Information Systems and Global Assemblages: (Re)Configuring Actors, Artefacts, Organizations Working Conference

Submitted by Kevin Crowston on Mon, 2013-11-04 14:03
Event date: 
2014-12-11 to 2024-12-30
Type: 
Conference

A working conference will be held in Auckland, New Zealand, immediately prior to the ICIS conference. The conference includes a track for work-in-progress papers modelled on the OASIS workshop. The call for paper is available here. Papers are due 30 June 2014. Further information is available on the conference website. The proceedings are now available from Springer.

Minutes: 
Business meeting minutes, Auckland, New Zealand, 12 December 2014

Comments

Submitted by Michael Oduor on Mon, 2014-12-15 02:49.

The working conference falling prior to ICIS was good as it provided a more relaxed introduction to the latter conference. It is clearer now after the first two days of ICIS where there has been a lot going on and it has not been easy to interact, especially being a first time participant in both conferences. There were interesting paper sessions on various topics ranging from IS design, methodology, application of theory in IS research amongst others in the working conference. The pick of the bunch for me were the final two presentations by Richard Baskerville on design science research and reconceptualisation of IS. I was also torn between attending the paper sessions and the OASIS workshop which were held in parallel so I had to sacrifice and opted to attend most of the paper sessions thus missing out on the valuable feedback and discussions in the OASSIS workshop.

The keynote session given by Karlheinz Kautz on Sociomaterial Practices and Assemblages was also very interesting and being unfamiliar with the concepts, I liked his presentation and views on the interplay between tasks, processes, their interaction with technology and how technology can act as an extension of the human body and be effectively used for communication as it is instantaneous and enables more interactivity.

Some of the key issues raised in the working conference include, but were not limited to:
How to utilise theoretical concepts (in this case those related to assemblage) in practice and empirically test them
How to make claims based on theoretical evaluation and support these claims in empirical studies
The extent to which data provides a significant description of reality
Sense making when there is information overload
Understanding the broad role of textual information and the impact it can have rather than just its meaning
The need for researchers (especially ethnographers) to fully immerse themselves in the phenomena they are investigating.

Overall, it was a good conference in a relaxed atmosphere and if possible will definitely try to attend the next one.