Standing Committee of the European Conference on Information Systems

Minutes of the meeting held 15.30-18.30 on Wednesday June 25th 2005 at Regensburg University, in the meeting room in Prof. Bartmanns office.


1. In attendance: Edgar Whitley, Florian Allwein, Richard Baskerville, Karl Kautz, Jannis Kallinikos, Chiara Frigerio (on behalf of Federico Rajola), Alessandro D'Atri, Jan Ljunberg, Urban Nulden, Thomas Acton, Martin Hughes, Willie Golden, David Avison, Robert Winter, Dieter Bartmann

Apologies: Stefan Klein, Eph McLean, Brian Fitzgerald, Hans-Dieter Zimmermann, Jan Pries Heje, Federico Rajola, Philip Ein-Dor

2. Minutes of the previous meeting

Accepted

3. ECIS 2005 review

3.1 Reported

That, in total, 493 submissions had been received of which 163 were accepted, an acceptance rate of 33%.

That, at this time, there were 347 registered participants and 80 students from Regensburg. Of these 88 were already AIS members, and 44 chose to join AIS. 105 chose not to join AIS at this time.

3.2 ECIS 2005 doctoral consortium

Reported

That this delightful, professionally run doctoral consortium had been a great success, with particular thanks due to Christian Schlaeger, the local organiser, who was a real pleasure to work with.

That 20 students and 7 faculty had attended the workshop, drawn from 25 applications (including some solicited by the DC chair)/

That the AIS/ICIS review system for doctoral consortia had been used successfully, with each application reviewed.

That the participants had been chosen, in part, to reflect the broadness of the field both geographically and by topic. However, it was noted that Southern Europe needed to become more active in soliciting submissions.

That the gender make up of the consortium was 6 female, 14 male, with 3 male and 3 female colleagues in the faculty group.

That in addition to paper presentations, discussions and plenaries, there were special sessions on dealing with your supervisor, publishing during the PhD etc.

That future DC chairs be strongly encouraged to attend the current DC to learn the ropes and pick up what works well and what less so.

3.3 Agreed

That Dieter Bartmann and his team be thanked for running what looked like it would be an excellent conference.

4 ECIS 2004 final review

4.1 Noted

The final accounts for ECIS 2004

5 ECIS 2006

5.1 Noted

That the call for papers was being distributed at this conference

That some new tracks, e.g. HCI, community, new organisational forms, had been included.

That the venue, the business school, had been booked (the hosting group was moving from the business school to the IT university).

That the DC would take place at a seaside resort

That sponsors were being sought

6 ECIS 2007

6.1 Reported

That St Gallen was putting forward a proposal to host ECIS 2007

That the proposed dates were June 7-9

That there was a financial commitment to cover any financial shortfall

That there was lots of hotel capacity in St Gallen

That the proposed venue for the dinner was a 420 capacity UNESCO world heritage site

That the track structure would be similar to previous conferences

That many new track volunteers were being sought.

That the overall structure would be more decentralised, with 1 chair per track rather than separate RIP, case studies etc. chairs.

That fees were expected to be about the same as Regensburg (+ inflation)

6.2 Agreed

Unanimously, that St Gallen be formally invited to host ECIS 2007


6.3 ECIS 2008

6.4 Reported

That, following discussion with St Gallen, Galway was now putting forward a proposal to host ECIS 2008

That the University had an excellent conference office and event management team that had organised conferences on the same scale as ECIS.

That wireless networking was available as standard.

That the Aula Maxima could be used for receptions

That Galway had 3500 hotel rooms and 2000 Bed and Breakfast rooms, as well as student accommodation

That Galway can be reached by flying to Dublin, Galway or Shannon

That the proposed dates for the conference were June 9-11

That the university was sponsoring the conference and could be asked to waive the nominal fee for the hire of meeting rooms etc.

That government funding was available for research in biomedicine and ICTs, up to €40,000

6.5 ECIS 2009 and beyond

6,6 In discussion

That although the UK might be an obvious choice to approach for ECIS 2009, its geographical proximity to Ireland, might suggest that Spain or Benelux be more appropriate for 2009 with the UK perhaps considering bidding for 2010.

7 ECIS proceedings online

7.1 That the ECIS proceedings since 2000, plus Endnote libraries for all conferences were now available at http://is2.lse.ac.uk/asp/aspecis/ and talks were in progress to also make them available on the AIS digital library.

8 Date of next meeting

8.1 Agreed

That the next meeting be held during the Goteborg site review visit.

9 Any other business

9.1 Noted

That the bilateral Italy / Germany workshop for young researchers had been held with 20 students attending and the intention was to continue this for the future.

That this plays a useful preliminary role for the doctoral consortium (which is normally intended for students in the middle of their research)

That the RIP track had a relatively low acceptance rate and that ICIS 2005 had dropped this track completely. In part, the problems may have arisen with regard to the ambiguity of what form an RIP paper should take, but nevertheless future conferences should reflect on whether they wish to continue with an RIP track and if they do, to be clear about what was expected from submissions to the track.

Dr. Edgar A. Whitley

Secretary, ECIS standing committee.