COVER

International Federation on Information Processing Working Group 8.2 Conference

December 13-14, 2012

General Co-Chairs: Alan Hevner, University of South Florida, USAMichael Myers, University of Auckland, NZ

Program Co-Chairs:Anol Bhattacherjee, University of South Florida, USABrian Fitzgerald, University of Limerick, Ireland

Organizing Co-Chairs:Rosann Webb Collins, University of South Florida, USAJoni Jones, University of South Florida, USA

Program Committee Members:Richard Baskerville, Georgia State University, USATom Butler, University of Cork, IrelandKevin Crowston, Syracuse University, USAElizabeth Davidson, University of Hawaii, USAShirley Gregor, Australian National University, AustraliaNetta Iivari, University of Oulu, FinlandJames Jiang, Australian National University, AustraliaJahangir Karimi, University of Colorado at Denver, USAAnnette Mills, University Canterbury, NZAbhay Nath Mishra, Georgia State University, USAEric Monteiro, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NorwayBenjamin Müller, University of Mannheim, GermanyBriony Oates, University of Teesside, UKHelena Holmstrom Olsson, Malmö University, SwedenCarl-Magnus Olsson, Malmö University, SwedenBalaji Padmanabhan, University of South Florida, USAJohan Perols, University of San Diego, USAMatti Rossi, Aalto University, FinlandNancy Russo, Northern Illinois University, USAMaha Shaikh, University of Warwick, UKJaeki Song, Texas Tech University, USAArvind Tripathi, University of Auckland, NZYoungjin Yoo, Temple University, USA

Conference Committee

Conference ScheduleThursday, December 13

8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Registration Open

8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

Session 1: Contemporary Topics in Information Systems ResearchSession Chair: Satish Krishnan

“Customization of Product Software: Insight from an Extensive IS Literature Review” by Matthias Bertram, Mario Schaarschmidt, and Harald Von Kortzfleisch.

“Co-materialization: Digital Innovation Dynamics in the Offshore Petroleum Industry” by Thomas Osterlie.

“Amazon Mechanical Turk: A Research Tool for Organizations and Information Systems Scholars” by Kevin Crowston.

10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Coffee Break

10:30 a.m. – Noon

Session 2: Recent Trends in Interpretive Research MethodsSession Chair: Elena Lioliou

“Action Design Ethnographic Research: Vested Interests Networks and ICTs Networks in Service Delivery of Land Records in Bangladesh” by M. Shahanoor Alam, Laurence Brooks, and N.I. Khan.

“Grounded Analytic Research: Building Theory from a Body of Research” by Bjørn Furuholt and Maung Kyaw Sein.

“Using Photo-Diary Interviews to Study Cyborgian Identity Performance in Virtual Worlds” by Ulrike Schultze.

Noon - 12:15 p.m. Welcome by Moez Limayem, Dean, USF College of Business

12:15 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Lunch

1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.Keynote AddressSpeaker: Allen Lee

“Are We All Just Adding Epicycles?” 2:45 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Coffee Break

3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Session 3: Sociomateriality in Information Systems ResearchSession Chair: Shana Ponelis

“Living in a Sociomaterial World” by Eric Monteiro, Petter Almklov, and Vidar Hepsø.

“Digital Artifacts as Institutional Attractors: An Evolutionary Perspective on Change in Organizational Routines” by SungYong Um, Youngjin Yoo, Nicholas Berente, and Kalle Lyytinen.

“Mutability and Becoming: Materializing of Public Sector Adoption of Open Source Software” by Maha Shaikh.

6:00 p.m. Bus departs for Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo from Embassy Suites Hotel

6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.Conference Social Event and Dinner:

“Mingle with the Animals” Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo

9:30 p.m. Bus returns for conference hotels

Friday, December 14

8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Registration Open

8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

Session 4: New Themes in Positivist Information Systems ResearchSession Chair: Rui Huang

“Moderating Effect of Environmental Factors on eHealth Development and Health Outcomes: a Country Level Analysis” by Supunmali Ahangama and Danny Poo.

