How to pick the perfect conference location

(upbeat music) Nick, my man, how you doing? Rackere my brother doing well, how are you? I'm okay, hey, I got a flurry of emails the other day. AOM is left the States, like what's up with that? It's not that they put it outside the Yess for once. They decided to move all of them to Europe or something, right? I mean, it's gonna be Vienna with our friend Thomas, then it's gonna be Frankfurt, and also to European places, do you know what happened? Yeah, what is up with that? So I guess we have Philadelphia, and maybe Philadelphia doesn't have the biggest turnout. And yeah, so they took Seattle, it was supposed to be Seattle in 2027, and they just canceled it. They canceled it? They're going to do Vienna. So I mean, that'll be great. Tommy is there, Tommy's grizzled. It's a great city to visit. It's wonderful to sell. They have the best pastries. So seriously, I can just eat those little pink guys. I don't know what they call them. Punch, so I can eat those all day. Yeah. Yeah, so Vienna, after that it's gonna be Toronto, Canada, which I know you might think is the United States, but it's not, it's a different country. Is it? Yeah. I heard it's Frankfurt after this, isn't it Frankfurt? After that, and then London after that. So the next four years are not the United States. But that never happened, am I right? I mean, like it wasn't Copenhagen, the first one that was outside of the US or North America or something. No, I think there were different ones that were outside, but they were very rare. Usually it was just Boston, Philly, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, and it was almost like a rotation of those cities. And it was very much Academy of Management was like a, it has been historically a very US centric. That's right. And then Egos, I guess, is the European one, right? Is Egos the big management account? I'd say so, I've never been, but I think, like there's also the Urem, the European Academy of Management. I've never been to either of these two, but I do would think that Egos is bigger, but it's a different association, right? Egos I'm associating with Oc Studies and Oc Theory, these journals, and Europe is just the European, I guess, sister of the AOM. But look, the AISS is model that it hops from one region to the next, and I know there's some issues with this, but to be honest, I really like that, 'cause it travels around the world, and of course, every one of us, like this likes one, or likes one region, or city, or place, or conference better than the others, but it sort of, like, it makes sense. It's a global association. It can't just always be one part of the world. It would always be to the disadvantage of someone else. So AOM going around the planet a little bit more, it's probably not a bad thing, is it? - Well, I mean, there are pros and cons to everything, but I think the big thing that, and I don't know this, I'm not, even though I'm part of the CTO leadership, I'm not privy to what happened in that room, but I will tell you this, the Copenhagen was a huge success. - It was. - The Europeans came out in full force, and it was a tremendously successful AOM meeting. And then I guess people are not overly thrilled with Philadelphia. So particularly international. We have a lot of folks who, who, I don't know, I mean, if I look at it, the Philadelphia is extremely accessible, like easy to get to. It has interesting historic sites to it. It can also such a good, but like these are the three things I'm looking at. I don't wanna spend like four days to get to a place, I wanna be in like, in a somewhat interesting city, they can go outside, you know, and see Liberty Bell or whatever else, or run up the stairs. I wanted to do the Rocky move, man. I mean, that's what I wanted to do. So that's really what I'm looking at. And, you know, if it's a Philadelphia East Coast, it's just fine. I don't think that's, that can't possibly be the main reason. Anyway, maybe it's a political move. And if so, I really don't care, to be honest. Well, I think there's some of that in the sense that, you know, there are international folks who either A will not come to the US because they're, you know, I guess protesting Trump or something. But then B, they want to, but they just can't get a visa. So we had a bunch of this happen, not last year, but two years ago. Oh, fan of it. It was really difficult to get a visa from a lot of different countries. And I think that was a situation also for ISIS in Nashville that people, like I heard some of these anecdotes that people on last minute did have visa issues. So that's the thing. So here's my question. I mean, is it, is it because I am more receptive to political issues as I'm getting older or because of the times? Or is it true that that research is a lot more political than it used to be? What's your take on this? I wonder about this sometimes. Maybe I'm more interested or just more confronted with politics and, and see it in our, little I.S. research bubble and, you know, like sort of, you know, research bubble. Or it's just really that it's very prevalent in things like, when we have our conferences and how do we run our journals and, you know, what sort of topics do we research? I see it everywhere now. And I wonder whether it's me or whether it's really research as a political thing. I don't know. I think it's Trump. I think people are very emotional about Trump. That's not even what I mean. Like, it really isn't. Like, so for example, if you think about, so first of all, I think it's a bit naive to think that research is by definition a political. Nothing is. And obvious ones is that, like, for example, we can't free ourselves from certain political orientation and streams and trends in terms of topics, which topics are hot, which phenomena and problems are sort of worth investigating. You know, we're always looking for important problems, but important of our problems, not an, you know, like objectively existing thing. It's obviously we construct something as being important as a sign of the time and whatever, you know, the region, everything