EMCIS2007: Keynotes

Professor David Avison

BA, MSc, PhD, FBCS

 

Keynote Lecture: Reflections on the Discipline of Information Systems: Teaching, Research and Practice

 

David Avison is Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at ESSEC Business School, Paris, France after being Professor at the School of Management at Southampton University for nine years. He has also held posts at Brunel, Aston and Southampton Universities in England, University Technology Sydney and University of New South Wales in Australia, and elsewhere. He is joint editor of Blackwell Science's Information Systems Journal now in its seventeenth volume and recently rated as a 'core' international journal and the leading European journal in information systems. So far, twenty-five books are to his credit including the fourth edition of the well-used text on Information Systems Development (jointly authored with Guy Fitzgerald). He has published a large number of research papers in learned journals, edited texts and conference papers.

Professor Avison was Chair of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) 8.2 group on the impact of IS/IT on organisations and society and is now vice chair of IFIP technical committee 8 . He was past President of the UK Academy for Information Systems and also chair of the UK Heads and Professors of IS and is presently member of the IS Senior Scholars Forum. He was joint programme chair of the International Conference in Information Systems in Las Vegas (previously also research programme stream chair at ICIS Atlanta), joint programme chair of IFIP TC8 conference at Santiago Chile, programme chair of the IFIPWG8.2 conference in Amsterdam, panels chair for the European Conference in Information Systems at Copenhagen and publicity chair for the entity-relationship conference in Paris and chair of several other UK and European conferences. He also acts as consultant and has most recently worked with a leading manufacturer developing their IT/IS strategy.

He researches in the area of information systems development and more generally on information systems in their natural organizational setting, in particular using action research, though he has also used a number of other qualitative research approaches.

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Dr Josep Maria Vilà-Solanes

PhD

 

Keynote Lecture: Working in the Knowledge Age. Information Technology & Best Practices

 

He studied at the School of Industrial Engineers at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, where he was awarded his PhD. He later gained the qualification of IT Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

 

He is currently General Manager of INDRA, Deputy Chairman of the Association of Electronics, Information Technologies and Telecommunications Companies (AETIC), Chairman of the Information Tecnologies Fundation, Chairman of the Digital Consortium and Chairman of the 22@Network Association.

 

In his professional life, he has held posts in a number of companies, such as Chief Executive Officer of ERITEL, General Manager of the Barcelona Olympics and Branch Manager of UNISYS.

 

Complementary to this, between 1969 and 1986, he taught as a university lecturer of “Operational Research and Production Management” and "Industrial Innovation and Improvement” at the Industrial Engineers and of Computer Sciences at the School Computing of Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

He has been editor of DATAMATION (Spanish edition) and furthermore, he has been lecturer in several conferences on organization and technology subjects in America as well as Europe.