“Social Networks and Communication Media for Generating Creative Ideas” by Yi Wu and Klarissa Chang.

“Cultural Challenges in Information Systems Innovation: The Need for Differentiation Studies” by Carl Lawrence and Markku Oivo.

10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Coffee Break

10:30 a.m. – Noon

Session 5: Emerging Topics in Design Science ResearchSession Chair: Arvind Tripathi

“Resolving Name Conflicts for Mobile Apps in Twitter Posts” by Sangaralingam Kajanan, Ahmed Shafeeq Bin Mohd Shariff, Kaushik Dutta, and Anindya Datta.

“Using Adjective Features from User Reviews to Generate Higher Quality and Explainable Recommendations” by Xiaoying Xu, Anindya Datta, and Kaushik Dutta.

“Product Semantics in Design Science Research” by Jonas Sjostrom, Brian Donnellan, and Markus Helfert.

Noon - 1:30 p.m. Lunch

1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.Panel Discussion and Closing Session:Panelists: Alan Hevner and Michael Myers

“The Future of ICT Research”

2:45 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Coffee Break

2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. IFIP WG 8.2 Business Meeting

TBA Bus Departs for Orlando

University of South Florida College of BusinessMuma Auditorium, BSN 115

4202 East Fowler AveTampa, FL 33620, USA

business.usf.edu (813) 974-6748

Hyatt Place Busch GardensLa Quinta Inn & Suites USFWingate InnEmbassy Suites

Conference Venue

Fowler Ave.

*

Keynote Address

Conference Venue Keynote Address

Speaker: Allen Lee

“Are We All Just Adding Epicycles?”

Abstract:A lesson from the history of science is that information systems research is nothing new. Ptolemy’s science of the universe situated

the earth at its center and, with the help of the theoretical device of epicycles, reigned as accepted scientific dogma for fourteen centuries. Today, our science of information systems, with our own versions of “epicycles,” is simply instantiating Ptolemy’s science in a different setting. What was wrong with Ptolemy’s science and is also wrong for IS research? What was right with Ptolemy’s science and is also right for IS research? How is “science” appropriate or not appropriate to IS research in the first place? In other words, with regard to methods and approaches shaping the future of IS research, what should we be attending to so that we will not just be blindly adding epicycles? Speaker Bio:Allen S. Lee has been a full professor at Virginia Commonwealth University since 1998 and, in 2012, was named a Dean’s Scholar Professor. He has served as associate dean at both VCU and McGill University, as editor-in-chief of MIS Quarterly, as a founding senior editor of MIS Quarterly Executive, and as an editorial board member of journals such as Information Technology & People, European Journal of Information Systems, and Information Systems Journal. His publications have typically taken a “philosophy of science” perspective in examining research methodology and designing research methods for the study of information systems.

“The Future of ICT Research” Panelists: Alan Hevner and Michael D. Myers

In this closing panel, the conference general chairs will present their thoughts about the future of ICT research from their unique perspectives. They will reflect on the ideas presented during the conference (was progress made?) and propose avenues for future directions. Some of the questions to be raised include:

• Can we finally move on from the old debates about the pros and cons of various paradigms and methods?

• Can IS researchers take the lead in designing and evaluating new socio-technical innovations?

• How can we leverage our expertise in different paradigms, methodologies, and tools?

The goal of the panel is to engage all conference participants in a discussion of how best to select, mix, and apply research paradigms and methods to greatest effect in projects.

