Standing Committee of the European Conference on Information Systems

Minutes of the meeting held from 0900-1100 at Institute of Information Management (IWI), Mueller-Friedberg-Strasse 8 on Saturday February 24th

1 Apologies

In attendance: Edgar Whitley, Eph McLean, Dieter Bartmann, Alessandro D'Atri, Willie Golden, Robert Winter, Jan Pries Heje, Hubert Osterle

Apologies: Received from Guy Fitzgerald, Brian Fitzgerald, Richard Baskerville

2 Minutes of the last meeting

2.1 Noted

The minutes were accepted

That AIS President, Michael Myers was launching  a review of AIS plagiarism policy in part as a result of the concerns raised by the ECIS Standing Committee

That since the meeting, Gianni Jacuzzi had been appointed the International Programme Chair in the plans for ECIS 2008

3 ECIS 2007 St Gallen plans

3.1 Reported

That there were 16 tracks both domain independent and domain dependent.

That attempts had been made to balance track chairs across the region and with the explicit goal to involve new people, with a separate role for a small 'programme committee' who would agree the final decisions on papers.

That, in general, the split responsibility worked well although in a few instances problems arose with regard to responsibility for the papers

That the number of track chairs might be based in the future on the likely number of submissions for the track

That there had been 583 submissions, including many from Germany, few from France and a strong showing from Australia, many of whom were also attending the Bled e-commerce conference.

That there had been 7 workshop proposals and 6 panel proposals.

That there would be an opening reception on June 6, from 19.00-21.00 (after the next standing committee meeting)

That the Annual University Day (on the Saturday) might require moving some of the sessions but would have no impact on the hotel rooms

That registration would open shortly with the end of March as the deadline for cheaper rates

That the location for the conference dinner had capacity for 420 attendees

That the financial planning was still on track and sponsorship had been secured to ensure a balanced budget

That there had been 24 submissions to the doctoral consortium

3.2 Noted

That the decline in DC submissions might be based on the policy of only accepting one submission per institution

That it might be helpful to encourage submissions from students in their 'middle year' of study, so that they would be able to benefit most from the consortium

That the DC had always tried to encourage participation from a diverse population, covering a range of topics, institutions, countries, genders and research approaches.

That, with the support of AIS, ECIS pays for the DC (attendees pay their travel costs to attend) and normally provides free registration for attending the conference (although DC attendees need to cover their accommodation for the conference)

That organisers of future DCs might wish to consider more advertising for the consortium, more proactive solicitation of submissions including email reminders and consider the possibility of one nomination per supervisor rather than one per institution, whilst taking care to ensure that there is still broad representation of institutions and countries.

That a question might be added to the AIS/ICIS questionnaire about DC attendance, including reasons why institutions do / do not nominate students for DCs

That AIS might wish to consider a single page which advertises all the DCs (ECIS, AMCIS, PACIS, ICIS etc.) together with their deadlines.

4 ECIS 2005 Final accounts

4.1 Reported

The full accounts for ECIS 2005 were presented.  For comparison, the previous accounts for 2003 and 2004 are also available.

The accounts were duly noted

5 Presentation of current status of ECIS 2008 preparations

5.1 Reported

That, in light of the St Gallen experience, the tracks were organised with track chairs (who would be the primary contact) and vice track chairs

That the call for tracks had been issued and gone well with 30 proposals received for 16 tracks (with some retro fitting involved)

That the call encouraged all submissions (especially the larger tracks) to identify associate editors that would work for the track.

That details of the tracks would be in the brochure distributed at ECIS 2007

6 Proposals for future conferences

6.1 Reported

No formal proposals have been received but there have been expressions of interest from

 Salford and Brunel (UK) for 2009 or 2010

University College of Agder/Kristiansand (NO) for 2010

Utrecht (NL) for 2013 (date chosen because that year is the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Utrecht)

6.2 Noted

That Jonathan Wareham was now at ESADE in Spain and might be interested in putting forward a proposal to host ECIS in Spain

7 Any other issues

There were no other issues

8 Next meeting

8.1 Reported

That the next meeting of the ECIS standing committee would take place from 17-19 on June 6th, before the opening reception

Dr. Edgar A. Whitley

Secretary, ECIS standing committee.