AMCIS 2009
The 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), 2009 was recently held in San Francisco. The conference was themed as 'The Golden Gate to the Future of IS (Information Systems)'. As part of the research group at Infosys, from the Web 2.0 Research Lab Dr. Jai Ganesh and I chaired three mini-tracks in this conference. These were:
- Web 2.0 and Collaborative Value Creation
- Business Impact of Virtual Worlds and Web 2.0
- Web Accessibility - Challenges, Regulation and Reality
The overall conference was replete with variety of parallel tracks including those on Design Theory, Analytical Modeling and Simulation, Decision Support Systems, diffusion of IT, eBusiness and eCommerce, Enterprise Systems all the way to Social issues of IT.
AMCIS has always been a big draw for both academician as well as industry folks in the IT and IS field. Some of the leading names in the field of IS such as Profs. Paul Gray, Gordon Davis, Dick Mason, Varun Grover, Kenneth Kendall, Ramesh Sharda, Upkar Varshney etc. were part of this conference. More than 800 papers (and posters) were presented in the conference which was spread over 3 and 1/2 days. Close to 1100 people attended this conference.
Like any other conference, this one offered a huge opportunity to network with like minded people in the industry and academia and share notes about the question on everyone's mind. Yes the dreaded 'R' word. While a majority of the academicians weren't directly impacted, they were deeply concerned about how they could contribute in 'turning the tide back'. The keynote speaker and panelists in various discussions, deliberated on the role of IS in an organization's tryst with difficult times. The tone in most cases was clearly the value Information Systems can add in taking tough and timely decisions. The consensus was on prudent adoption of newer technologies that allow organizations to collaborate with its customers and partners and create value which was hitherto unrealizable.
The papers presented was a mix of theoretical constructs and practical challenges in achieving the above. A lot of emphasis was on human issues in IS such as cultural influences, unlearning and re-learning, models for collaboration, process changes and improvements, soft skills, communication, knowledge-networks, and digital-divide was evident in the papers that were presented. Of course the traditional issues in IS such as metrics, risk assessment and mitigation, sustainability, technological advances, diffusion mechanisms, value articulation etc. were also addressed by several papers.
In the tracks that we had proposed and chaired, some very interesting papers on web usability and accessibility challenges faced by visually challenged folks, Web 2.0 capabilities and strategy, Web 2.0 for small and medium enterprises, Online reputation systems, social nature of virtual worlds, structure and design of social networking etc. were presented.
Our take home was essentially the potential collaboration in research related with social networking analysis, usability and accessibility, business models for Web 2.0 adoption, trends in virtual reality, its relevance for geographically distributed business processes and the technology diffusion and moreover development of tools to facilitate the transitions. To this extent this conference provided connects with several leading academicians from across the world.
The AMCIS 2010 will be held in Lima, PERU.
