Happy New Year 2016! A Note to AIS Membership

Thank you for being a member of the Association for Information Systems. 

The end of the calendar year provides an ideal opportunity to take a quick pulse of the state of the association and to reflect on our progress toward achieving the AIS mission of “serving society through the advancement of knowledge and the promotion of excellence in the practice and study of information systems.”  

This past year did present council with some challenges and it resulted in necessary changes in the association and in the AIS office.  However, we have never been more optimistic and more excited about the financial health of the association, the value proposition that we offer our members and the association’s ability to continue fulfilling the AIS Mission.  Indeed, it is a wonderful time to be part of AIS. 

To begin, the association is in a solid financial footing and is poised to continue growth and enhance membership services.  We continue to have no long-term debt and our financial reserves have been built-up and are now able to cover twelve months of operating expenses.  This was an important milestone reached this year as it is a widely accepted “benchmark” among peer associations, matching a new official AIS policy to maintain this target level moving forward. In recent months we have also re-affirmed our close affiliation with Georgia State University, while simultaneously re-examining key supplier contracts in the AIS office, some of which were eliminated, de-scoped and/or changed in order to streamline our staffing structure.  We have also re-organized the AIS Office to support our renewed priorities around member services and membership value.

AIS Council and staff continue to work on many initiatives to improve your member experience. Some of the significant highlights and milestones from across the association this year include:

• The association is more than 4,000 members strong, representing 100 different countries.  

• Members have formed 37 SIGs, 37 Chapters and three Colleges. 

• There are three (not two) major annual conferences now in AIS with ICIS, AMCIS and PACIS (officially joining in 2015 as the Region 3 AIS Conference). This is in addition to countless IS workshops, seminars, regional conferences and topic focused conferences that take place across the globe each year. 

• Undergraduates have formed 73 student chapters and represent an additional 3,000 student members in the AIS extended community. The latest information about AIS Student Chapters can be found here (https://sc.aisnet.org/). 

• The AIS e-library attracts 1 million downloads annually now from across 8 AIS owned journals, 6 affiliated journals, 2 chapter journals, and annual proceedings from 9 IS related conferences.

• AIS established a first of its kind Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between AIS and the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for the grand vision of the Bright Internet Initiative project.  This MOU was signed in Fort Worth during ICIS.

• There are 35 annual awards provided by the association to our members. These include the AIS LEOs, Fellows and the recently named Sandra Slaughter AIS Service Award. Many of them from 2015 are posted here (http://aisnet.org/news/266598/Many-Honored-at-ICIS-2015.htm).  These are in addition to the awards offered via conferences, journals and workshops.

• AMCIS and ICIS offered the lowest early-bird registration rates in years during 2015, while simultaneously providing higher quality bags, more drink tickets and enhanced conference services.

• Our Conference Executive Committees are also wrapping up two task forces that provided comprehensive review and re-examination of AMCIS and ICIS. 

   

  Collectively, these changes and this progress have been extremely well received based on the very favorable results in satisfaction surveys from AMCIS (Puerto Rico), membership and ICIS (Fort Worth).  Although there is always more work to be done, the survey results are promising and represent significant gains from prior years. 

   

  In the coming months you’ll be seeing a refreshed AISNet website and learning more about the implementation of task force innovations by the AMCIS and ICIS Executive Committees.  We will add access to more journals through the AIS e-Library, with priority given to journals in the Senior Scholars Basket of journals. We will summarize these milestones and many more from across the association in an AIS Annual Report. Our volunteer Interim Executive Director (Matt Nelson) will begin transitioning responsibilities to our newly hired professional Associate Executive Director Jody McGuiness. We have arranged for a transition period of up to 12 months in order to allow Jody sufficient time become better acquainted with the AIS member community, our research, our conference cycle(s) as well as AIS by-laws, policies and procedures. Finally, we will continue to improve the financial transparency of the association (at all levels) and will continue enhancing membership value with mobile-friendly services, multi-year discounted memberships, more webinars and of course AMCIS in San Diego, PACIS in Taiwan, and ICIS in Dublin!

   

  Most importantly, we close with this. Associations cannot survive without the dedication and spirit of service and volunteerism from our members. Your willingness to participate and serve on conference committees, program committees, Council, SIG and Chapter governance, and as paper reviewers, editors, track chairs, program chairs, student chapter advisors, and mini-track chairs across the community provides the foundation and intellectual bedrock of the association. 

   

  THANK YOU for your service, dedication and contributions in the Association for Information Systems.   

Sincerely,

AIS Council

Jae Kyu Lee, President, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Helmut Krcmar, Immediate Past President, Technische Universität München

Jason Thatcher, President-Elect, Clemson University

Jane Fedorowicz, Past President & Special Advisor to Council, Bentley University

Mary C. Jones, Secretary, University of North Texas

Rayman Meservey, Interim Treasurer, BYU Marriott School

Kevin Desouza, Vice President of Communications, Arizona State University

Julie Kendall, Vice President of SIGs, Chapters & Colleges, Rutgers University

James Parrish, Vice President of Student Chapters, Nova Southeastern University

Jan vom Brocke, Vice President of Education, Universität Liechtenstein

Alan Dennis, Vice President of Conferences, Indiana University

Ryan Wright, Vice President of Member Services, University of Massachusetts – Amherst

Virpi Tuunainen, Vice President of Publications, Aalto University School of Business

Harry Jiannan Wang, Vice President of Technology, University of Delaware

Michael Myers, ICIS Representative, University of Auckland

Stacie Petter, Region 1 (Americas) Representative, Baylor University

Tim Weitzel, Region 2 (Europe/Africa/Middle East) Representative, University of Bamberg

Jae-Nam Lee, Region 3 (Asia/Pacific) Representative, Korea University Business School

Matthew Nelson, Interim Executive Director, Illinois State University

AIS Staff

Amanda S. Bureau, AIS Membership Director

Patrick Dockins, AIS Communities (SIG, Chapter, College) Relations Manager

Lise Fitzpatrick, AIS Conference Director

Andrea Lashley-Aquil, AIS Conference Registrar

Adam Lebrocq, Copy Editor

Lesley Martin, AIS Membership Service Coordinator

Sarah Pinkowski, AIS Review Coordinator

Brook Pritchett, AIS Communications Director

Tenez Quarles, AIS Finance Director

Mahesh Rathi, IT Manager

Jeff Rausch, Technology Director

Aretha Wright, AIS Office Manager