BUSINESS MEETING MINUTES, HYDERABAD, DECEMBER 8 2023

Submitted by Matthew Jones on Wed, 2024-09-18 11:01

1. INTRODUCTION AND ATTENDANCE
Matthew JONES welcomed all attending members, friends, and guests to the WG’s annual business meeting

2. APOLOGIES
The WG’s secretary Yeliz ESERYEL was absent.

3. MATTERS ARISING
Eija KARSTEN, past Chair of WG8.2, had been awarded the IFIP Service Award
No progress had been made on organising interim events during 2023, an initiative that was indicated as potentially desirable by the WG’s membership during the Jubilee Workshop. It was hoped that it may be possible to pursue this in 2024 with the strengthened Officer team (see below). At the same time, the officers highlighted that such events largely depend on the membership’s initiative and volunteering, even if events organized by the officers can provide an initial impulse in this direction.

4. OFFICERS’ TERMS AND ELECTIONS
The term of the current officers – Matthew JONES (chair), Benjamin MUELLER (vice-chair), and Yeliz ESERYEL (secretary) – will last until December 2024. Nominations will be sought in September 2024 with elections being held in November 2024, if necessary, so that the new Officer team can take over from the December 2024 Business Meeting.
Due to personal circumstances Yeliz ESERYEL had experienced difficulties in carrying out the Secretary role. Following discussions among the WG Officers it had been suggested that Pamela ABBOTT, who had stood for the Secretary position in the 2021 election, might be coopted to act as Co-Secretary for the remainder of the term of Office. Pamela had kindly agreed to help. Matthew JONES proposed that Pamela ABBOTT be formally co-opted as Co-Secretary. The motion was passed unanimously.

5. ATTENDEES AND MEMBERSHIP ISSUES (20 participants – 19 in person, 1 online)
An attendance list was passed around for all attendees to fill in (see below).
Benjamin MUELLER reported on progress (or lack of it) in updating the Group’s membership records, which contain many dormant and duplicate accounts. A student at his University had been recruited to assist with the updating, but in order to ensure that the Group’s records are GDPR compliant it will be necessary for the membership list to include a statement of the Group’s privacy policy, which should be consistent with that of IFIP. No such statement, that the Group could refer to, is currently shown on IFIP’s website, however. Benjamin had written to IFIP Headquarters to seek advice, and raised the issue at a TC8 meeting, but has not yet received a response.
When this matter has been resolved, members and friends will receive an e-mail to update their membership records accordingly and the process for signing up as a new member / friend on the website will be amended accordingly.

5. REPORTS ON PAST EVENTS
Matthew JONES reported for the organizing team of the 2022 OASIS workshop, on the theme of “Criticality and Values in Digital Transformation Research”. The workshop, held in conjunction with the ICIS conference in Copenhagen, attracted 58 participants. The organisers of the workshop will be guest-editors for a special issue of the European Journal of Information Systems on “Embracing Contrarian Thinking: Value-Reflexive Research for a Digital World” with a deadline of 2/2/2024 (https://www.callforpapers.co.uk/ejis-contrarian-thinking)
Matthew JONES reported that the 2023 Joint Working Conference (with IFIPWG9.4) in Hyderabad had attracted 52 participants. 28 papers had been presented (15 full papers and 13 shorter Research in Progress papers) and there had been a roundtable discussion of 4 papers. Keynote speeches had been given by Janaki SRINAVASAN (IIIT Bangalore) and Bobby BANERJEE (City University, London). Two panels, on Enabling Southern-anchored Networks for “Strengthening Research-based Action” and “Theory and Practice: Alternative perspectives and methods” had also been held. The proceedings have been published by Springer in the IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology series (IFIPAICT, volume 696).

6. FUTURE EVENTS
Matthew JONES explained that the next WG event was expected to be an OASIS workshop that will be associated with ICIS 2024 in Bangkok. Will Venters offered to help with organising this.

7. SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY UPDATE
Benjamin MUELLER reported that adoption of the WG’s Linkedin group had been limited in the past year. This was true both in terms of new members (despite the expansion of the eligibility criteria passed last year) as well as in terms of content tagged using the group’s hashtag #wg82. The active expansion of the member list on Linkedin based on the group’s official membership records had to be halted on account of the issues discussed in §5 above. Content generation was discussed and attendees were encouraged to tag content relevant to the WG on Linkedin as much as possible. The expanded officers team will continue to look into the matter with the aim of identifying additional efforts to be proposed to the membership at the next business meeting.

8. OTHER BUSINESS
None

The Meeting Closed at 18:15 IST

Participants:

Matthew Jones mrj10@cam.ac.uk

Benjamin Muller muellerb@uni-bremen.de

Laurence Brooks l.brooks@sheffield.ac.uk

Netta Iivari netta.iivari@oulu.fi

Pamela Abbott p.y.abbott@sheffield.ac.uk

Will Venters w.venters@lse.ac.uk

Channel Zhou g20z1119@campus.ru.ac.za

Edgar Whitley e.a.whitley@lse.ac.uk

Dirk Hovorka dirk.hovorka@sydney.edu.au