IS History: Timeline and Institutional Roles of IS

REQUIRED) The history of any academic discipline plays an important role in shaping the discipline and giving the discipline its unique identity. AIS is initiating an effort to collect, preserve, interpret, write and disseminate the history of the IS field. Ping Zhang was selected as the AIS Historian, and the supporting committee includes Frank Land, Rudy Hirschheim, Doug Vogel, Richard Baskerville, Dan Robey, and Andy Schwarz. AIS hopes to maintain the legacy and heritage of the IS field by starting now when many pioneers in our field are still among us. As part of the first initiatives, the AIS History committee is organizing panels at IS conferences, including ECIS, PACIS, AMCIS and ICIS. This is one type of activity that will help collect as well as communicate/share the IS history with the community. The main idea is to invite some of the most influential pioneers in our field as the panelists to offer their memories, opinions, suggestions, and share such with the audience. At AMCIS, the theme of the panel is: IS Timeline and The Institutional Roles of IS.