Biographies:Alan R. Hevner is an Eminent Scholar and professor in the Information Systems Decision Sciences Department in the College of Business at the University of South Florida. He holds the Citigroup/Hidden River Chair of Distributed Technology. Hevner’s areas of research interest include information systems development, software engineering, distributed database systems, healthcare systems, and service-oriented computing. He has published more than 200 research papers on these topics and has consulted for a number of Fortune 500 companies. Hevner is a thought leader on the use of design science research (DSR) methods. His co-authored 2004 MISQ essay on DSR has more than 3,000 citations. In addition, he has co-authored a 2010 book, presented seminars internationally on the topic, and co-founded an international annual conference (Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology – DESRIST). Hevner received a PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University. He has held faculty positions at

Panel Discussion

Panel Discussion the University of Maryland and the University of Minnesota. Hevner is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is a member of ACM, IEEE, AIS, and INFORMS.

Michael D. Myers is professor of information systems and head of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Auckland Business School. He is ranked 8th in the world (http://www.vvenkatesh.com/isranking/) based on the number of publications in MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research over the past three years (2009-2011), and 7th in the world based on the number of publications in the AIS Senior Scholars basket of eight top IS journals over the same period. He won the Best Paper award (with Heinz Klein) for the most outstanding paper published in MIS Quarterly in 1999. This paper has been cited more than 2,000 times. He previously served as senior editor of MIS Quarterly from 2001-2005 and as senior editor of Information Systems Research from 2008-2010. He also served as president of the Association for Information Systems in 2006-2007 and as chair of the International Federation of Information Processing Working Group 8.2 from 2006-2008. Myers is a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems.

Session Abstracts

Session 1: Contemporary Topics in Information Systems Research

Session Chair: Satish Krishnan (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

“Customization of Product Software: Insight from an Extensive IS Literature Review”

Matthias Bertram, Mario Schaarschmidt, and Harald Von Kortzfleisch (University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany)

In recent years, companies started not only to ask customers by means of market research but also to integrate them into the innovation process. Within information systems research, both customization as a way to serve the uniqueness of customers (inside-out) and as a form of customer integration and value co-creation (outside-in) has been considered. However, since many software vendors have consummated the shift from being manufacturers to being service firms, in practice, customization as a service highlights the continuance of customization projects. This paper addresses the research question of how concepts of customization are distinguished in recent IS literature. By conducting an extensive review of the IS literature between 2001 and 2011 we find that future research could benefit from considering knowledge interactions in customization processes more deeply.

“Co-materialization: Digital Innovation Dynamics in the Offshore Petroleum Industry”

Thomas Osterlie (NTNU, Norway)

This paper empirically explores the concept of co-materialization to explain the digital innovation dynamics in offshore petroleum production. The central insight developed is that the very nature of subsurface processes and phenomena that may be monitored and controlled is transformed as offshore petroleum production is digitalized. The paper shows how digital technologies are intrinsic to this transformation as material reality and abstract concepts take on meaning together through digital technologies. The central dynamic driving this transformation is the process wherein digital technologies, physical phenomena, and work processes for monitoring and controlling these phenomena evolve together in continuous interplay.

“Amazon Mechanical Turk: A Research Tool for Organizations and Information Systems Scholars”

Kevin Crowston (Syracuse University, USA)

Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), a system for crowdsourcing work, has been used in many academic fields to support research and could be similarly useful for information systems research. This paper briefly describes the functioning of the AMT system and presents a simple typology of research data collected using AMT. For each kind of data, it discusses potential threats to reliability and validity and possible ways to address those threats. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of possible applications of AMT to research on organizations and information systems.

Session 2: Recent Trends in Interpretive Research Methods

Session Chair: Eleni Lioliou (Loughborough University, UK)

“Action Design Ethnographic Research: Vested Interests Networks and ICTs Networks in Service Delivery of Land Records in Bangladesh”

M. Shahanoor Alam, Laurence Brooks (Brunel University, UK), and N.I. Khan (Ministry of ICT, Bangladesh)

Identifying rigorous and relevant research methods has for a long time been a challenge in IS research. This is amplified in developing countries, where understanding the context is key. This paper presents an Action Design Research based approach, incorporating ethnography, which aims to provide a more authentic and relevant analysis. The Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER) method is illustrated through the case of ICTs and land records management in Bangladesh. The findings show that where ICTs have been introduced so far, they do not clearly relate to the specific organizational context and service delivery processes. Furthermore, they fail to recognize the role of what is termed here ‘vested interest networks’, which sit outside the formal processes, but are key to their effective functioning. This paper suggests ADER has the potential to enable the development of more contextually contingent, authentic and hence useful ICTs, especially in the developing countries context.

