Minutes of the IFIP WG 8.3 Business Meeting 11 July 2000

These are the minutes of the business meeting that was held by IFIP Working Group 8.3 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Membership

George Widmeyer checked the membership list at the beginning of the meeting and listed László Fekete-szucs, Omar El Sawy, Ronald M. Lee, Andrew B. Winston, Lawrence F. Young and Robert W. Zmud who were dropped from the list. He mentioned the regrets of Ayestaran, Berkeley, Brookes, Coelho, Klein, Methlie, Power, Sprague and Vári because they could not attend this time. It was reported that Brookes has a knowledge management company and Sprague had schedule problems. They will certainly continue their work in the group. George Huber was added to the list, he returned after 10 years break and was highly welcome. We must recognise that we dropped more than we added and that is a serious matter, even it seems to be a good idea to drop inactive people. We confirmed that someone could become a new member after two attendances and after one attendance he/she can be added to the friends’ list.

The Stockholm Conference

Bengt Lundberg gave his report on the current conference. We had 49 attendees; there were 42 paying participants and 7 non-paying participants. Because of complaints about the cost, he gave information about the utilisation of the registration fees. A few of the participants felt that the high registration fee kept away several potential participants from the conference, especially young researchers and Ph.D. students. Anyhow 4-500 SEK was spent for the registration, the cost of the dinner was 600 SEK, lunches were 500 SEK and the cost of the publication was 500 SEK. Sunday evening and Tuesday lunch were a kind of compensation. The publication cost can be divided into two parts, 400 SEK for the proceedings and 100 for the CD.

Publication

We devoted considerable discussion to the question of publication. Up to now we have worked with three different publishers, North Holland, Chapman and Hall, and Kluwer. Kluwer made an offer 13 weeks before the conference started of 55 USD/copy for 300 pages. They later increased the price by 20%. However, we had 380 pages so it was completely impossible to publish the book there. Vlado Rajkovic said that no one could afford the book if it is so expensive. On the other hand the basic problem is the small number of participants. We have to buy 75 copies and the book should be available in 800 libraries.

George Huber suggested we should clear up the purpose of the proceedings. Should we reach for the outside audience, which means a presence at the bookstores? Or do we simply want to disseminate the knowledge that we have? We should start by defining our goals. After that we can decide what type of document we want.

Patrick Humphreys suggested we could have two levels of publications. Firs, he described the possibility of producing a book, which would contain a selection from the past conferences including the Stockholm conference as well. The copyright in that case will belong to Kluwer or to IFIP. George Widmeyer mentioned that IFIP plans to eventually put all our papers on their website. It is clear that IFIP holds the copyrights. (Note that we signed the copyright papers during the business meeting!)

Patrick Humphreys discussed, secondly, the possibility of producing a handbook of decision support. This could summarise the work of the group and could provide valuable help in teaching. The audience supported this idea.

Conference in 2002

Two potential locations were suggested for the next conference in 2002. There was a short discussion before the presentations on whether it would be wise to connect our meeting to another conference or stay as a stand-alone conference. We had 10 participants from Australia this time who could save lots of money if they could connect their trips, but the conference in 2002 in Poland, Gdansk will be organised from 6-8 June, which was too early for most of our participants.

Frederick Adam presented a joint proposal by Paris and University of Cork. He confirmed that University of Cork has all the facilities that are necessary to have the conference. The suggested date was late June or early July. Length of the conference will be 2.5 to 3 days. Jean-Charles Pomerol added that we need a larger group and the name of IFIP is confusing. We should say that it would be an international conference supported by the IFIP. It is advisable to have two committees, a programme committee of IFIP members and a scientific committee of non-IFIP members. This separation could give the possibility to attract new people and find sponsors. He also mentioned that to get there (University of Cork) is easy and they plan cheap registration.

Professor Henryk Sroka from Poland gave an alternative suggestion, Krakow/Katowice/Zakopane. His department organises every year conference on organisational decision support. Half of his staff (15/30) has scientific degree.

The majority of the participants voted for Cork. It was fixed that the 2002 conference will be held in Cork and the date is around 8 July. Zakopane was suggested as a place of task group or workshop that is shorter, more specific and task focussed, but later because of lack of interest it was cancelled.

It was agreed that the conference topic must be kept wide and attractive in order to increase the number of participants. The following potential themes were mentioned:

It was accepted that the chairman of the working group and the programme committee will choose from this list. Frederick Adam was appointed as chairman of the organising committee and Jean-Charles Pomerol was appointed as chairman of the programme committee. There was a list circulated on which people could add their names to participate in the programme committee. It will be the job of the programme committee, and especially an executive sub-committee, to prepare the call for papers.

Election

The last programme point was the election of the new officers. George Widmeyer is the chairman of the working group until the end of 2000, so he will represent the group at the Technical committee meeting in Hong Kong and can discuss the copyright problem with IFIP officials. We thank him for his work and enthusiasm.

There were three recommendations as vice-chair. Patrick Humphreys got 9 votes, Patrick Brezillion got 2 votes and Bengt Lundberg got 6 votes. (One vote was not valid.) Patrick Humphreys suggested electing two vice-chairs with different networks for the future. In the second round P. Brezillion had 8 votes while Bengt Lundberg received 10 votes. Bengt Lundberg was elected as a second vice chair. Andrew McCosh was elected as chairman of the group and Zita Paprika will continue as the secretary to the group.

Zita Zoltay Paprika

11 August, 2000