else. So, so clear example, like the last five to 10 years, especially in Europe, but everywhere, sustainability was big. Diversity, equity, inclusion was big. It's not so big anymore. By the way, digitalization on the downward slope, isn't it? Yeah, but that's because AI has taken the wind out of every, right? So now it's all about me. This AI, that AI ethics instead of AI. Absolutely. It's AI biased, right? Yeah. And then sustainability was the big ethical issue for decades now. And I mean, one could argue that's political. And now it seems to have given way to the elephant in every room, which is AI. But all right, so political, I think there's some of that with the US, but you know what, this is my theory about what happened with AOM and with ISIS, because ISIS, Nashville, I'm not sure, Nashville was the world's greatest choice. I mean, it went to the conference and it was wonderful. I think we had fun and I think it was a great choice for the experience. But I think people told me that it was difficult to get to and that it wasn't one of those big American cities that attracts people. So I did hear that a little bit, but you know, look at what happened with ISIS. We had whatever 1,500 submissions to Nashville. Now with Portugal, we have 2,500 submissions to Portugal. And I'm sure a lot of it is Europeans, because it's easier to go to Portugal and Portugal is a more desirable place, I guess, right? And people outside of Europe, it's easier to go there. So I think there is this thing where, you know, Europe is an easier destination for Europeans and for Chinese. And if you think about it, the two biggest growing groups in information systems anyway, is Germans and Chinese, right? If you look at it. And it happened for a long time. Those are the three big countries. It's US, Germany, and Chinese, but in Germany and Chinese, basically, it's easier to get to Europe. And I think that's what's happening, probably with Academy of Management. I think they realized that, like, look at Germany. Everyone gets a PhD in Germany. In the US, the only people who get a PhD are a small group of people who want to go be professors, right? And actually, I saw a statistic the other day. I would have to look that up and I haven't double checked it. But it's at that per capita, the USS more PhDs in Germany. Which I found surprising to. I'm going to double check that and fact check it. And if it's true, I'm going to put it on the webpage. But aside from that, I would agree with your sentiment. And I think part of that is the difference in the academic system, right? Like, we have way more doctoral students than you guys do. We do way more, right? All right. This is probably the explanation for your PhD argument than per capita. We have way more universities than Germany does. Oh, yeah, way more research money and research spending. The entire world comes to the US to get their PhD historically. So last 100 years, the entire world, all of India, all of China, and half the people in Europe. They come all of South America, right? Come to the US to get their PhDs and then they try to stay. And then there was such a huge university system that they, in Germany, the percentage of Germans is probably higher than the percentage of Americans if you eliminate immigrants, right? Because the only people getting PhDs in Germany, with some exceptions, are Germans. And a lot of them just go back to industry, right? Yeah, they do. Yeah, absolutely. Like, we have about-- 200 something universities and you have thousands so that's a huge difference But if you look at IS I mean like in IS you guys have what six or four doctoral students in your entire department And not to them. I last year had six myself You know, so it's a systemic difference, but you know when you say like the Europe Europe and China make up 80 90 percent of all conference submissions easily I don't know about the journal level, but I do know that at you know ISIS your peen conference even America's conference They've been dominating the submission and accepted paper numbers and participant numbers for many many years now Like like by far right? So and obviously if you're the organization running this and uses a source of income You want to go where your where your audience is isn't it? I mean that's what you know, but Historically the US was still number one Germany was a fast growing number two, but I don't think it eclipse the US Similarly with China China's the fast growing number three. I don't think it's eclipsed Well in terms of what in terms of paper submissions absolutely it helps papers accepted people going I don't know the stats, but I would say I'm not even sure the what you're saying is true anymore It certainly historically used to be true I would think that you have more Europeans than Americans that any AIS conference these days I'm pretty would be certain of that. I don't know that to be honest like we we got to be careful here, but it's certainly It might be close with something, but yeah, so yeah, and then there's always the paper submitted Which is what you said and then there's papers accepted which is what I said now And I'm going to tell you this and I'll stand by this. I think and on average again on average Americans American PhD students American submissions are going to be higher quality than the ones from the rest of the world We still have more like you said, you know here at Notre Dame We have and we actually have more than six, but we have like a dozen PhD students with the Department of 30 professors Right you have six for yourself You can't give the training to six people maybe one of those six you can really ramp up But all all six of them are not going to have the same training is when we have 30 people focusing on ten or twelve, right? And we have multiple years of classes historically in Germany that didn't necessarily do it the same way We have multiple years of a dissertation historically in Germany that didn't do it that way And I think in an average we are going to see more rigorous work and more well-trained Okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna fire back at you because I think your view is very dated And I think a lot of what you said used to be true And I think it's been a long time since that was true So let me paint a different picture just told me you have six PhD students Yeah, but you you just told me that the quality of my training it can't be possibly be as good I'm like why not right so maybe your Your head count to PhD student ratio is more favorable. