By Trevor Rohm, MD
CEO, International Information Management Association (IIMA)
For nearly four decades, the International Information Management Association (IIMA) has been about something larger than information technology. It has been about people, ideas, relationships, discovery, and the bridges that connect them.
Founded in 1989, IIMA was established with a distinctive mission: to bring together high-quality academic research and meaningful social interaction. Today, our community includes academics, researchers, students, technology professionals, business leaders, and practitioners who share a common interest in understanding how information and technology shape our organizations and our world.
As we prepare to gather in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, September 6–10, 2026, for our 37th Annual Conference, hosted by International Burch University, it is appropriate to reflect on where we have been, what IIMA has accomplished, and—perhaps most importantly—where we are going.
37 Years of Change
Think about how dramatically our world has changed since IIMA began.
When our organization was founded, much of the professional and academic communication still occurred through face-to-face conversations, telephone calls, printed documents, libraries, letters, and traditional publications. Computers were rapidly entering workplaces and universities, but the digital world that surrounds us today was still in its infancy.
Then came the computer age.
Information that once filled filing cabinets became digital. Processing power transformed research, business, medicine, education, finance, government, and nearly every other profession.
Then came the Internet.
Suddenly, information was no longer constrained by geography. Universities could collaborate across continents. Researchers could communicate almost instantaneously. Knowledge that once required multiple trips to a library could increasingly be accessed from a computer.
Then came mobile technology, cloud computing, social networks, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Computers were no longer simply devices sitting on our desks. They became embedded in our homes, vehicles, factories, hospitals, cities, and daily lives.
And now we have entered another transformation: the age of artificial intelligence and, increasingly, the Age of Intelligence.
The challenge is no longer simply whether we can collect information.
We can.
The challenge is no longer simply whether we can transmit information.
We can do that almost instantaneously.
Our challenge now is whether we can manage information intelligently, responsibly, ethically, securely, and ultimately for the good of humanity.
That challenge makes the mission of IIMA more relevant today than perhaps at any point in our history.
More Than a Conference
Over the decades, IIMA conferences have traveled throughout the United States and around the world—from California, New York, Houston, Seattle, and Las Vegas to Dublin, Beijing, Taipei, Utrecht, Manchester, and now Sarajevo.
Those locations tell only part of our story.
Behind every conference are the universities and individuals who opened their campuses, classrooms, conference rooms, and communities to us.
To every university that has hosted the IIMA over these many years: thank you.
Your hospitality created environments where ideas could be challenged, young researchers could find mentors, established scholars could begin new collaborations, and friendships could develop across institutions, disciplines, countries, and cultures.
Our conferences have always combined serious scholarship, with something equally important: companionship.
IIMA describes its conference culture as one where members often know one another on a first-name basis, attend one another’s presentations, communicate throughout the year, and develop continuing collaborations.
That is something worth protecting.
Academic conferences can become very large and impersonal. IIMA has followed a different path. We have worked to create a community where the conversation following a presentation can be as meaningful as the presentation itself.
Sometimes the most important collaboration begins over dinner.
Sometimes a research idea emerges during a walk through a city.
Sometimes a professional colleague becomes a lifelong friend.
And sometimes traveling halfway around the world reminds us that although our cultures, languages, and experiences may differ, our aspirations are remarkably similar.
Scholarship That Lives Beyond the Conference
The impact of IIMA extends beyond our annual gatherings.
Our commitment to scholarship has been preserved through our publications, including the Journal of International Technology and Information Management (JITIM) and Communications of the IIMA (CIIMA), along with conference proceedings that document the evolving research interests of our community. IIMA’s journal history reaches back to the original Journal of International Information Management, which later became JITIM.
These publications represent more than articles stored in an academic archive.
Collectively, they provide a record of technological transformation.
Researchers associated with IIMA have examined technologies and information-management problems as they emerged, matured, and sometimes disappeared—while continually asking the essential questions of our discipline:
How should information be collected? How should it be organized? How should it be protected? How should it be communicated? And how can it be transformed into knowledge that improves decisions and society?
