Information Research, Vol. 10 No. 3, April, 2005

IFIP TC8 Working Conference on Mobile Information Systems - 2005
Leeds, UK, December 5-6, 2005

Paper submission by May 30, 2005 (Extended final deadline)

Background

Mobility is perhaps the most important market and technological trend in information and communication technology. With the advent of new mobile infrastructures providing higher bandwidth and constant connection to the network from virtually everywhere, the way people use information resources for work and leisure is being radically transformed. The rapid developments in information technology, particularly communication and collaboration technologies, are substantially changing the landscape of organizational computing. Workers in any business area are becoming increasingly mobile. Workers in more and more areas will be required to act flexibly within the constraints of the business processes of the company (or companies) they are currently working for. At the same time they will often want to use the same information technology to support their private tasks.

In recent years, a new breed of information systems has appeared to address this emerging situation, referred to as mobile information systems. Specific applications are also being characterized as, among others, m-Commerce, m-Learning and m-Business.

Objective of the Working Conference

The objective of the working conference is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in planning, analysis, design, construction, modification, implementation, utilization, evaluation, and management of mobile information systems to meet, and exchange research ideas and results following up on MOBIS’04 held in Oslo September 2004. It also provides this group of researchers with an opportunity to present their research papers, and to take part in open discussions. Specifically, we would like to use the working conference to:

• Clarify differences and similarities between the development of mobile and more traditional information system.
• Investigate the organizational impact of mobile information systems.
• Investigate the 'e to m shift' , for example in m-Commerce relative to e-Commerce.
• Investigate mobile commerce applications combined with the advantages of mobile communications technologies, the drivers of which have been identified as ubiquity, reachability, security, convenience, localization, instant connectivity and personalization.
• Evaluate existing and newly developed approaches for analysis, design, implementation, and evolution of mobile information systems.
• Investigate technical issues and the constraints they impose on mobile information systems functionalities and design.
• Investigate interactive design issues.

The relevant topics for this working conference include (but are not limited to) the following aspects of mobile information systems and m-Commerce systems:

• The Mobile Enterprise.
• Mobile information systems applications in organizations.
• e-services in mobile information systems.
• Interdependencies of mobile information technologies and organizational structure, relationships and interaction.
• Public sector and public safety use and development of mobile technologies.
• Enterprise modeling and business process re-engineering supporting the introduction of mobile information systems.
• Analysis, design, construction, modification and implementation of computer-based mobile information systems for organizations.
• Requirement specification.
• Meta-modeling and method engineering.
• Multi-channel architecture and user-interface development.
• Data management for mobile applications.
• Location awareness and determination.
• Content personalization and tailoring based on context.
• New collaboration paradigms.
• Enabling Technologies for Mobile Commerce and mobile working.
• Mobile agents.
• Security, privacy, authorization, and billing.
• Evaluation and management of mobile information systems.
• Mobile commerce implications.
• Social and economic aspects of mobility.

A special track in the conference will be devoted to adaptivity in the mobile information systems area. Adaptive systems are able to modify their behaviour according to context changes or if failures of services occur. The track will focus on the following topics:

• Monitoring and identifying significant context changes.
• Modifying IS behaviour and processes at run time.
• Designing mobile information systems.
• Synchronization in information systems with detached mode operation.

Keynote presentation by Professor Jan Damsgaard, Copenhagen Business School

Important dates:

• Call for papers submission date: 30. May 2005.
• Notification: 1.August 2005.
• Camera-ready copies: 26. August 2005.
• Conference: 5-6 December 2005.

Submission guidelines:

Papers must be original, unpublished elsewhere and between 16 and 24 pages long double-spaced. Both paper manuscripts and panel proposals can be submitted through http://mobis2005.confmaster.net, alternatively send the paper directly to krogstie@idi.ntnu.no. If questions with the use of the conference management system, contact Prof. John Krogstie (krogstie@idi.ntnu.no).

The paper must contain the title and abstract, a list of keywords, the text and should not identify the author (s) in any manner. Contact details should be provided through the conference manager system. Authors willing to candidate their papers for the special track should indicate 'adaptive IS track' as a keyword in their submission Once accepted, final papers must be submitted in IFIP/Kluwer camera ready format. This is not necessary for the reviewing draft. Guidelines (templates) for formatting are available at http://www.wkap.com/ifip. More details including the final page limitation will be provided at a later stage.

Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit an extended and updated version of their work to a special issue in a Journal.

Panels are required to generate active discussion on key issues related to the conference theme. All panel proposals should include:

• A brief summary of the proposed topic.
• Names, affiliations and full addresses of all confirmed panel members.
• A brief description of each member's background relative to the topic of the panel.

Accepted papers as well as summaries of panels will be published in the Kluwer/Springer proceedings. One author of each paper must attend to present the paper at the conference. All participants will receive a copy of the final proceedings.

International Programme Committee

Conference co-chairs