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean it's better Right, it just means that you investing a lot of manpower into one student Okay, fair enough right so but maybe you're overdoing this Maybe our training is good enough. So I would I would submit as counter arguments the following like um, I'm pretty sure we're dominating paper submissions paper acceptance in these days At the conference level you would also have to acknowledge that over the last thing is we have seen European Germans whatever Danish Chinese um in In all the top journals From that never happened to this is one guy that one time did a god his p you know MISQ papers to Every issue is full of them like they're really pretty there. So if it's a question of rigor Maybe your training is better, but it's not that I was just lacking right so it maybe you are more rigorous But I don't like we're no longer below the bar anymore right maybe you're overdoing this But I'm pretty sure we got the hygiene factor on the coach. All right, we're having two different discussions record I said on average All right, uh, we're going to have more rigorous training in the US I didn't say that there isn't some wonderful programs in the rest of the world And that there aren't great professors doing a wonderful job training their students well outside. I didn't say that of course It's there and it's growing Absolutely I think if you would look to Germany 20 years ago and you look at Germany now it's like night and day the the rigor and the the serious and and seriousness of the research and you know I think it was a lot of tools stuff back in the day from what I recall you know people were making There was there was a particular way to do German research. It was design science It was making tools now German research is doing everything that anyone's doing and they're doing it at a very high level Some people I think there's still a huge number of people in Germany that aren't doing it that way. They're still doing consulting projects they're still doing Machines through which they just crank out PhD students and those PhD students still are submitting their lit reviews to the conferences They're still so the average is such that You know, you're you're gonna have I'm not sure. I mean like because you're equating your average You're talking about the top 20 maybe the top 50 of research intent is business schools in America and you're neglecting the other 150 that out there not doing any research whatsoever. So every Okay, Fair enough I I will say this I think Europe if you just let's just focus on Europe for while China has obviously done the same thing China has done an amazing trajectory of learning research skills Stealing up and you know frankly in many areas looking beyond us just surpassing everybody else Right, so when we're like 10 15 20 years ago say in China, but also in Europe We flew in the American professors and paid the money to do some doctoral training when we realized our doctoral training isn't very good enough Now I remember because I left literally the continent to get better training somewhere else But I know at that point that those who could afford it and those that at that time had the networks to the US which not everybody did Um, they literally flew in the Michael Myers in the Woody Hirsha I know that Rudy Hirsha was did when the Heinz Klein they did like Germany tours and you know There's still people doing these types of tours and they go around and they you know Did do some training they take over supervision? Et cetera what all of that what is doing is not a transfer not a transfer so you know Europe has learned and it learned rigor it learned methods I would say it is still probably a little bit behind in theoretical work and sort of like the broad Reading type of part of a PhD. It's learning that too And it's doing the more interesting projects. So it has sort of advanced its capability Have you guys done the same or have you just stayed at the level where you are thinking that you better than? No, I would say so this is Germany's big advantage is that you have all these relationships with industry And you can get data from industry that's harder to get in the US in the US We don't have a culture of organizations Working with universities, right? With business schools in the same way now that we still work with with some of these organizations, but it's not as So that's the one thing the other thing we see in the US is we are moving away from theory right the last decade or so Has econometrics for example is taken over IS And econometrics yes you read a little but it's somewhat a theoretical in that you know these these other people found this cause and here's my cause that I'm extending and you know you use so I think yeah On the one hand we've gotten more rigorous in some areas we've probably lost Some of our focus on theory in the cumulative tradition at least in IS But I will still tell you this I think our PhD students are really well trained you look at so you mentioned how Other countries are ramping up and everything go look at Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the hotbeds right now a bias Oh, yeah, that's been full a while now right and it's been for a while a lot of the folks who Who in first of all they have folks going out to Elena Karahana and Arun Rao when I think they still go out there every year So there are the kind of people going out there and talking to the folks in Hong Kong, but They also hired a bunch of people from US schools and put them in and paid them you know US salaries and over the course of more than a decade and that kind of ramped it up So yes, I understand what you're saying I think that there you can get a great education