Copyright2012 1

Roger ClarkeXamax Consultancy, Canberra

Visiting Professor in Computer Science, ANUand in Cyberspace Law & Policy, UNSW

http://www.anu.edu.au/Roger.Clarke/......../EC/Bled25TA {.html, .ppt}

Bled eConference – 18 June 2012

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference

Themes and Impacts

Copyright2012 2

Why Analyse the Bled eConference?• 1968 HICSS• 1978 IS Research Seminar in Scandinavia

(IRIS)• 1980 ICIS

• 1990 Australasian Conference in IS (ACIS)• 1993 ECIS

Copyright2012 3

Why Analyse the Bled eConference?• 1968 HICSS• 1978 IS Research Seminar in Scandinavia (IRIS)• 1980 ICIS

• 1990 Australasian Conference in IS (ACIS)• 1993 ECIS

• All of those are generic IS conferences• Bled is the longest-running thematic conference

series in or associated with the IS discipline• Its themes have historical and substantive

significance

Copyright2012 4

Origins of the Bled eConference• Joze Gricar conceived and ran conferences

on the topic of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)• EDI:

• informally, the replacement of paper-based purchase orders with electronic equivalents

• more formally, the exchange of documents in standardised electronic form, between organisations, in an automated manner, directly from an application in one organisation to an application in another

• There were new opportunities and new challenges• These needed to be investigated

Copyright2012 5

The Early Bled eConferences• The 1988, 1989 and 1990 conferences were mainly

local – but ‘local’ meant Yugoslavia as a whole• 3 leading US academics were increasingly

involved:• Milt Jenkins (University of Baltimore)• Doug Vogel (then University of Arizona,

later City University of Hong Kong)• Don McCubbrey (University of Denver)

• By 1991, many conference delegates were from outside Yugoslavia, incl. Europe, USA, Australia

• In 1995, a fully-refereed Research Stream emerged• In 1999, the Outstanding Paper Award commenced

Copyright2012 6

The Scope of the Bled Conferences

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) 1988-1992 (5)

EDI and Inter-Organizational Systems 1993-1995 (3)

––– LANs mainstream, the Internet arrives –––

Electronic Commerce 1996-2004 (9)

eConference 2005-2012 (8)

Copyright2012 7

The Bled Conference Themes, post-EDI

Bled Electronic Commerce Conference

1996 (09) – Electronic Commerce for Trade Efficiency and Effectiveness

1997 (10) – Global Business in Practice1998 (11) – Electronic Commerce in the

Information Society1999 (12) – Global Networked

Organisations2000 (13) – Electronic Commerce:

The End of the Beginning2001 (14) – e-Everything: e-Commerce,

e-Government, e-Household, e-Democracy

2002 (15) – eReality: Constructing the eEconomy

2003 (16) – eTransformation2004 (17) – eGlobal

Bled eConference

2005 (18) – eIntegration in Action2006 (19) – eValues2007 (20) – eMergence: Merging and

Emerging Technologies, Processes, and Institutions

2008 (21) – eCollaboration: Overcoming Boundaries Through Multi-Channel Interaction

2009 (22) – eEnablement: Facilitating an Open, Effective and Representative eSociety

2010 (23) – eTrust: Implications for the Individual, Enterprises and Society

2011 (24) – eFuture: Solutions for the Individual, Organisations and Society

2012 (25) – eDependability

Copyright2012 8

Conference and Research Stream Leadership

• Conference Chair – Joze Gricar (21), Andreja Pucihar (4)Consistency, continuity in flavour, style and values

• Research Stream Chair in a 2-Year Cycle – for Diversity and Adaptation to changes in the conference community's interests

• Over 18 years, 16 different individuals have performed the Research Stream Chair role – 9 male, 7 female

• Chairs’ affiliations in 9 different countriesEurope (6) – Germany 5, Greece, the UK, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland – & the USA, Australia, Hong Kong

Copyright2012 9

Papers and Authorship• >1,000 papers, >2,000 authors• Since 1995, 773 refereed papers, 1,800

authors• 49 countries on the research program:

Australia 389 (22%), Netherlands 260 (15%), Germany 234 (13%), UK 100, Finland 95, USA 71, Ireland 68, Greece 66, Switzerland 61, ...

• On average, on each program:17 countries (range 11 to 23)55 universities (range 24 to 94)9 authors not academics (range 2 to 19)11 multiple-institutional authors (c. 25%) (4 to 21)7 multiple-country authors (c. 15%) (1 to 13)

Copyright2012 10

Authorship• Of the 773 papers:

• Sole Author 21%• Dual-Authored 42%• Three Authors 26%• Four Authors 8%• 5, 6 or 7 authors 3% (25 papers)

• From sole-authored papers (48%, down to 14%)Towards teams of 3 or more authors (12%, up to 48%)

Copyright2012 11

Technologies as Themesat the Bled eConference?