“Grounded Analytic Research: Building Theory from a Body of Research”

Bjørn Furuholt and Maung Kyaw Sein (University of Agder, Norway)

In this paper, we present Grounded Analytic Research (GAR) as a method to build theory by synthesizing empirical findings from multiple studies that has been conducted by a single researcher. GAR incorporates concepts from grounded theory, analytic research and

systematic literature review. The method was applied in a doctoral dissertation work to build the theoretical concept of Demand Sustainability of public Internet access in the context of bridging the digital divide. We describe GAR and compare it with existing theory building methods that are similar to it in epistemology and ontology.

“Using Photo-Diary Interviews to Study Cyborgian Identity Performance in Virtual Worlds”

Ulrike Schultze (Southern Methodist University, USA & Lund University, Sweden)

People’s identities (i.e., who they are) are increasingly performed in both physical and digital spaces. Individuals become cyborgs as they extend their presence and bodily senses through digital bodies (e.g., social media profiles, blog posts and avatars). To gain insight into how people make sense of who they are in the face of their digital extensions, a photo-diary method is advanced in this paper. Using a single photo-diary entry and its associated interview, this short paper illustrated empirically the material and discursive practices a user of the virtual world, Second Life, enacted to dynamically draw boundaries to construct her and her avatar’s identities.

Session 3: Sociomateriality in Information Systems Research

Session Chair: Shana Ponelis (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)

“Living in a Sociomaterial World”

Eric Monteiro, Petter Almklov, and Vidar Hepsø (NTNU, Norway)

The Internet of Things (IoT) – the proliferation of networked sensors, gadgets, artefacts and measurement devices – increase the presence, scope and potential importance of mediated information in collaborative work practices. This underscores the material aspects of sociomaterial practices. We study an extreme case where work practices rely heavily, almost entirely, on representations. In line with the research programme on sociomateriality, we acknowledge the performative role of representations. Representations are thus actively embedded in practice rather than passive re-presentation of data. Extending the programme of sociomateriality, we contribute by identifying and discussing three strategies detailing how sociomaterial practices get performed: extrapolate (filling in gaps), harmonise (ironing out inaccuracies) and abduct (coping with anomalies). We draw empirically on a longitudinal (2004-2011) case study of the subsurface community of NorthOil. This community of geologists, geophysicists, reservoir engineers, production engineers and well engineers rely on sensor-based (acoustic, electromagnetic, radioactive, pressure, temperature) data when

exploring and producing oil and gas resources several thousand meters below the seabed where direct access to data is difficult and/ or limited.

“Digital Artifacts as Institutional Attractors: An Evolutionary Perspective on Change in Organizational Routines”

SungYong Um and Youngjin Yoo (Temple University, USA), Nicholas Berente (University of Georgia, USA), and Kalle Lyytinen (Case Western Reserve University, USA)

Digital artifacts have become fundamental elements of organizational change. Such change is not frictionless, since routines and associated structures are deeply embedded- or institutionalized. Though, organizational institutionalism has been traditionally concerned with stability and change in routines and underlying structures, it has so far meagerly theorized the role of digital artifacts in balancing stability and change. To address this gap, we draw on systems biology to understand how introduction of new digital artifacts can influence routines in organizations. In particular, we approach digital artifacts as institutional attractors and examine the role of such attractors within gene regulatory networks. In this view institutional attractors become endogenous to sociomaterial systems and are keys to simultaneously promoting stability and inducing change. Just as attractors are implicated in changes to established gene regulatory networks within cells, so too are digital artifacts implicated in the efforts of institutional entrepreneurs to bring about change to organizational routines (behaviors). Based upon this analogous reasoning we outline elements of a research agenda and .conclude with a discussion of methodological directions to deal with digitally induced endogenous sociomaterial change.