in China and Hong Kong you can get a great education in Germany and you can still get a great education in the US The US doesn't have a corner on it anymore But I'm going to stand by my argument that on average you get a paper submitted from say US PhD program Because we don't have that many because they're all research focused It's going to be a more solid paper on an average than The rest of the world because the rest of the world has a wider range of variants right they have really crappy PhD programs They're offering it to really great ones and everything in the middle. So you're going to get more noise Yeah, okay, I would buy that I was also thinking that yeah that is probably also true if it's if we're talking about a particular way of looking at a paper Say how methodologically rigorous it is or how theoretically sound but you know Not even that it's my particular appetite for research, but there are other types of research a very apply very engaged You know very useful very relevant maybe at the expense of rigor or theory You know so there they're there are the ways of doing research that may be more prominent in other in other parts of the world You know we call that we call that consulting Right if it's if there's no theory and it's not rigorous. That's called a consulting project you you got it right Right? Unless it's a technical project, but then if it's a technical project and you're moving the technology, then that's research. If you're doing something different than anybody else has ever done, if you're just taking something someone has done and applying it to a context, that's not research, that's applying a tool, that's consulting. So I think a lot of what we see in management, in IS generally, is that it's consulting projects. And you're not paying attention. When you say it's not theory, that means you're not paying attention to cumulative tradition. You're not abstracting concepts and you're not relating your concepts to the existing tradition. And if you're saying it's not rigorous, well then what exactly is it? If it's not theory and it's not rigorous, it's not research. Fair enough. Yep. But aside from the fact that maybe there's a bit of an edge and there's still a bit of distance or some sort of whatever. There's a different level of quality on average between place A and place B. In general, isn't it a good development that you've seen that other parts of the world have caught up with research training, with research skills, with capabilities, and that you can get pretty, like you can see very good research from China, from Europe, not only just from the US. It didn't matter in a world where everyone loved everyone. But in general, it's obviously a good thing that by large on average around the globe, the skills have gone up. I would certainly say this about IS. The quality of the research in IS on average, broadly speaking, is a lot better than what it used to be. And we see this, right? We have higher requirements for our papers. They are more interesting. They also, by the way, more relevant and important, the work that is being done now. So literally everyone is getting better. That's a good sign. Like if it weren't, that would be a very dangerous sign because then we would sort of, you know, research our way out of existence. Yeah, so I agree. The field is cool. I look at the journal articles. We're doing really cool stuff across the journals, not just in the IS, IRON and ISQ, but if you go look at all the other, I mean, we're doing cool stuff as a field. And a big chunk of that, if not the majority, is coming from outside of the US. Sometimes it's US trained people outside of the US, but more increasingly it's not. It's people who are trained outside of the US, you know, publishing. So yeah, I think so we're becoming global. And we see with ISIS, they're moving, you know, two out of every three ISIS conferences are outside of the US. There's going to be South Africa. I think we're doing Orlando next year and then South Africa. That's going to be another one that's, so what do you think of that? Like when we talk about the world of research, South Africa, I've never been there, Cape Town. That seems kind of cool. And I like the idea of going for vacation to South Africa and then maybe do a little conference on the side. I like that. I know my wife might want to go with me. So I might be the week before or the week after. We might do a little vacationing down in Cape Town. I mean, that's the way, like I personally think that's how we should treat conferences if they're nice locations like you know, extend and take your partner and holiday around. I mean, that makes most sense also even for the money that you spend in the time that it takes to get there. Maze will stay a little bit longer, right? I mean, make perfect sense, I think. Yeah. So, so that's Cape Town. But then, so if you think about it just from a tourist standpoint, sure. It's a long flight. It's not particularly convenient, but it's, I think at least to me anyway, it's a desirable tourist location. Is that how we should be planning our conferences? Yeah, I know. So, conference says be like easy to get to. First of all, I mean, shouldn't they be, think of all the airlines and the fuel that's spent and shouldn't we go somewhere that's like a central hub that can take a bunch of people and, you know, the Atlanta's of the world. Atlanta has direct flights everywhere. It's got a bunch of hotels. It makes really easy conferences. It might not be the coolest, you know, it's not a great vacation spot like Cape Town, I suppose. It's a New York City, but it's really convenient. Maybe in Europe, it would be Frankfurt, right? The Frankfurt Airport just really easy access. You don't want to have a conference in Frankfurt though. It's like the Atlantic. But that's what I'm saying. Yeah, but don't try to go to. Yeah. Yeah, they don't want to go to the destination. They want to go have a conference at a convenient place. Shouldn't we be focusing on the scholarship, go into convenient places and instead of this vacation? Well, first of all, I don't think that the scholarship