• Mainframes, Minis, Micros PCs, LaptopsMobiles, Tablets

• PPNs and VANs• LANs• The Internet and VPNs• Cellular Networks

• But Technology has never been the primary focus

Copyright2012 12

Frequency of Words in Paper-Titles

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

The most-frequent words in the titles within each 3-year set,omitting generic terms such as management, system and framework

Copyright2012 13

Categorisation Process• No existing set of categories was found

that provides a basis for classifying the 773 papers• Visual inspection identified 63 keywords, with 972

mentions, for an average of 1.25 keywords per paper• The keywords were then clustered, informally, on the

basis of the author's familiarity with the subject-matter and his particular world-view. No authoritative basis for the clustering is claimed

• This gave 34 keyword-clusters within 3 major groups

• Categories of eBusiness60%• Corporate Perspectives 22%• Research Topics 19%

Copyright2012 14

Categories of eBusiness (60%)EDI 1995-1998 41 eCommerce (14%) 1996-2001 140 eMarkets, Directories, Auctions 1998-2002 51

SMEs 1998-2002 53

MCommerce, Mobile Apps 2002-2009 56

eMarketing, CRM, 2003-2011 55

Consumer BehavioureGovernment 2004-2008 35eHealth 2006, 2011 32Other (8 clusters) 108

Copyright2012 15

Bled25 Special SectionCategories of eBusiness

• eRegionsHansDieter Zimmerman

• Mobile Commerce, Mobile Value ServicesCarlsson & Walden

Copyright2012 16

Corporate Perspectives (22%)

Inter-Organisational Systems 1995-1998 24

Supply Chain, ECR, Intermediaries 1998-2003 37

Business Models 2003-2005, 2009 29 BPR, Transformation,

Alignment, Integration 2003-2007 42

Strategic Alliance, Bus Networks, Virtual Organisations 2004, 2007-2009 37

Other (4 clusters) 47

Copyright2012 17

Bled25 Special SectionCorporate Perspectives

• Tools to Support Business ModelsBouwman et al.

• Project ManagementJulie Cameron

• IOIS and Information InfrastructureKlein at al.

• Procedural Controls to Facilitate TradeBons et al.

Copyright2012 18

Research Topics (19%)

Adoption, Impediments, Success Factors 2001-2007 52

Trust, Reputation, Risk 2001-2004, 2010-1137

Other (7 clusters) 96

Copyright2012 19

Bled25 Special SectionResearch Topics

• User AcceptanceHans van der Heijden

Copyright2012 20

Full-Text Analysis?• 1988-1997 not currently in machine-readable

formatwhich includes the first 3 refereed Procs, 1995-97

• Searches by keyword-in-fulltext are feasible• on the Bled eConference site, for 1998-2011• in the AIS eLibrary, for 2001-10

• Content analysis is highly resource-intensive• Preliminary Experiments

• Smartphone gives 2005-11 – 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 2 – ?!

• Facebook gives 2007-11 – 1, 4, 4, 8, 12 – !??• An important Lit Search resource

Copyright2012 21

The Special Case of Google• Formed in 1998 and achieved dominance of the

search-market in many countries by 2002-03• First mention in a Bled paper in 2004, then 58 times:

• 2004-11 – 2, 1, 11, 11, 9, 7, 5, 12 times • The focal point in only 10 papers:

• 5 in 2006 (3 re search, 1 re copyright, 1 re privacy)• 1 in 2007 (re the market for advertising)• 1 in 2008 (re the market for advertising)• 3 in 2011 (2 re cloud computing, 1 re copyright)

• Particular services are of interest to Bled authors only during a brief window, some time after the services have been launched and achieved market penetration

Copyright2012 22

Towards Semi-Automated Meta-Analysis

of the Bled Corpus

• Manual analysis is too resource-intensive, andtoo judgmental, unreliable, unrepeatable, etc.

• 'Automatic Semantic Trend Analysis' – Heinz Dreher

Application of a semantic analysis tool to the full-text of each set of refereed proceedings 2001-2011, generating measures of the occurrence of ConceptKeywords, within-year, and across the period

Enables detection and analysis of changing emphases, such as the patterns of references to people as users, participants, employees, team-members and objects

Copyright2012 23

Impact Measures• >1,000 Papers in hard-copy and CD Proceedings• Papers in Journals – 53 papers (7%) in 13 Special

Sections of IJEC, EM plus many more independently• 550 Papers Online, Open Access

at the Conference web-site, also in the AIS eLibrary• Citations:

• Bled Papers’ Google citation-count > 3,500• Bled-Derived Special Issue Papers > 2,000

• Downloads, from AIS eLibrary >10,000, plus conference web-site, uni and personal repositories

• Graduate Student Consortia, Student ePrototype Bazaars, Research Collaborations, informal exchange

Copyright2012 24

Diversity of Scope, and of Units of Study

• Economic Perspective:• Corporation / Government Agency• Industry Segment / Sector• Region• Nation• Bloc

• Human Perspective:• Not-for-profit / NGO / Association• Community / Segment• Social Group• Individual

Copyright2012 25

Information SystemsA Definition

The multi-disciplinary study of:• the collection, processing and storage of data• the use of information by individuals and

groups, especially within organisational contexts

• artefacts and technologies that are applied to those activities

• the impact, implications and management of those artefacts and technologies

Copyright2012 26

The Dangers of Empiricism

• Empiricism says ‘base interpretations on observations’

• Empiricists have to wait for phenomena to stabilise before they can deliver any information of value

• So empiricism is inherently backwards-looking.‘Old-world research’ describes past realities

Copyright2012 27

The Dangers of Empricism• Empiricism = ‘base interpretations on observations’• Empiricists have to wait for phenomena to stabilise

before they can deliver any information of value• So empiricism is inherently backwards-looking.

‘Old-world research’ describes past realities

• The subject-matter of the Bled eConference is dynamic• The style of the Bled eConference is instrumentalist• To be design-oriented, authors have to take risks, and

carefully balance academic rigour with relevance

Copyright2012 28

The Bled eConferenceOutstanding Paper Award

The Criteria

Perspective The Quality Sought

Real-World Relevance

Contribution Ambition

Academic Rigour

Presentation Ease of Access

Copyright2012 29

Roger ClarkeXamax Consultancy, Canberra

Visiting Professor in Computer Science, ANUand in Cyberspace Law & Policy, UNSW

http://www.anu.edu.au/Roger.Clarke/......../EC/Bled25TA {.html, .ppt}

Bled eConference – 18 June 2012

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference

Themes and Impacts