“Mutability and Becoming: Materializing of Public Sector Adoption of Open Source Software”

Maha Shaikh (University of Warwick, UK)

Juxtaposing two local council cases of open source software adoption in the UK we highlight their differences and similarities in open source adoption and implementation. Our narratives indicate that for both cases there was strong goodwill towards open source yet the trajectories of implementation differed widely. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of becoming, tracing versus mapping and multiplicity to explain how becoming occurs at different speeds. Our data shows that the becoming of adoption can be both constrained and precipitated by various forms of materiality (of the assemblage of the open source ecosystem). The interesting point of departure of our study is how open source software – a much touted transparent and open phenomenon – is by its nuanced and layered mutability able to make the process and practices surrounding it less visible.

Session 4: New Themes in Positivist Information Systems Research

Session Chair: Rui Huang (State University of New York Binghamton, USA)

“Moderating Effect of Environmental Factors on eHealth Development and Health Outcomes: a Country Level Analysis”

Supunmali Ahangama and Danny Poo (National University of Singapore, Singapore).

This cross-national study examines how the relationship between national eHealth initiatives and health outcomes are contingent on (1) macro-economic stability; (2) GDP per capita; and (3) institutions. Resource Based View’s (RBV) resource complementary perspective and literature on Information Technology and health outcomes are used as the guiding theoretical framework. Publicly available archival data from more than 50 countries are gathered to understand the moderating effect. Health outcomes are measured through Infant Survival Rate (ISR). The results indicated that there is no direct effect of eHealth initiatives on health outcomes; however, eHealth initiatives interact with above three contingencies affecting health outcomes. Macro-economic stability moderated the relationship between eHealth development and health outcomes positively. GDP per capita and institutions moderated the relationship of eHealth development and health outcomes in a negative direction. Implications of the findings for theoretical discourse of the resource complimentary perspective and future research are discussed in this paper.

“Social Networks and Communication Media for Generating Creative Ideas”

Yi Wu and Klarissa Chang (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Why some dyadic interactions are more likely than others to trigger hinder the generation of novel and useful ideas? To investigate this question, we examine the attributes of dyadic ties that influence the generation of creative ideas, and how the strength of influence changes contingently on the mix use of communication media. Our study extends previous research by examining the impacts of Simmelian advice tie, Simmelian friendship tie and communication media mix on generating creative ideas. We conducted a survey among students in a knowledge-intensive academic institution. The results show that Simmelian advice tie, Simmelian friendship tie and communication media mix help to trigger the generation of creative ideas. The impact of Simmelian advice tie on creative idea generation is weakened by communication media mix, while the influence of Simmelian friendship tie is strengthened by it. We discuss both theoretical and practical contributions of our research on these findings.

“Cultural Challenges in Information Systems Innovation: The Need for Differentiation Studies”

Carl Lawrence and Markku Oivo (University of Oulu, Finland)

Information technology (IT) innovations have been vital to the success of organizations seeking to improve efficiency and productivity. IT’s global diffusion has however raised serious questions about its neutral application across cultures and contexts. This paper synthesizes a sample of the literature to conceptualize the key cultural challenges in IS innovation as, differentiation, externality, compatibility, embeddedness. The study shows that the adoption decision is challenged by differentiation, and the adoption phase exhibits issues of externality. During implementation, compatibility is the key challenge of innovators and the assimilation literature revealed that embeddedness was the cultural challenge that phase. The synthesis also revealed that the comprehension phase where adoption decisions are made was lacking significant study. The paper proposes two opportunities for research and examples of research methods that can be used to investigate pre-adoption phenomena.