is tied to a location, right? So I don't think there's better scholarship in Atlanta than there's in Frankfurt or South Africa. Personally, I have actually always disliked the fact that AOM was always in the US. So I do like that model that we have in IS a lot better. It's a more modern take, of course, that we go around the world also because it does allow me, which I think is a big perk of this profession. I get to travel a lot. I don't know many people that have traveled as much as I have in my life, in my networks and stuff. I've been to almost everyone. I haven't been to South Africa, but boy, give me the opportunity to go to South Africa and call it work. That's pretty amazing. And look at Higgs. I mean, Hawaii is not an accessible place. It's also not a cheap place. It's difficult to get to, et cetera. And it's enormously successful and popular and it's a good conference, right? So I don't have a problem with South Africa. And in fact, that's why I mean, you should actually treat it like a tourist destination, stay a couple of days longer, take your part and take your friends, go high. Like whatever, right? See the world. I mean, it makes no sense to fly 20 hours into South Africa, go into the conference hotel, never leave the convention center and go back to the airport. I don't know what I'm saying. I mean, if you do, amses put to Rico, I have not seen put to Rico. I mean, I stayed there three days, but really I was in a resort like a little something. And that's exactly the same everywhere on the planet, right? So was I in Puerto Rico? Not really. But I could have. And I probably should have. So that's one argument. What I don't like is that the associations also pick their conference locations with the view of increasing membership. So they go to places where they hope they can find a couple of new members that pay more money, that stop paying money, right? I don't like that because that's a commercial move. And that is a little bit where like I don't see the academic benefit of going to a place like, I'm sorry, say, but why are we going to the Philippines? It's difficult to get to this. Actually, no one like, you know what I mean? Like I don't think we've ever been to the Philippines, but you know, it's places like this where they think that maybe there will be members that are not part of the association yet, but might be in the future. So we're sort of hunting for new members. If it looks too much like that, is that the argument per South Africa? Because it does get me. I don't think it's South Africa. I think South Africa, I say, it's a, if you could think that region two is not just Europe, it's Europe and Africa. And what is it like one of the biggest hubs in Africa would be South Africa? So I think that's the argument there. But I think that some places we've been to in region three when the IS conference was there were based on this could be an interesting growing population of IS, scholars, AI as members in the future. I mean, we've been to Thailand. Do you know a single Thai IS person? No. Exactly. Right? Same way. Well, Portugal. Portugal's the same thing to be honest. And there aren't that many IS folks. There are a few, but it is one of those things. So you're making a point that what are the criteria that we pick things? And I'm not sure I buy the vacation. I think we should go on vacations on our own. Yes, it's super convenient to go on vacation and also kill a conference requirement at same time. And it's better to go to a desirable location than a non-desirable location. But part of me thinks that it's better to have conferences at convenient places and it should be about the conference. And most of the time these vacation spots, I don't go. I'll probably go to South Africa, but most of the time if it's a vacation spot where it's not, I only like the US and then I'll go to Europe because it's kind of convenient. There are some nice direct flights. But the rest of the world, yeah, every once in a while I'll go. And the whole vacation thing and taking those long flights, it's not appealing to me. As you said, we've been around the world a bunch of times. I'm not that excited always with these destinations. So I'm not sure I'm, I think, the whole tourist thing is the appropriate thing. I also, if there are no IS researchers there or a very small community of IS researchers there, why are we doing it when clearly Copenhagen? First of all, we have a bunch of researchers there, but then it's also crazy convenient to all of Europe. It's convenient enough to the US. I don't know. So I'm always torn. I always think that I also think that the, as we are more inclusive, and this is probably going to be a controversial statement, but as we're more inclusive, we want to grow IS scholarship. We want to make sure Africa comes online. And there are some great African researchers, but historically the continent has not produced a ton of IS research. So we want to be inclusive. We want to kind of welcome the continent into our field. And I think that's a noble, wonderful cause. I also think that there isn't a whole lot of IS training going on in Africa. So the submissions you get, the things that the opportunities to participate are not going to be as strong. So here we are, we're trying to be inclusive of the continent, but in doing so we're going to be less exclusive in the sense that the papers are going to be available in short papers. Half our papers are the short papers that aren't even done research anymore. I get that, but you would have to say that historically speaking, if you look at what happened over the last 20 years since ISIS and AI. brought in from a US North American centric to becoming a global organization. They did the same thing with Europe, with China, and it did pay off eventually. Obviously, the submissions from Europe 20 years ago when you and I all didn't have to have seen this, they were the same. Like there were shitty little short papers and they weren't good and there weren't that many people and it's the training and they weren't the same level, but that's how you build it up. Right? So this model has worked in