Business meeting minutes, Turku, Finland, June 2011

The chair, Nancy Russo (US), called the meeting to order at 12:25 PM.

1. Nancy called for nominations of new members. One new member was nominated:

-- Dirk Hovorka (AU) (attended business meeting in Perth).

Nancy moved that Dirk be accepted as a member. Motion carried.

2. Nancy reviewed past and upcoming events. She thanked the organizers of the Turku conference for a successful conference just concluded. She noted the upcoming Oasis meeting before the ICIS conference in Shanghai in December 2012.

3. Nancy noted that there was not a working conference currently planned. She invited proposals for new working conferences.

4. Nancy noted that her term as chair is nearly over. There is a nominating committee seeking nominees for secretary: Michael Myers (NZ), Richard Baskerville (US) and Nancy Russo (US). If there is a slate of candidates, the election will be held in the fall.

5. Nancy reported on the recent Technical Committee 8 meeting, held immediately before the Working Conference. The meeting led to three initiatives:
a. Test new conference formats
b. Create a ranking of IS conferences
c. Creating a summer school in a developing country

Karlheinz Kautz (DK) noted that Denmark and Germany do rankings of conferences--e.g., an ECIS paper is worth 1/3 of an ICIS paper. But it has backfired in the sense that ECIS is now being flooded with papers. Michel Avital (NL) noted that having a ranking will likely not change the minds of Deans.

6. Nancy mentioned two innovations under discussion:
a. We do not have good information about our members (e.g., age, number of PhD students) and so will be doing a survey.
b. Should we have our own journal? Or form an alliance with an existing journal (e.g., JITTA or Information, Technology & People)?

Kevin Crowston (US) noted that an argument for a new journal would be the possibility for having it be an open access journal, which would be compatible with our values. Mike Chiasson (UK) noted the possibility of experimenting with new forms of reviewing and editing, but without sacrificing quality. There was a good discussion about the possibilities of tying conferences and journal publications.

7. Nancy asked if we should remove inactive members from the membership list. The consensus of the group was that the secretary should email members who have not attended a business meeting in the past 10 years to ask if they want to continue their participation with the group.

8. Nancy called for new business. Dirk Hovorka (AU) suggested that working group conference emphasize discussion rather than presentations.

9. At 1:10 pm, Mike Chiasson (UK) moved to adjourn. Motion carried.