Session 5: Emerging Topics in Design Science Research

Session Chair: Arvind Tripathi (University of Auckland, NZ)

“Resolving Name Conflicts for Mobile Apps in Twitter Posts”

Sangaralingam Kajanan, Ahmed Shafeeq Bin Mohd Shariff, Kaushik Dutta, and Anindya Datta (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

The Twitter platform has emerged as a leading medium of conducting social commentary, where users remark upon all kinds of entities, events and occurrences. As a result, organizations are starting to mine twitter posts to unearth the knowledge encoded in such commentary. Mobile applications, commonly known as mobile apps, are the fastest growing consumer product segment in the history of human merchandizing, with over 600,000 apps on the Apple platform and over 350,000 on Android. A particularly interesting issue is to evaluate the popularity of specific mobile apps by analyzing the social conversation on them. Clearly, twitter posts related to apps are an important segment of this conversation and have been a main area of research for us. In this respect, one particularly important problem arises due to a name conflict of mobile app names and the names that are used to refer the mobile apps in twitter posts. In this paper, we present a strategy to reliably extract twitter posts that are related to specific apps, but discovering the contextual clues that enable effective filtering of irrelevant twitter posts is our concern. While our application is in the important

space of mobile apps, our techniques are completely general and may be applied to any entity class. We have evaluated our approach against a popular Bayesian classifier and a commercial solution. We have demonstrated that our approach is significantly more accurate than both of these. These results as well as other theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

“Using Adjective Features from User Reviews to Generate Higher Quality and Explainable Recommendations”

Xiaoying Xu, Anindya Datta, and Kaushik Dutta (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Recommender systems have played a significant role in alleviating the “information overload” problem. Existing Collaborative Filtering approaches face the data sparsity problem and transparency problem, and the content-based approaches suffer the problem of insufficient attributes. In this paper, we show that abundant adjective features embedded in user reviews can be used to characterize movies as well as users’ taste. We extend the standard TF-IDF term weighting scheme by introducing cluster frequency (CLF) to automatically extract high quality adjective features from user reviews for recommendation. We also develop a movie recommendation framework incorporating adjective features to generated highly accurate rating prediction and high quality recommendation explanation. The results of experiments performed on a real world dataset show that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques.

“Product Semantics in Design Science Research”

Jonas Sjostrom (Uppsala University, Sweden), Brian Donnellan (National University of Ireland, Ireland), and Markus Helfert (Dublin City University, Ireland).

The concept of product semantics and its focus on meaning is used to interpret design research as design. It is argued that we may conceive of design research as design in two realms: The practical and the academic. In doing design research, there is a reciprocal shaping of artifacts: Better artifacts (contributions to practice) through appropriation of knowledge and methods from the academic realm, and better knowledge artifacts (contributions to academia) by drawing relevance and experiences of appropriation from the practical realm. We adopt a product semantics view to discuss research as design. Product semantics highlights the meaning of artifacts with respect to their (i) stakeholders, (ii) artifacts-in-use, (iii), artifacts-in-language, (iv) artifact lifecycle, and (v) ecology. Based on this interpretation, we propose activities that should characterize the practice of doing design research. Finally we provide an example of Design Research Practice in action.

Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo will be ablaze with holiday spirit on your way to a scrumptious four-course meal. Expect to meet some “special guests” during the evening, as you will be able to mingle with some exotic zoo residents, such as a Green Winged Macaw or possibly a two-toed sloth.

The zoo ‘s koala is a bit of a diva. Every two days, eucalyptus leaves from South Florida are flown in for the koala to eat. He only eats a special variety of the fragrant plant and only eats the top of the shoots, leaving the remaining leaves behind (the leaves hanging from a nearby, so you’ll be able to enjoy the scent!).