the past. So now, extending it to what Africa, I think South America is a focus as well and maybe Middle East, Southeast Asia, like Thailand where we have been, etc. Is a model because they're doing this because they've seen it work in the past. And you just gotta give it some time. And we need to start with the conferences because that is the los, what do you want to tell them? Right, some of my skew pay? That no. Right? So if I look at Germans, you know, when I started, I was one of the first ever to have an MISQ article. Now, running, everyone has them, right? Somebody takes some time. It takes some time. No, but I always thought that that Ampsis, Passes, some of these others were for the kind of ramping things up in global inclusion. Sure. I always kind of thought Isis was the exclusive one. It was the one that hard to get into. That's a good counter-argument. We can debate that point. I see that point. Yeah. It's the doctoral consortium that's hard to get into. Right? We can get into it. The papers are hard to get into. There was this, all right, we had this flagship, this hard to get into. That's true. Academic conference. And then we had other conferences that were a bit more inclusive. And you can make the argument because you're right. And I think that was the point of the regional conferences back in the day. And I'm not quite sure, but I'm thinking their participation rate is declining in Isis is booming, right? I think Ampsis and Paxis for a while have been struggling to get participants in some mission numbers. That because everyone wants to go to Isis now. Isn't that true? And I'll tell you what, I'm hungry for a hard to get into a conference in the sense because right now I'm the program chair for Isis right now, Portia Gould, right? We have 25 and one of the program chairs. I'm actually Amin and Andrew are doing it with me and frankly they're doing all the work as you know. Not really. But you know, I look at all the short papers and it bums me out a little bit. Now we're going to get half the short papers will get in half the regular or not half, but 20 percent or whatever. The final acceptance rate is going to be. But the same number of short papers are going to get in roughly as full papers. Why are we doing that? And it was just one of these things we inherited. Why are we accepting short papers in Isis? Isis is supposed to be a hard to get into a conference. You're supposed to do a presentation. The presentations are supposed to be good. And now we have a bunch of short papers. I want to increase the rigor. I'd love to kill. Now that I've done it and I have no more power, but I've looked at it. I want to kill short papers entirely. Now I know we have trio submissions and other things like that that are there to bring in inclusive, right? If you don't get in, you do a trio and then you do that. So yeah, I don't know. I think we have in the name of inclusivity, killed our exclusivity and now I'm hungry for something rigorous. I want to go look at where every paper is awesome. And Isis is not that anymore. And I think it was. No, it's not that. But maybe it doesn't need to be. Yeah, it was that like that. It absolutely was. And as you said, as you broaden and increase participation, necessarily that exclusivity or the quality goes down. Like to the point that I, if I do good work, I don't know what's up meeting that twice. It feels to me like a wasted thing. Like why would I do that? I don't get good feedback. Like it's no point. I'm just going to go straight to general, right? So I think also thinking I said this before, I think the same argument can make it our journals. We've brought in the list of journals, the quality of the journals has gone up, et cetera. I think we should up the requirements. I think we should become a little bit more exclusive. Why? Because I think we can. Right? If you tip the balance towards broader participation and get more people to come to Isis or the same equivalent, get an MSQ paper. Now that we've ticked that box, okay. Now it's time, I think, to tilt the balance back into more exclusivity because we are getting you know at the conference, at the journal, we're getting more submissions anyway. What do you want to do? Like that to me says like we need to up the requirements. Maybe that means getting rid of short papers. Maybe that means going to an AOM model where like where we don't even pretend this stupid, why do we write a response to reviewers to our conference submissions? It's not like there's a review or looking at them. I always thought that it's a weird thing. I know I think we did this because we wanted to show this is a very rigorous quality assurance process. Sure. Except that we're writing responses like thousands and tens of thousands of pages of responses to reviews that no one is reading. Like if at all I know this to track just flying over them frankly to check whether there has been a response because we get like a day or two to look at a hundred response before we have to say this paper is now accepted in the conference. We may as well get rid of the shenanigan and just like here's faith back, here's the PDF on the bloody web page, come to the conference or you know and maybe not because we're making it tougher. Well academy management has a cool thing. They accept just under 50% for presentation but of those 10% are accepted in the proceedings. So that means there's a 5% acceptance rate into the proceedings at academy management. So if you look at academy management proceedings those are good papers and at the same time they're inclusive enough to let a lot of people come and present. So I think academy management has an interesting formula. I like that. I liked ISIS back in the day when it was hard to get in and your paper had to be good. Now I don't think it is anymore and it's bumming me out and I think this short paper thing, I realize why we did it or I think I realize why we did it is for the same thing. It's an inclusive idea but I think by doing that we're sticking these short papers all over the place and there I think there's actually a really other reasons it's not even the