The technology changes.
That fundamental responsibility does not.
Sarajevo: A City Made for Building Bridges
There could hardly be a more meaningful destination for our 37th Annual Conference than Sarajevo.
Our 2026 theme is:
“Rebuilding Bridges: Sustainable Cyber-Physical Integration in the AI Era.”
The conference asks researchers and practitioners to examine how emerging technologies can rebuild bridges between people, institutions, sectors, and regions, while advancing intelligent systems that remain ethical, secure, sustainable, and human-centered.
Sarajevo embodies that idea beautifully.
It is a city where East meets West—where Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, European, and modern influences can be experienced within the same city. Its streets, cafés, markets, architecture, places of worship, universities, and bridges tell stories of civilizations meeting one another across generations.
Sarajevo also understands that bridges are more than physical structures.
Bridges connect people.
Bridges overcome division.
Bridges allow ideas to move in both directions.
And bridges must sometimes be rebuilt.
A city that has experienced conflict and extraordinary historical change now welcomes researchers, educators, students, and professionals from around the world to discuss technologies that themselves have the potential either to divide humanity further or bring us closer together.
That makes Sarajevo more than the location of IIMA 2026.
Sarajevo is part of the message.
We are deeply grateful to International Burch University for hosting this year’s conference and welcoming the international IIMA community to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The university provides a fitting environment for conversations surrounding artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital transformation, sustainable information systems, and the future of information management.
From the Information Age to the Age of Intelligence
Artificial intelligence represents an extraordinary technological transition.
But our responsibility cannot end with creating increasingly intelligent machines.
We must ask harder questions.
How do we connect artificial intelligence with human intelligence?
How do we connect innovation with ethics?
How do we connect data with wisdom?
How do we connect cybersecurity with accessibility?
How do we connect universities with industry?
How do we connect technological advancement with human need?
And how do we ensure that the extraordinary power of intelligent technology ultimately serves humanity rather than simply technology itself?
Those are bridges worth building.
Information has never been more abundant. Yet abundance does not automatically produce understanding. Data does not automatically become knowledge, and knowledge does not automatically become wisdom.
That transformation requires thoughtful information management.
This is where organizations such as IIMA have an important role to play.
Our future must include computer scientists and information-management researchers, but it must also include physicians, educators, engineers, business leaders, policymakers, cybersecurity professionals, social scientists, students, and communities.
The Age of Intelligence cannot belong to one profession, one university, one company, or one country.
It must be a global conversation.
Looking Toward the Next 37 Years
As we prepare for Sarajevo, I find myself thinking less about technology itself and more about the people who have made IIMA possible.
To our founders and past leaders: thank you for creating and sustaining this organization.
To our editors, reviewers, authors, presenters, and researchers: thank you for preserving our commitment to scholarship.
To our students and emerging scholars: you are the future of IIMA.
To every university and institution that has hosted our conferences: thank you for opening your doors to us.
And to the members who traveled across cities, states, countries, and continents—not simply to present research, but to share meals, explore new places, exchange ideas, laugh together, develop friendships, and return year after year—thank you.
Those relationships may ultimately be IIMA’s greatest legacy.
Thirty-seven years ago, we were trying to understand how computers would change information management.
Today, we are asking how artificial intelligence will change humanity.
Thirty-seven years from now, the technologies will undoubtedly be different again.
But I believe our fundamental mission will remain.
Bring people together.
Share knowledge.
Challenge ideas.
Manage information responsibly.
Create friendships.
Explore the world.
And build bridges.
This September, those bridges lead to Sarajevo.
I look forward to walking across them with you.
Where do we go from here?
Forward—together.
Trevor Rohm, MD,
CEO, International Information Management Association
(IIMA)
37th Annual Conference — Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
September 6–10, 2026
Rebuilding Bridges: Sustainable Cyber-Physical Integration in the AI Era