A popular attraction at the zoo is the manatee exhibit. Manatees are large aquatic mammals that are related to elephants, and according to myth, were the creatures sailors called mermaids. West Indian manatees are found in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, especially in warm shallow waters. This makes the large herbivores vulnerable to injuries from boats and ships. Tampa‘s Lowry Park Zoo rescues these special creatures from the Florida Keys all the way to Texas, making it one of the nation’s largest rehabilitation facilities.

Discover Tampa’s world-renowned Lowry Park Zoo online at lowryparkzoo.com.

Our dinner will begin with several scrumptious appetizers: shrimp cocktail with key lime cocktail sauce, tomato bruschetta with toast points, roasted vegetable cruditè with chipotle dip, and stuffed mushrooms. Guests will choose one of the following entrees: grilled asparagus and eggplant napoleons with ricotta cheese over a bed of pesto mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus with Sicilian chicken breast stuffed with asiago cheese & sun dried tomatoes, with a light roasted garlic & tomato sauce accompanied by scalloped potatoes, or a fresh vegetable stir-fry over white rice. Dinner will be served with fresh traditional house salad and warm dinner rolls; Key Lime Pie will be served for dessert.

Note that bus for Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo will depart from Embassy Suites hotel at 6:00 p.m. and will return from Lowry Park Zoo at 9:30 p.m.

Conference Social Event

Busch Gardens is a unique amusement park and zoo complex, featuring an African savannah while animals roam free and world-famous rides such as the Kumba and the new inverted roller-coaster Montu. Located just 1 mile from the conference site,

this theme park has nine different areas offering safari adventures, kid-friendly attractions, aerial and water rides, animal shows, and serves as the home base for Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures television show. In November and December, the park features Christmas themed shows to celebrate the holiday season. For details, visit eaworldparks.com/en/buschgardens-tampa.

Tampa Bay Attractions

The Florida Aquarium is one of Tampa Bay most popular attractions. Located downtown in the Channelside District, this aquarium offers exhibits of sharks, dolphins, mantle-rays, endangered sea turtles, moray eels, and numerous other marine animals in a coral reef setting.

Aquacamp and education programs are available for children. For more information, visit flaquarium.org.

Located in downtown Tampa, the Tampa Museum of Art offers a unique collection of paintings, sculptures, and antiquities. It is a must-see destination for art enthusiasts. Visit tampamuseum.org.

Ybor City: Known as Tampa’s Latin Quarter for more than a century, Ybor City is an exotic blend of aromas, flavors, sights, and sounds. From the scent of roasting Cuban coffee early in the morning to the rhythms of Latin music late into the night, Ybor is a feast for the senses. Listen to jazz, blues, salsa, reggae and hip-hop from a selection of pubs, patio bars, and nightclubs at one of Florida’s top-ranked nightspots. Learn more about Tampa’s Latin Quarter at ybor.org

Pier 60 Beach, Clearwater: Located on the Gulf of Mexico in Clearwater and stretching for 2.5 miles on a barrier island, this white sand beach is consistently rated as one of America’s most popular beaches.

St. Petersburg: Located a few miles south of Clearwater, the city of St. Petersburg is a unique Florida city with barrier reef island beaches, The Pier, and the Tampa Bay Walk of Fame located near Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. Learn more about this great city online at stpete.org/the50things.asp

Sarasota: Located one hour south of Tampa, Sarasota features numerous attractions such as the Siesta Key Beach, Lido Beach, Holmes Beach at Anna Maria Island, the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota Opera, Mote Marine Aquarium, Selby Botanical Gardens, St. Armand’s Circle, and endless options for shopping and fine dining. For more information, go to visitsarasota.org.

The 2012 International Federation on Information Processing Conference is sponsored by the University of South Florida’s

College of Business and the Information Systems Decision Sciences Department.

The 2012 International Federation on Information Processing Conference is sponsored by the USF College of Business and the

Information Systems Decision Sciences Department.