inclusive argument. I think the reason was that we wanted to get people to write papers of the content without undermining their chances of getting their work published in the journal because for a while it's not an issue anymore I think but for a while we had the issue that people wrote 20 pages ISIS papers and then submitted like slightly or more less extended and revised versions of that paper to journal and the journals did come back and said like this is too similar. That was a thing if you remember 10, 15 years ago that this was an issue how to what extent is your conference paper different from your journal paper. Now I don't think it is anymore but I think that was one of the reasons why they started with the short papers and like just give us an A-page because no frankly no journal can ever now say like this is too close to you know your paper submission. The journal paper submission should be eight pages too we got to shorten those things. Like fully agree on this one. Yeah. Okay let's do spell them it. So first of all like I read like I'll find it up and put it this show. It's a read an article the other day. The argument of the article is basically that AOM has become this huge fair where it's a lot of stardom and you know sort of like people run around with the follow us the academic content is next to nothing you know except for a couple of more less interesting pdw's but even then we even with those we get flooded which we do you know and 15,000 people running around is not an intellectual place of debate. Yeah. I want to be challenged intellectually. I want to learn stuff. I don't necessarily want the same panelist five same five panelists this session then in the next session I'm really the same five panelists and I remember the AOM last year I mean I swear to God I set the same thing at three different panels and in the space of 20 minutes you know there's this sort of like what am I what is this right. So there is some truth to this so and he has the question so we have we already have AIS we also have informs with each super system like partially overlaps but it also in parts doesn't overlap. Now we have cyst and we have which wise whatever you know like the so I worry that this fact how can this fragmentation be good like what I always liked about OEM is that this is one organization of all management scholarship and there's subdivisions necessarily very large but imagine you part of seven of an association tell that I was that going to be good thing ACM and I triple the I enormous right I mean like I I don't think it's a good idea if we have four different types of associations for different kinds of IS scholars based on whatever then they tend to like for themselves no yeah I don't know I so I think what you're saying with cyst and what I've seen with workshops is that fragmentation is happening we see it with it is and isis where people won't even go to isis they'll just go to wits or isis right so that fragmentation is happening and I think the reason the fragmentation is or one reason the fragmentation is happening is because people who really focus and people who maybe do really strong work in their area are getting less value out of the general purpose conference and want to get like even with me when I had that idea of I want to see discourse I wanted to see debate I had a construct in my head then it wasn't cyst right cyst is a particular thing that's not what I want to see so I think what's happening is those of us who have a thing that we want to see if we're not seeing it in these big general purpose conferences like a or I say now with AMI always do because the CTO community to me is smaller but even there I think we have to start getting more exclusive we can also growing enormously and it's not small anymore Yeah, we can't have all the PDWs that we have because there's repetition they have to like Bring those down so there are fewer better PDWs agree Which they are great you and I've talked about the PDWs are the best thing about AOM There's just so many of them at this point And then the paper sessions they keep small, you know They keep just a couple days of paper sessions, but yeah, I don't know I think Making sure that we Maintain the exclusivity in the big general purpose conferences to me would kind of keep me engaged I guess and also I mean like one more argument for that inclusivity because inclusivity is not just a people feel good and equity Argument it's also very important access argument because like you and I We have big networks if I want to have intellectual stimulation. I call the engine, you know you for that matter Or you know, I could call people. I don't need a conference to get stimulation that's not the same for everybody else And when we started I don't know about you you're a little bit different I certainly didn't have that so the conference were important to get actually go and meet and network and get some stimulation Even if at some stage you're surpassed that I still think that going to like why I love University Seminox Here's us so much is that I get to see research that otherwise I wouldn't see wouldn't listen wouldn't not read That's the big value like and that is incredibly stimulating because there's different ways of looking at the world and different ways of doing research You know always find a nugget of something. Oh, that's a clever idea. That's a clever approach That's a funny little variable that you thought of you know all of that is always I think stimulating so And you know maybe I see is is it's very hard I find it very hard to find these stimulating nuggets because there's too much noise around it Sure, I personally I don't need that anymore because I can find the stimulation somewhere else That may not be the same for everybody else other people need that stimulation other people need to get introduced into that community first And we still need this conference one imagine we didn't have that conference it'd be horrible We need to find together and talk about stuff I wonder if I'm just being snobby because if during my PhD when I would go to these conferences and I would