Thanks to all of you who helped make the 33rd annual conference of the International Information Management Association (IIMA) such a wonderful success. 

  • Our keynote speakers enriched us: Jason Wood talking about Digital Transformation in Healthcare and Miten Mehta sharing about Digital Transformation from creating his “Start Change” web app to using Salesforce products.
  • Our President, Ian, gave a great talk on digital transformation of universities, and our CEO, Trevor, shared lots of data and perspectives on the future of Covid and healthcare in the US.
  • My grad students (Nicholas, Jessica, Oanh, Lewis, Quynh, Thu and Charan) did a wonderful job in chairing the various sessions as well as setting up the different venues—especially Nicholas for fixing the computer problems.
  • While distracted by the numerous aircraft in the Museum of Flight, most of us paid close attention to a wonderful variety of talks.
  • Our van drivers, Jim and Trevor, were amazing. (Have you seen vans cross five lanes of busy stop and go traffic in 100 feet?!) And Helen found out that we can’t blame the Vice President for the traffic jam on Wednesday (https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/troopers-find-unusual-passenger-after-semitruck-crash-in-sodo/ar-AA13s9rk)
  • Emmanuel and the program committee provided us with an enriching program of talks (Thanks Emmanuel, Louis and Jaymeen)
  • Well, Emmanuel, couldn’t have done it without all of you who submitted papers and presentations and workshops. (Now review and update those papers and submit them to CIIMA or JITIM for publication!)
  • Thank those who asked you questions after your presentation – and use their comments to improve your paper…
  • Pascal and Tanya, thanks for hosting workshops. We need more of these in the future…
  • Thanks to Pascal for helping us hear some virtual presentations – and thanks to those who presented virtually!
  • Agatha and Chichi received the “Best Student Presentation” award – Congratulations!
  • Thanks to those who came for the first time to an IIMA conference (e.g., Anand, Markus, Chichi, Agatha, Sylvia, Tim,…), as well as those who came after missing many years (e.g., Helen!) along with the many regulars (e.g., Jay (Congratulations on your retirement!), Tanya, Alison, Peter, Ramesh, Diana, James, Namchul, Kosin, Shaoyi, Jake, Frank, Ore,…)
  • The visit to Microsoft allowed us to get a group picture with the Microsoft founders (?!) as well as shop in the Microsoft store and hear the last two presentations.
  • Thanks to Kosin and Emmanuel for sending out thousands of emails on behalf of the IIMA. (But it might be more effective for you to invite your colleagues to the next IIMA conference!)
  • We had delicious food, starting with the Sunday evening welcome at the Lebanese Tanoor restaurant and ending with the Tuesday night conference dinner at the Seattle Crab Pot restaurant – with delicious crab and shrimp dumped on the table in front of us (good that they gave us bibs and a wooden hammer to break the crab legs!)
  • We saw Seattle and even a touch of a sunset from the top of the Space Needle (and nearly everyone eventually stood on the glass floor looking down 500 feet).
  • Congratulations to Shoshana who will be Co-president with Ian for the coming year. Pass on your suggestions and ideas to make IIMA even better in the future!
  • Thanks to everyone who came and participated!

Professor Gerhard Steinke, PhD., CISSP, Seattle Pacific University