2009 ACM SIGMIS CPR Conference

Although Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre - and the University of Limerick’s Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) department do not specialize in the area of computer personnel research, Lero’s industry liaison, Jack Downey, carried out his PhD in the area under the supervision of Norah Power from CSIS. Having attended the conference since 2005, Jack was invited to host the conference in 2009 and fortunately, Norah was willing to take on the organization of the event.

After nearly a year’s worth of effort, the conference began in the Lero building on Thursday, May 28^th. The CPR conference has adopted a policy of having co-chairs for each role, so Norah was joined by Kate Kaiser from Marquette University as organization co-chair; Jack was fortunate to work with Damien Joseph from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in the programme chair role, while the doctoral consortium was arranged by Deb Armstrong of Florida State University and Cindy Riemenschneider of Baylor University in Texas. The consortium was the first event.

The three doctoral students presenting were Paddy Buckley from the Kemmy Business School in the University of Limerick; Poornima Krishnan, originally from India, but studying in Chicago and Mathieu Cheveau from France, who is spending a year in Georgia State University. Although the organizers were disappointed with the number of doctoral students, the students really benefited from the feedback given by the faculty. Poornima’s work relates tangentially to the global software development research being done in Lero and she was delighted to be introduced to Lero's Sadhana Deshpande, a fellow doctoral student, also from India. Paddy’s work makes use of the DeLone and McLean method and Paddy was pleased to be introduced to Ephraim McLean the following day.

On Friday, the sun shone and the conference began in earnest. From now on, the conference would be located in the Kemmy Business School. Kate Kaiser opened proceedings by introducing the keynote speaker, John O’Sullivan from Fidelity Investments. He explained the company’s induction programme for new graduates. This presentation inspired a great deal of questions from the academic faculty and got the conference off to a good start.

After the opening speaker, the conference split into two parallel tracks and, for the next day and a half, CPR researchers explored such subjects as the role of IT in recruitment and professional development, the IT profession as a career choice, IT in pedagogy, retaining IT professionals, IT skills development, increasing IT enrolments, the leading edge of CPR research, IT and work processes and the nature of IT work.

Among the paper presentations, there were two panel discussions. The first was chaired by Eileen Truath from Penn State University and, backed up by Kate Kaiser, Regina Connelly from DCU and Leigh Ellen Potter from Griffith University in Australia, they discussed how regions create competitiveness. The second panel was held on the second day and was chaired by Cathy Biese from Salisbury University. Her panel comprised Fred Niederman of St Louis University, Joe Robbins of CareerWise Recruitment in Shannon and Kate Kaiser again.

During the final lunch of the conference, Kate presented Klodwig Mgaya from Tanzania with the best paper award for his work entitled "Examining Career Orientations of Information Systems Personnel in an Emerging Economy Context". This was a very interesting study of IS professionals in Botswana.

Everything went smoothly throughout the three days and the standard joke was that we had blown the budget on the sunshine. While this made all the difference in terms of moving people between buildings for meals, it also ensured that those delegates who had brought their families with them, enjoyed a nice vacation in Ireland as well as the conference.

Next year’s conference will be held in Vancouver, Canada.

Cindy Riemenschneider and Deb Armstrong, doctoral consortium chairs.

Kate Kaiser and Norah Power (conference co-chairs) with keynote speaker, John O'Sullivan of Fidelity Investments.

Cathy Biese, Fred Niederman, Joe Robbins and Kate Kaiser in the second panel discussion.

Kate Kaiser presenting Klodwig Mgaya with the best paper award.

Click here for more information http://www.sigmis.org/CPR_2009_Home_Page.html