sit in the paper session And I would listen I would learn a lot and you would learn and I learned yeah And maybe it's just because I'm old. I don't find myself learning anything that half the time when I go to see I think we also approaching this wrong Like we would go and I scan Frankly I scan the program and I look for names and like oh This person is here they usually do interesting. Let's go and look at that recent like their new paper That's a stupid idea. I should what I should be doing is he is a topic He is a title and he is a person's name that I've never heard of I should probably go to that one right like get stimulated from Outside of my comfort zone. Of course. I don't do that But that's probably and then we probably don't sit here being snobby's like oh, there's nothing nice is for me I think that says more about us than for than about ice except that I sat in a bunch of ice as paper sessions this last year And I was not impressed with the the level of Quality and all the papers some of course were great But many I was sitting there thinking how did this get into ISIS? But that we say the same thing about journals - we always look at a journal issues like how did this paper get in there? How you know this paper is boring this paper is not so good and I'm pretty sure that other people say the same about our work as well So I think that's just an inherent quality of the research process because that's how the system is designed We don't want to we don't want to miss out this one Nobel Prize winning ideas and we do the safety expense of allowing a lot of She stuff that has no place of it's not furthering our knowledge We accept that too because if we are to is restrictive We might just you know kill the one idea that actually changes the world. So I think that's just part of the system Alright so RECKER what did we decide today? You're a snob I Guess I'm a snob this is awful. I don't think of myself as a snob But I guess in my in my desire to uphold I don't know high levels of quality and research I Know what it is I think I think it's that's things that are not quality I guess I know I think I think it's because you're in your position you're pressed for time like efficiency is Key and that also means like to where can you spend your time and then you look at a conference is like oh 90% of that will not be Stimulating et cetera that is not a good use of my time I much rather go to somewhere where I know that in 20 minutes I get some gold stimulation happening if you look at it from the official it's not an efficient venue like none of these conferences are Right, so maybe that's that says more about how your work life is at the moment than anything else So as I said I personally think the the the way that the AIS has been handling its conferences with this regional go-around the world Robin model and has lots of limitations, but it's also a pretty wonderful thing and I don't know many other associations that do that including a. O. M. and as you said like a. O. M. in Copenhagen was great and I my entirety I said to everyone. I don't care if you have a paper. It's two hours by trade north. We're all going and For a lot of them that was the first conference experience and it was very meaningful and their network they engaged they met Now co-authors they literally did and they learned and isn't that a good thing right and I'm pretty sure it was good for a. O. M. as well because I'm pretty sure that they got new members from it So you know, it's not a lot of people losing out the people that lose out are only the top 0 5% at the top They're losing some of the competitive advantage, but it doesn't make their research worse It just helps everybody else except them. That's not a bad thing either. I mean that's a cost that you could be willing to bear No, yeah sure as long as you still get them going to the conference Give them reasons to go to the conference which is for now they still are right young gin still goes to a. O. M. So as long as we get young gin going a. O. M. we're in good shape Happy to have them I'm not going to a. O. M. you're not going a. O. We just need young gin we don't need you and we need I did Marshall Van Alstein did present in this I was in this fake news thing that Natalia and some other people put on and I loved his presentation and You know and he was at ISIS so as long as Marshall keeps going ISIS and Young gin keeps going a. O. M. I think I'll still keep going but I Want to increase rigor I want to increase exclusive. I'm with you on this I When I say it out loud. This is the problem with us not preparing for our podcast. I say it out loud I think I sound like a total snob. No, but I'm with you with you as well Like I think we've had a very good strategy of of broadening and enriching and blind being more inclusive I feel I do think it's time to boost rigor Expectations across the board like I said I've said this a couple of times. I really do be think so it's it's it's it's not big because of the way that we Handle the conference. I think it's because of the number of submissions, etc and so forth. I do think we can up our requirements And I think we should like we've all got to this level. We shouldn't stop here We should make it tougher again. That's that's just how it goes like we slowly but surely getting to different levels Individually and as a field and as a journal and as a conference and everything so that's exactly what we should be doing And I don't think it we we're not we're not like you remember we had run web or on He said we didn't have enough papers to publish in them. I've squaddly these times are long gone They they have a pipeline of two years of papers waiting to get published in print You know done in Schleichman said like did they have hundreds of papers waiting in the pipeline surely we can squeeze the filter I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think it makes me a snobby though to be honest and if so yeah, well deal with it Yep, all right Riker All right my friend I'm a snob you're a snob we old man. That's our privilege All right my friend good talking to you. Hey talk to you