DSS News is a free biweekly newsletter from DSSResources.COM about computerized Decision Support Systems. *********************************************************** DSS News D. J. Power, Editor August 14, 2005 -- Vol. 6, No. 18 A Free Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM 1,190 Subscribers ************************************************************ Please check the interview with Wayne Eckerson "Finding the Decision Support Sweetspot" ************************************************************ Featured: * Report from AMCIS 2005, Omaha * DSS Conferences * What's New at DSSResources.COM * DSS News Releases ************************************************************ Visit DSSResources.com; Support our advertisers Advertise here! ************************************************************ Report from AMCIS 2005, Omaha by Dan Power The Eleventh Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2005) was held in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, August 11-14, 2005. On Wednesday, August 10, I drove from my home in Cedar Falls, Iowa to Omaha for the conference. The 275 mile trek took less than 5 hours. Omaha may seem like an unlikely site for the "largest gathering of Information Systems Professors and IS/IT Ph.D. students in North America", but more than 1000 attendees gathered for what was billed as a "Conference on a Human Scale" (check amcis2005.isqa.unomaha.edu). After checking in at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, I walked 2 blocks to the conference venue. The Qwest Center was the main site for AMCIS 2005. We used the ballroom and meeting rooms and it is connected via a skywalk to the Hilton Omaha hotel. I registered about 5:30 pm and spoke briefly with Fred Niederman, Saint Louis University and Paul Gray, an emeritus Professor at Claremont Graduate University and Founding Past Chair of AIS SIG DSS. Apparently DSS researchers were the early registrants. The registration desk was otherwise quiet while I was there. I had dinner in the Old Market area and was back at my hotel by 9pm. Thursday morning I got up early for an 8am workshop at the Hilton on “Philosophical Understanding of Research Approaches in the Field of Information Systems/Technology”. Position papers were solicited that helped guide the workshop. Jim Courtney, University of Central Florida, led the workshop. Fourteen participants engaged in a semi-structured dialog. Recent research indicates a variety of philosophies are guiding the research reported in IS/IT/DSS journals. The traditional positivism/objectivism philosophy remains dominant, but subjective, interpretivist approaches are also guiding research. This has led to more qualitative and action research reported in journals. We tried to understand what was happening and how it has impacted our understanding of information systems and information technologies. Information Systems research is generally perceived as an applied, pragmatic academic discipline. Methodologies like action research and design science involve us with practice and help insure the relevance of what we do. The workshop underscored the need for openness to new ideas and new methods. John Beachboard, Idaho State, asserted we need to better refine and articulate our understanding of theory and research linkages. Kay Fielden, Unitec New Zealand, challenged us to examine our various philosophical frameworks to see if we are providing "sound and wise support" to information systems practitioners confronted with "wicked" problems. The workshop ended at noon, but we all lingered and chatted. No one was in a hurry to have it end. Thanks to all my new friends from the workshop and especially to Jim Courtney, our fearless leader. I had lunch with Omar El-Gayar, Dakota State University, and two doctoral students in the Liberty Tavern at the Hilton. A reuben sandwich and sweet potato fries coupled with good conversation made for a pleasant meal. Thursday afternoon my colleague Ramesh Sharda, Oklahoma State, was waiting to hear if a proposal he had helped craft with Ken and Julie Kendall, Rutgers-Camden, for holding AMCIS 2009 in San Francisco had been accepted. It was! We chatted about various SIG DSS issues while he waited. Ramesh is the current chair of SIG DSS. The crowds were increasing all afternoon and Ilze Zigurs, University of Nebraska at Omaha and a conference co-chair, was checking the details and seeking feedback. I had an enjoyable 45 minute chat with Roger Pick, Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City, and Chip Levine, a Ph.D. student at UMKC. We covered the range of topics, but declining undergraduate enrollments in MIS courses evoked the greatest concern and discussion. The SIG DSS business meeting started promptly at 5:30pm. Finances are good, we are unhappy with the AIS transaction processing system for membership renewals, we explored having the International Conference on DSS (ICDSS 2007) in Calcutta, and we agreed to create an annual "best DSS published article" award. Ramesh Sharda chaired the meeting and handed out the summer 2005 newsletter (check an e-version at http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/sugumaran/sigdss/Vol4No1Summer2005.pdf ..) I agreed to chair the inaugural award committee to annually recognize a recently published article about decision support, data and knowledge