research and case study track chairs.
That officers for ECIS 2000 and 2001 had participated in the January selection meeting and formally expressed their thanks for the invitation to participate which they found pleasurable and a tradition which they wished to continue.
4 Proposals for future ECIS conferences
• ECIS 2003 Naples
4.1 Reported
That Claudio Ciborra had been allowed to leave the Doctoral Consortium early to present the plans for ECIS 2003
That a meeting was held on June 8th at the Catholic University in Milan. This was the first meeting of Italian IS business school people. There were a large number of people (around 50) there with a high proportion of younger researchers (around 40). Institutions represented include: Naples, Parma, Bologna, Bocconi, Milan
The home for this group is the Professors of Organisational Science.
There was an intention to try and host ECIS 2003 in Naples. Professor Mercurio was offering new facilities in the School of Economics and there were many possible locations for the doctoral consortium.
That Claudio would be going to Naples on July 16th to evaluate the venue
That the likely date would be early June to avoid the peak holiday season
Possible sponsors include Daimler/Chrysler who were training 1500 employees in SAP in Naples
That the organisation would be distributed between Italy, Goteborg and Oslo with sponsorship and administration divided between these locations.
4.2 Resolved
That Claudio be encouraged to prepare a full proposal for presentation at the next meeting of the standing committee at ICIS in December
5 Future conferences
• Vienna
5.1 Reported
That the official call for papers was now issued (with a change of colour from red to blue to signify that it is now the official call for papers)
That November 15th would be the deadline for submissions
That authors would be notified of the decisions on 30th January with revised papers due for 28th February.
A particular focus would be made to include the German speaking and Eastern European community
That a recruitment event, focussing primarily on these areas, would be held with the conference, partly as a way of increasing student participation.
The conference was broken up into 16 tracks, with track chairs being held responsible for the content of each track.
The central administration would be responsible for collecting papers and managing the process after the reviews and selections had been made.
Track chairs would be able to track the papers in their track through a web enabled system.
The software for this process is based on experiences gained in ECIS 1997 and the software is now developed.
The central administration would check for possible cross-submissions and jointly-authored papers with authors appearing more than once. Authors would be asked to confirm at the submission process that there were no cross-postings
It was noted that there may be a problem if different tracks have different rejection rates.
There would be no formal limit on the number of submissions, although informally one would hope that an author would only submit the best one or two papers rather than large numbers of papers.
Whilst not explicitly stated, it was expected that track chairs (in a similar manner to conference officers previously) would not submit papers to the conference.
It was recommended that the associate editor process should be applied in this model and the organisers were asked to consider how this could be implemented.
That Steve Smithson and Kurt Bauknecht had been co-opted as international contacts as specified by the ECIS guidelines document.
That Joachim Griese and John Mooney had been chosen as the organisers of the PhD consortium
• Slovenia
5.2 Reported
That a two page flier would be finalised as soon as the names of the sponsors were agreed.
That Slovenia Telecom had provided sponsorship of 30,000 DM. The organisers were not concerned about financial problems
The Bled community and mayor were supportive of the conference.
The two universities and seven schools with informatics specialisations were involved with the conference. There was a good atmosphere in the country about the conference.
Steve Smithson had agreed to be the research papers chair.
Hans Hansen had visited the university officially.
That they were working with Gdansk and had learned a lot from the experiences of Copenhagen.
• Poland
5.3 Reported
That the conference had been announced in the Polish professional press
That the conference was being organised by the main organisers of the Gdansk international fair.
That there would be practioner and business tracks and a theme of the "digital economy"
The new hotels in Gdansk would be suitable for attendees
That the Polish society for information systems research would be invited to help with the conference.
The conference will be held at the Technical University, with the Opera House being the location of the social event.
6 Any other business
6.1 Reported
That the web site was proving to be a useful resource, although there were some problems with punctuation marks being translated across different language systems.
That Endnote libraries for all the ECIS conferences would soon be available on ISWORLD and the ECIS site
That a database of all referees and organisers for past ECIS conferences would soon be running on the web site
That AIS had chosen to rename the region 1 conference as AMCIS to avoid confusion with AIS
That AIS had 1500 members with a concentration in North America
That AIS sponsorship of the doctoral consortium was confirmed and would continue
That the standing committee may wish to consider AIS backing for the conference.
6.2 Resolved
That AIS be asked to prepare a paper for discussion at the next meeting about possible models for backing the conference financially.
6.3 Noted
That Georgios Doukidis was stepping down as chair of the standing committee and would be replaced by Jan Pries-Heje. Georgios was thanked for his excellent work in this role.
6.4 Date of next meeting
The next meeting would be a breakfast meeting at ICIS, on the morning that was not the morning of the women's breakfast. Date to be confirmed as soon as it was known.
Dr. Edgar A. Whitley
Secretary