IFIP W.G 8.2 BUSINESS MEETING
JANUARY 15, 2025
1. Welcome
The meeting started at 3:35pm EST. Matthew Jones welcomed all attending members, friends, and guests to the WG’s annual business meeting.
2. Attendance
Attendance is taken (list below). Kevin Crowston was absent with apologies.
3. Elections
No new candidates were received for the office positions. Therefore, as customary in IFIP W.G. 8.2, people moved up in their roles. Matthew Jones has finished his term as the chair (Thank you Matthew for your leadership!). For the next three years, Benjamin Mueller became the new chair, Pamela Abbott became the new vice-chair, and Yeliz Eseryel is staying on in her second 3-year term as the secretary.
4. Membership issues
Brenda Killingsworth was voted in a new member. Congratulations!
All members and friends are encouraged to sigh up through (i.e., create an account on) the WG’s website to stay in touch.
5. Quick round of introductions
Everyone introduced themselves.
6. Social Media Strategy:
We had established a social media presence within the last two years in LinkedIn. In a small update to our previously established rules, we now also accept “Friends” of the WG into the LinkedIn group (as compared to only full members previously). The attendants also discuss different strategies for boosting the presence of the WG on LinkedIn. Members are again encouraged to use the “#wg82” hashtag to flag relevant content they are positing on LinkedIn anyhow. The officers will then repost this on the group.
LinkedIn now introduced an Active Groups Badge. Thus, it would be good to keep active and receive the active group badge. It would be good to have the membership contribute content.
In light of slow uptake thus far, Benjamin Mueller suggests that the officers will attempt to be more active to animate the group over the next two years. At the end of that period, the WG’s LinkedIn presence is to be re-evaluated critically and, if not deemed to be valuable (as evidenced by activity and engagement with content), discontinued.
7. Update of membership list
The project initiated by IFIP leadership continues to be on hold as no guidance on GDPR-compliant privacy statements, roles and rules has been issued by IFIP central. In the absence of these, WGs are unlikely to be able to update their member lists. Benjamin Mueller and a student of his developed a plan for how to update the member list once the framework has been established. The issue is to be raised at the next TC8 meeting again. If no guidance is issued, we may have to at least stop publishing membership info.
8. New Events
During our Jubilee Event, we had discussed the identity of IFIP 8.2 going forward, what issues we need to investigate, and what services we can provide for IFIP 8.2 to be relevant to the membership.
There was some discussion that instead of hosting only physical events that require expensive travel, we can host smaller, informal online events. Some events could be (1) to have paper talks for recently accepted journal articles, or (2) brainstorming on emergent issues in the scholarly community. We are encouraging all the members to start using the community as a platform for sharing and discussing their news, rather than expecting the officers to organize all events.
9. OASIS 2024 (cancelled)
For ICIS in Bangkok, we could not organize an OASIS workshop, because no volunteers were found that could be on site at Bangkok. We discussed the option of tagging onto the AOM Conference (July 25-29 2025 in Copenhagen) or having it as an ancillary event of ICIS 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee. Of course, this issue also affects the schedule of the WG’s working conference. We may want to postpone it to another year, rather than doing it simultaneously with an OASIS workshop.
The theme for the OASIS workshop (which came out of the WG’s Jubilee workshop) should be retained for a future event.
10. Other business
Ken asked about if there are still awards at IFIP? The officers clarify that there are. Follow-ups will be conducted with TC8 leadership and IFIP central.
Ken asked if we were going to have a methodology conference? Ken reminded us that this is something we have every five-six years. Our methods may not be as relevant to the AI research. A methods conference may also bring new people.
We discussed whether we should move our community to another place from IFIP such as AIS. IFIP is not providing resources, IFIP is in Austria, and it does not exist as a legal business entity with a legal tax number. Because of that we cannot collect money using IFIP as an entity or have an account where we can store IFIP funds. The issues is to be raised at the next TC8 meeting.