management systems theory and applications. Other members of the 2005 review committee include David Paradice, Florida State, Jerry Fjermestad, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Roger Pick, and Ramesh Sharda. By 6:15pm we were headed for the opening reception for AMCIS 2005. The exhibit hall was packed, the food was good, but I elected to head back to the hotel a little before 8pm. A 14 hour conference day is about my limit. The main conference started Friday morning at 8:15am with a keynote by Linda Sanford, Senior Vice President for Enterprise on Demand Transformation and Information Technology, IBM. We had a good crowd for such an early session. Omaha apparently supported a strong work ethic for attendees. Prior to the first session, Ramesh Sharda and I chatted with Karen Corral, Arizona State, and David Schuff, Temple Univ., about SIG DSS business. Basically this was an informal meeting of the executive committee. Karen is Vice Chair/Chair-elect and David is Secretary-Treasurer SIG DSS. The meeting didn't result in any earth shaking decisions, but we reviewed plans for the upcoming year. The Qwest Center is a very large venue, AMCIS had more than 180 sessions in 2 1/2 days. SIG DSS sponsored 21 sessions with 60 papers. So approximately 15% of the program was related to decision support, data and knowledge management topics. The other 150+ sessions focused on the range of IS/IT topics from security, systems analysis, outsourcing, IS/IT education and then various panels and tutorials. Picking and choosing sessions is always a challenge. Basically I focused on the SIG DSS sessions and most of them were in adjacent rooms on the second floor of the Qwest Center. The eProceedings of AMCIS 2005 are online at http://aisel.isworld.org/proceedings/amcis/2005/, but you need a User ID and Password to access the E-Library. At 9:30am Friday, I attended a session on Emergency Response Systems chaired by my friend Murray Turoff, New Jersey Institute of Technology. The leading edge papers addressed disaster management and mobile communication. We had some good discussion on locating people in an emergency, privacy, creating panic and decision support for alerts. Murray is Program Chair for ISCRAM2006, the Third International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, that will take place in Newark, New Jersey, USA, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology from May 14-17 2006. Check http://www.iscram.org/ . At 11:30am I attended a session on Information Visualization and Decision Support. Kurt Pflughoeft, Market Probe, and Mariam Zahedi, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, presented an excellent paper on "Data Visualization using Figural Animation". My glyph or Chernoff face was very happy. Following lunch and a pitch to attend AMCIS 2006 in Acapulco, I attended the Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS) journal editorial board meeting. I've served on the board since 1999 and my service is nearing an end. Paul Gray is the founding editor and his term ends in December 2005. Paul has done a great job creating a credible, interesting journal for the IS/T field. Since 1999 CAIS has published 428 articles. We discussed the search for a new editor, in press articles and transition issues. Many thanks Paul for a job well done. By 3:30 I was rushing to a session on Knowledge Management. Then from 4:30-5:45pm I attended my last session of the day and quickly dropped my program materials at my hotel so I could catch a bus for the Henry Doorly Zoo and the evening social event. I saw many friends and acquaintances, but I especially enjoyed dining with Sean Eom, Southeast Missouri, Merrill Warkentin, Mississippi State, and his wife Kim, and Vijay Sugumaran, Oakland University. Merrill and Kim are both University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. The Henry Doorly Zoo (www.omahazoo.com) is too large to explore adequately in 2 hours. I started in the Desert Dome that opened in April 2002. It is the world's largest indoor desert and it is located under the world's largest glazed geodesic dome that stands 13 stories tall. The exhibit is an impressive maze of desert animals from all over the world. Murray Jennex and I chatted on the bus back to the hotel. Saturday morning I met Sean Eom at 6:45am and we walked to the Hilton and chatted. I attended the 7am meeting for AMCIS 2006 mini-track chairs, then had a bagel and Starbucks coffee. At 8:15am, Roger Schell, President Aesec Corp., gave a Keynote on "Trustworthy Information Systems – A Myth or an Enabler?" The why and how of reducing the vulnerability of our information systems is increasingly understood by those of us in Information Systems, but we need to be more candid with management, especially senior management, about the risks, threats and vulnerabilities. By 9:15am I was headed for another DSS paper session. Jack Becker, University of North Texas, presented an interesting exploratory study of the impact of Collaborative tools on virtual team activities. Following the coffee break, I caught an interesting presentation by Dursun Delen, Oklahoma State University, on data preprocessing for data mining. I wish I could summarize all of the presentations I heard. The noon luncheon and AMCIS 2005 awards was on the lighter side this year with Master of Ceremonies Mary