Tag Archives: workshops

Reflections on conference organizations in 2021

In 2021, I had great opportunities to serve as an organizer for three events: Program Co-Chair for INFORMS Workshop on Data Science 2021, Workshop Co-Chair for KrAIS Research Workshop 2021, and Minitrack Co-Chair for HICSS 2022 TAEM Minitrack. This post is to reflect my experiences in organizing these events. In sum, I am grateful that I had the opportunity to contribute to my academic communities!

1. INFORMS Workshop on Data Science 2021 (Virtual via Zoom) [DS 2021 Program]

This INFORMS workshop is for data science-oriented IS research. Many of the papers are technical in nature, using various computational and machine learning approaches, to solve a variety of business and societal challenges. The previous workshops were collocated with CIST in the INFORMS Annual Meeting locations. Due to the pandemic, the 2021 workshop was held virtually. There are both positive and negative sides to being virtual. Just focussing on the positive side, because there is no travel cost, many participants from all around the world could participate in the event, although there could be some time zone issues. Thankfully, we could invite many prestigious editors to our panel discussion (many thanks to the editors Andrew Burton-Jones, Alok Gupta, Subodha Kumar, Olivia Sheng, D. J. Wu as well as the moderator Ahmed Abbasi). We also had the great honor to have Jon Kleinberg as the keynote speaker. Last but not least, we had great presentations about many cutting-edge papers on recommender systems, algorithm design, deep learning, personalization, pricing, network analytics, and healthcare. Thanks to all the conference co-chairs (Gautam Pant, Wenjun Zhou, Shawn Mankad), program co-chairs (Yong Ge, Jingjing Zhang), and other organizing committee members. It was great teamwork!

2. KrAIS Research Workshop 2021 (Hybrid in Austin, TX & Zoom) [KrAIS 2021 Program]

This post-ICIS workshop is to promote the scholarship and provide networking opportunities for the AIS members with Korean heritage. ICIS 2021 was held in Austin, TX, and I was looking forward to visiting my second home through this opportunity. We managed to secure a great conference venue (OASIS on Lake Travis). However, due to the COVID-19 variant omicron, many international participants (including myself!) had to cancel their travel plans at the very last moment, hence the organizers had to manage many last-minute changes. Managing a hybrid conference brought interesting challenges: the audio-video delivery between the venue and Zoom, the transition between on-site and online, and registration processes. We had a great panel discussion on the issue of EDI (many thanks to panelists Victoria Yoon, Byungjoon Yoo, Min-Seok Pang, and the moderator Dokyun Lee). Also, I appreciate the support from the KrAIS Co-Presidents (Habin Lee, Byungjoon Yoo) and KrAIS Committee members (Wooje Cho, Kyung Young Lee, Youngsok Bang). Many thanks to my fellow workshop co-chairs (Hyeyoung Hah, JaeHong Park)!

3. HICSS 2022 Technology and Analytics in Emerging Markets (TAEM) Mini-track (Virtual via Zoom) [HICSS 2022 TAEM Mini-track]

Starting from HICSS 2021, Sang-Pil Han, Sungho Park, Wonseok Oh, and I are organizing a mini-track at the HICSS conference. The objective of this mini-track is to nurture a vibrant community between academics and industry on the topic of technology and analytics in emerging markets. Of course, in beautiful Hawaii islands. Unfortunately, we had to do virtual conferences for two consecutive years (we are missing Hawaii!). Fortunately, we had many great paper submissions this year (thanks to the authors who submitted their great work). We had a Zoom session to discuss the accepted papers. We all agreed to meet in person again in Hawaii next year!

4. Summary

When I was a participant in conferences, I didn’t realize all the complexities behind the scene. Now I started to appreciate the significant amount of time and effort put by conference organizers to make such events a reality. Thanks to all the organizers of the numerous conferences and workshops that I attended in my academic life! In 2022, I will be serving as a track co-chair (with Ali Shuyaev and Jing Wang) for ICIS 2022 Data Analytics for Business and Societal Challenges, a track co-chair (with Seung Hyun Kim and Dan J. Kim) for PACIS 2022 Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Ethical Issues, and a conference co-chair (with Jingjing Zhang and Yong Ge) for INFORMS Workshop on Data Science 2022. The reward of good work is more work, but I am happy to keep contributing to our academic communities 🙂