International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations

Dr Kecheng Liu

2009 IFIP WG8.1 International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations: Information systems in the changing era: theory and practice

The 2009 ICISO is the first time with its current new name (formerly named as international conference on organisational semiotic). Same as the past ten occurrences, this conference served as a focused forum for the researchers to explore and debate about how semiotics is developed and applied to business organisations and information systems. The researchers welcomed the expansion of the conference scope to include wider participation in the organisational semiotics and informatics research. Moving away from the tradition of placing the conference in Europe and North America, China was chosen as the venue for this event, especially motivated by the increasing interest in organisational semiotics and exciting research in informatics in that part of the world.

ICISO 2009 was devoted to the latest research in informatics and applications of organisational semiotics to address business problems. This was reflected in the main theme of this conference: “Information Systems in the Changing Era – Theory and Practice”. ICISO 2009 provided an opportunity for active researchers, practitioners, business and industrial professionals and academics from various domains of information systems and with diversified backgrounds to get together, to share latest research achievements and practical experiences, and in particular to harness the greatest challenges in the changing era and think seriously into the future. ICISO 2009 continued the effort of the international research community in the development of the emergent discipline in organisational semiotics and its applications. It focused not only on the theory building, but also on practical benefits gained so far through applications of methods and techniques derived from various approaches.

Once again, support was received from the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.1 (WG8.1) to recognise this as a working conference for IFIP WG8.1. Several keynotes from the prominent speakers were delivered to cover a wide range of relevant topics of organisational semiotics and information systems. Göran Goldkuhl, Linköping University of Sweden, delivered his speech on Pragmatic Qualities of Information Systems – actability criteria for design and evaluation. Ronald Stamper, emeritus professor of the University of Twente, the Netherlands made an address entitled the Chemistry of Society: Organisational Semiotics as an Empirical Social Science. Guoqing Chen from Tshinghua University, China talked about Discovering Associative Knowledge for Decision Support. Yu Chen from Renmin University of China presented Lessons from Modern Systems Science for MIS.

ICISO 2009 attracted 222 papers from 19 countries and regions. Having gone through the rigorous reviews, 72 regular papers (33% of the total submissions) have been accepted for publication. More detailed information of ICISO 2009 can be found here.

The next International Conference on Informatics and Organisational Semiotics (ICISO2010) is also an IFIP WG8.1 Working Conference, which will be held in Reading, UK, 19 – 21 July 2010. It will be hosted by the Informatics Research Centre, University of Reading, with support from various institutions, including a world-leading IT and business consulting firm Capgemini. There will be also academic and industrial workshops associated with the main conference. 50 papers have been accepted to the conference. More information on the conference can be found here.