EDSIG Newsletter (Volume 9, No. 2)

NEWSLETTER
The AITP's Special Interest Group for Education

Volume 9, No. 2 --- October 1999
Stuart A. Varden, Editor

Chicago Hosts ISECON'99

ISECON'99, to be held at the Holiday Inn O'Hare International in Rosemont, Illinois from October 14-17, will offer six workshops, nearly fifty papers, and several panels on a wide range of topics on IS curricula, teaching methods, and supporting infrastructure. Also featured are four distinguished speakers: Kevin W. Bowyer of the University of South Florida, Joel R. Hodes of Ernst & Young, Maryfran Johnson of Computerworld, and C. Dianne Martin of George Washington University who is currently on loan to the NSF.

Congratulations go to David Feinstein and his conference team for once again putting together a wonderful conference. The conference will take place in conjunction with the annual AITP Conference and some joint activities are scheduled.

Join Us at the Open EDSIG Board Meeting at ISECON

The annual open EDSIG Board meeting is scheduled for October 16, 1999 in Chicago at this year's ISECON. This year has been a very active one for the Board which has already met twice. The Board is seeking active membership participation. Agenda items for the business meeting will include:

The President's Message to the membership.

EDSIG Officer Reports.

The current status of JISE.

Discussion of a revised set of EDSIG ByLaws.

Plans for ISECON2000.

Nomination of candidates of Officers/Board members for 2000.

EDSIG welcomes those who are interested in assuming a leadership role as an EDSIG Officer or Board member. Nominations from the floor will be accepted at the Board meeting. Voting will take place later this fall, and the new Board will begin their duties on January 1, 2000.

EDSIG Initiates Affiliate
Membership Status

AITP and EDSIG have agreed to offer a new category of membership, known as "affiliate membership", which entitles members to receive the Journal of Information Systems Education (JISE) and other EDSIG services at a reduced fee. The affiliate membership status is priced at $65 per year.

The reasoning behind this new membership status is to encourage EDSIG membership by lightening the financial burden on faculty members who make up the vast majority of potential EDSIG members. The EDSIG Board believes that the new affiliate membership status will have a very positive long term impact on the future of EDSIG. ISECON'99 Conference Chair, David Feinstein, has confirmed that EDSIG membership will increase by about 80 as part of ISECON'99 registrations.

The EDSIG Board, however, has agreed that it is fitting that EDSIG Board members continue to be required to be active AITP/EDSIG members.

Board Meets in Philadelphia

The EDSIG Board met over the July 17-18 weekend in Philadelphia for a day-long work session and site review for ISECON2000.

Much of the discussion centered on updating the EDSIG Bylaws and clarifying the relationship among EDSIG, the Education Foundation and AITP. Each article of the Bylaws was reviewed in detail. The draft revision of the bylaws will be presented to the membership for discussion at the open EDSIG Business meeting in Chicago.

The Board also approved the selection of the Adam's Mark as the site for ISECON2000.

EDSIG Newsletter --- Page 2

ISECON2000 Set for Philadelphia

We invite you to join us at ISECON2000 in historic Philadelphia from Nov. 9-12, 2000. The theme of next year's ISECON is "Let Liberty Ring: Learning from the Past and Applying It to the Future of IS Education." The Adam's Mark Hotel Philadelphia has been selected for the conference. We have negotiated an attractive room rate of $114 and will arrange tourist activities to historic sites and shopping areas.

This will be the first ever ISECON in the northeast and is located ideally to accommodate the hundreds of colleges and universities in the region. Plans are underway to aggressively market the conference and we are anticipating a large turnout featuring several distinguished speakers.

The call for participation, including papers, panels and pre-conference workshops, will be made available shortly and will be summarized in a subsequent issue of this newsletter. Please email svarden@pace.edu for additional information.

Historically Speaking

This fall marks the 30th anniversary of the Internet, then known as the ARPANET, as an operational system. Two years earlier the first design paper on the ARPANET, entitled "Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication" was presented by Larry Roberts at the ACM Symposium on Operating Principles in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. But it wasn't until the fall of 1969 that the concept was put to the test when four computers at major research universities (UCLA, Stanford, University of California Santa Barbara, and University of Utah) were connected via AT&T links operating at the then dazzling data rate of 50kbps. The first packets were sent by Charley Kline at UCLA as he tried logging on. The first attempt resulted in the system crashing as the letter G of LOGIN was entered. It was not an auspicious beginning.

It should be pointed out that the four original systems were very heterogeneous, made up of a SDS SIGMA 7 (UCLA), SDS940/Genie (Stanford), IBM 360/75, OS/MVT (UCSB), and DEC PDP-10, Tenex (Utah). So, the notion of the Internet as an "open system" can be traced back to its very inception.

This all took place many years before TCP/IP, Unix, Ethernet, FTP, Archie, Gopher, Veronica & Jughead, and of course the Web. As of August 1999, it is estimated that there are over seven million Web sites and the number continues to grow at a breathtaking pace.

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