News

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

Dear friends

A belated Happy New Year to you all! I hope that you are all well.

Last year was an interesting, if sometimes challenging year for us all. We used the pandemic to develop a series on online symposiums. These were well attended and provided a wide variety of interesting talks that were very informative. A huge thank you to those friends that lead those events. We would like to keep this going and at the conference in October agreed to four more in 2022, so watch out for dates for these – but if you would like to volunteer to run one yourself or organize one for another speaker / panel you know of then please let me know.

The conference in Utrecht was awesome, and we sincerely thank the team who organised it all – led by Diana and Pascal. It was held in a new conference suite on their beautiful and impressive campus. We had a tour of the campus as part of the event, including looking at a smart building that the university had built recently, as well as visits to Amersfoort and Amsterdam.

We were truly inspired by starting with the PhD colloquium. We heard about some really exciting and far reaching research programs from doctoral students. We then progressed into the regular conference during which two keynote talks were given:

First, Anand Sheombar on digital rights in Africa (Anand Sheombar – IIMA). I found this fascinating drawing on the power of governments, the way the pandemic has been used to control civic space, and the position social media platforms play as a data monopoly. 

Our second keynote talk was from Erik Proper from the Luxemburg Institute for Science and Technology on Enterprises as Model Driven Systems (http://iima.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/20211019_model-driven_enterprises.pdf). He discussed the opportunities and challenges of using modelling to design enterprises and keeping these models up to date in an agile process, continuously changing organization and dynamic world context.

And so, while the conference ended up as a hybrid of in person and online attendance the event was wonderful. We can’t wait for the next conference – and with travel restrictions being lifted again we are very hopeful that it will be in person again.

We confirmed that we would go to Seattle in October 2022 24^th to 26^th. The early call is out already under the theme of “The State of Digital Transformation” so start to write those papers as we want to see a full gathering again. You can find the full call here: Call for Papers – IIMA

Kind regards

Professor Ian Allison
President

Dear friends and members of the IIMA,

We hope that you all remain well and that the pandemic has not unduly impacted you. I am sure that I speak for us all when I say that the last year has been bizarre – at times very difficult, worrying and isolating, but I am delighted the worst seems to be over. We will be moving back to face to face teaching this Fall. 

Since the previous conference in 2019 we have enjoyed some interesting and dynamic online symposiums on a variety of subjects. We hope that you have managed to engage with those.

As time for the 2021 conference is getting closer, we thought it timely to update you on the plans for the conference scheduled for October 18-20 hosted by University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Netherlands.

We postponed the conference last year due to COVID-related travel restrictions. This year we plan to proceed. Travel remains uncertain, but we are planning to host an in-person conference in Utrecht for those who can make it. There will be the normal set of social and cultural activities for those in attendance.

Those who cannot travel but can contribute a paper/panel/workshop online we would welcome your input and we will organise a programme to support presentations from different time zones.

We have a growing number of abstracts and papers already but we urge you to submit your contribution now that you know we are definitely proceeding. We have therefore reset the final deadline to be 12th September 2021.

The programme committee are working on plans for additional research brainstorming work to support a group funding bid opportunity. If you are present you will be able to contribute and be included on any bid subject to the eligibility of the cal(s)l targeted. 

If the various Governments allow travel then I certainly plan to be there, and I hope to see you too.

The original call

Theme: Human-Centric Digitalisation

The International Information Management Association was founded in 1989, with the mission of providing a unique blend of high-quality academic research and social interaction. The 32nd annual meeting aims to promote the dynamic exchange of ideas among researchers, educators, developers and practitioners who share their research and disseminate innovations in education, business, and government. This conference is devoted to examining and sharing how business analytics and technology innovations can help us succeed in a world where information is increasingly taking center stage. Come, join and share with us in Utrecht.

Conference topics include but are not limited to:

Artificial Intelligence Accounting and Auditing Applications Big Data Biomedical and Healthcare Informatics Business Analytics and Business Intelligence Cloud Computing Cultural and Societal Implications of IT Cyber Security and Privacy Data and Knowledge Management E-Government E-Commerce

E-Learning and Teaching Innovations Emerging Technology Innovations Gaming and Simulations Intelligent Systems Legal and Ethical Issues in an Information-Driven World Mobile Computing Networks and Wireless Technologies Organizational Impacts of Information Systems Social Networking and Electronic Communication Strategic Management of IT Virtual Organizations

Dear IIMA friends

A Happy New Year to you all!

We hope that you are all well. I am sure that we are all pleased to see the back of the year 2020 and in the UK we are delighted to see the roll out of the new vaccines to address the COVID pandemic. Clearly 2020 has been a challenge for many of us and it has certainly had an impact on the way we work here in the UK with home working and online classes becoming the norm.

As we look forward to 2021 I wanted to set out some thoughts that I hope will feature in your plans for this year and give you something to look forward to!

Conference – October 2021

We had to postpone the majority of the conference in 2020. We did manage a short online version (iima.org/wp/31st)

We expect to have our 32nd annual conference in Utrecht, Netherlands. This is always a highlight and the chance to visit Europe again will be special. Remember the fantastic times we have had before – Conference 2021 will be extra special for the wait! The IIMA conference is a great opportunity to share and debate our work in this very supportive and inspiring community.

Look out for the full call for papers. Please book this in your schedule and start to plan that paper you wish to submit.

Monday, October 18 – Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Theme: Human-Centric Digitalisation (Human-Centric Digitalisation – IIMA)

Symposium & Webinars on the following topics

We were delighted to have four webinar / symposiums last year. One thought provoking discussion session on Ethics and AI, another panel symposium on Open Data in addressing the pandemic, an excellent talk on Digital Leadership and Alison Munsch led a very helpful session on online teaching and learning.

Look out for the next ones. We have one coming up (27^th January) on Cybersecurity hosted by Vincent Nestler. This will be based on the NICE Challenge Project (nice-challenge.com). It is a project he leads, and it is an excellent free resource for any educational organization to use.  

We are then planning two further sessions on “Big Data: Lessons from the future” in February and another one on a linked topic of “Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning” in March or April.  

These sessions are really helpful opportunities to test out some early work, develop ideas for your next research project, to hear from some experts, researchers or practitioners about their field … so help us to learn and share, and to keep the community alive during these unusual times. These can be the springboard for your conference paper. If you would like to host a session or give a talk, please let us know.

Submission of Papers

And if you have been completing work then don’t forget to keep your papers coming in to the two journals – a presentation in a symposium could be the basis for developing a fuller paper. See for guidelines and information on how to submit: Call for Papers – IIMA

So our best wishes for a healthy and successful 2021 – and most of all I look forward to it being the time we can all meet again.

Professor Ian Allison

President IIMA

Download the newsletters here:

IIMA 2015 – Call for Participation
IIMA 2015 News – Spring 2015
IIMA 2016 News – Fall 2015
IIMA 2016 News – Winter 2016