Maxwell. Her "dry humor and quick wit" kept the event moving. Following lunch I attend a presentation by Omar El-Gayar and then headed to my car for the drive back to Cedar Falls. The meeting ended with two sessions Sunday morning, but DSS News needed my attention and I was tired after a busy 3 days in Omaha. By 8pm I was pulling into the driveway at my home. Sponsors of AMCIS 2005 included Microsoft, Union Pacific, Peter Kiewit Institute, Mutual of Omaha, and First National Bank of Omaha. The name "Omaha" comes from the Indian tribe of the same name and supposedly means "Above All Others on a Stream." AMCIS 2005 was not above all other IS/IT/DSS conferences, but it was a good conference and an excellent meeting of the Information Systems academic community. The International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2005) will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 11-14, 2005. The SIG DSS pre-ICIS DSS workshop will be held on Sunday, December 10. Check http://icis2005.unlv.edu/. ************************************************************ Purchase Dan Power's DSS FAQ book 83 frequently asked questions about computerized DSS http://dssresources.com/dssbookstore/power2005.html ************************************************************ DSS Conferences Upcoming Conferences 1. Teradata PARTNERS User Group conference, September 18-22, 2005, Orlando, Florida. Check http://www.teradata.com . 2. 2005 NPRA Plant Automation and Decision Support Conference, October 18-21, 2005, Gaylord Texan Hotel, Grapevine, Texas. Check npra.org . 3. ACM 8th International Workshop on Data Warehousing and OLAP (DOLAP 2005), November 4-5, 2005, Bremen, Germany. Check http://gplsi.dlsi.ua.es/congresos/dolap05/ . 4. Water Management Decision-Support Software Workshop November 16 - 17, 2005 - Niagara Falls, New York, USA, Check http://www.ceatech.ca/eventsd.php?eid=1027. Abstracts due August 26, 2005. 5. Call for Papers: Fourth workshop on e-Business (WEB 2005), a pre-ICIS workshop sponsored by AIS SIGeBIZ, papers due August 31, 2005. Workshop URL: www.web-workshop.org 6. Call for Papers: Third Annual Pre-ICIS Workshop on Decision Support Systems sponsored by AIS SIG DSS, December 11, 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada. Papers due September 1, 2005. Workshop URL: mis.temple.edu/sigdss/icis05 ************************************************************ Please tell your DSS friends about DSSResources.COM ************************************************************ What's New at DSSResources.COM 08/06/2005 Moved the Ask Dan! DSS FAQ to a FAQ content management system called phpMyFAQ. Check the Ask Dan! page. 08/05/2005 Posted interview with Wayne Eckerson "Finding the Decision Support Sweetspot". Check the interviews page. ************************************************************ DSS News Releases - August 1 to August 14, 2005 Read them at DSSResources.COM and search the DSS News Archive 08/11/2005 SAS is leader in IDC marketing automation software applications report. 08/10/2005 Garmin's new Rino 520 and 530 two-way radio/GPS units have increased range and new features. 08/10/2005 Oracle powers Data Center and Oracle(R) on Demand with 64-bit Linux. 08/10/2005 Use of information technology by medical professionals causes growth in data storage. 08/10/2005 Business Objects and Bull Services help Michigan Department of Human Services improve business processes and make better decisions. 08/09/2005 Allegro v.7 software selected by CHS Inc.; natural gas and risk management software supports propane operations. 08/09/2005 Wells Fargo successfully deploys largest implementation of Workstream Compensation. 08/08/2005 Oracle and HP set new world record one terabyte TPC-H benchmark result. 08/08/2005 Analytics, business intelligence, and document management executives to gather at The Sarbanes-Oxley conference and exposition. 08/08/2005 U.S. Bank selects Fair Isaac's Strategy Science Service to optimize credit line decisions. 08/08/2005 Six Sigma Qualtec implements enhanced financial reporting capabilities into SixNet business intelligence system. 08/05/2005 Smart startups don't wait to set up accounting systems according to research at Stanford Business School. 08/04/2005 HostMySite.com unveils hosted document management solution. 08/03/2005 New CIO poll reveals chief information officers want more stringent Sarbanes- Oxley guidelines. 08/03/2005 Research study finds changes required in automotive warranty process. 08/02/2005 DARC Corp. and Parelli Natural Horsemanship implement Oracle applications on their way to the winner's circle. 08/02/2005 SAS Institute engages Evalubase Research to analyze the analytics market. 08/02/2005 Intergraph deployed at largest local gas supplier in Western Europe. 08/02/2005 ILOG launches the first Gantt Chart graphics tool with custom project management features for Microsoft .NET. 08/01/2005 IAIDQ co-chairs information quality conference to encourage global collaboration for information and data quality improvement. 08/01/2005 Pivotal Corporation teams up with Pervasive Software to drive operational efficiencies for America's top home builders. ************************************************************ DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2005 by D. J. Power. Please send your questions to daniel.power@dssresources.com. |