AIS, LEO and the Pursuit of Good Work

This paper is the text of a talk at the 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Francisco, California, on 8 August 2009, based on the concept of the “Last Lecture” by recipients of the Association for Information Systems LEO Award

Volunteering and Social Activism: Pathways for Participation in Human Development

This discussion paper explores the following questions, drawing on the above-mentioned background study: How is volunteering an d social activism understood?; How do volunteering and social activism foster people's participation?; What is the relationship between participation and development?; What is required to widen and sustain participation

The Effects of the Quantification of Faculty Productivity: Perspectives from the Design Science Research Community

In recent years, efforts to assess faculty research productivity have focused more on the measurable quantification of academic outcomes. For benchmarking academic performance, researchers have developed different ranking and rating lists that define so-called high-quality research. While many scholars in IS consider lists such as the Senior Scholar’s basket (SSB) to provide good guidance, others who belong to less-mainstream groups in the IS discipline could perceive these lists as constraining. Thus, we analyzed the perceived impact of the SSB on information systems (IS) academics working in design science research (DSR) and, in particular, how it has affected their research behavior. We found the DSR community felt a strong normative influence from the SSB. We conducted a content analysis of the SSB and found evidence that some of its journals have come to accept DSR more. We note the emergence of papers in the SSB that outline the role of theory in DSR and describe DSR methodologies, which indicates that the DSR community has rallied to describe what to expect from a DSR manuscript to the broader IS community and to guide the DSR community on how to organize papers for publication in the SSB

Light Streak Photometry and Streaktools

Context. The accuracy of photometric calibration has gradually become a limiting factor in various fields of astronomy, limiting the scientific output of a host of research. Calibration using artificial light sources in low earth orbit remains largely unexplored. Aims. We aim to demonstrate that photometric calibration using light sources in low earth orbit is a viable and competitive alternative/complement to current calibration techniques, and explore the associated ideas and basic theory. Methods. We present the publicly-available Python code Streaktools as a means to simulate and perform photometric calibration using real and simulated light streaks. We use Streaktools to perform `pill' aperture photometry on 131 simulated streaks, and MCMC-based PSF model-fitting photometry on 425 simulated streaks in an attempt to recover the magnitude zeropoint of a real exposure of the DECam instrument on the Blanco 4m telescope. Results. We show that calibration using pill photometry is too inaccurate to be useful, but that PSF photometry is able to produce unbiased and accurate ($1\sigma$ error = 3.4mmag) estimates of the zeropoint of a real image in a realistic scenario, with a reasonable light source.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics, 13 November 202

The Cowl - v.8 - n.14 - Jan 29, 1943

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 8, Number 14 - Jan 29, 1943. 4 pages

The Critical Role of Historiography in Writing IS History

Insightful histories of an academic field can only be written when there is sufficient raw material to serve as “grist for the mill” for historians. This is the first task for those who are monumentally interested in preserving the origins of a field from the ravages of time is to collect artifacts—written, verbal, visual, and physical—that can later be used in historical inquiries. But the critical perspective to know what to collect and how much to collect is served by historiography, the science that elaborates on the variety of methods and procedures that historians use. A simple but incomplete set of these variations include: political history, intellectual history, cultural history, and social history. Each of these viewpoints brings with it a different set of assumptions about what is important and, although there is considerable overlap among them, each brings a different set of requirements for artifactual evidence. Historiography should not be overlooked when the field of information systems begins an all-out effort to collect data about the history of the field

Spartan Daily, May 13, 1954

Volume 42, Issue 139https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/12033/thumbnail.jp

A Field-Based View on Gender in the Information Systems Discipline: Preliminary Evidence and an Agenda for Change

Gender disparities are an often-cited concern of the information technology (IT) workforce in general, and technology-focused fields, such as information systems, in particular. These worries have been underscored by evidence from practice, which indicates low rates of participation by women in the IT workforce, and have been exacerbated by suggestions that women lack an aptitude for technical work. Motivated by events in practice, and recent events in our own discipline, this editorial considers how gender shapes the careers of women and men in the information systems academe in relation to their employing institutions and to the Association for Information Systems (AIS). Based on a survey of 279 AIS members, we offer insights into whether women and men feel equitably treated in terms of support, job satisfaction, opportunities for career advancement, quality of mentoring, and sexual harassment in their AIS interactions and at their employing universities. We find that women and men report different experiences in the workplace, in relation to the professional association, and in regard to their opportunities for career advancement. Given these differences, we offer an agenda for change within the AIS and a call to action aiming for gender equity within the information systems community