Minutes of the ICEIMT'02 Conference of the EI3-IC Initiative(Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration – International Consensus) |
The initiative began in the early 90s when governments and users in Europe and the USA realised that there was a need for a better way to manage the flow of information within or among enterprises of all natures. It was therefore decided to hold a conference on Enterprise Modelling and Enterprise Integration technologies preceded by a series of 3-day workshops bringing together top experts from EU and US, as well as experts from other regions of the world. The aim was to compare scientific and technical advances in the field on both side of the Atlantic Ocean, to build an international consensus where common stand-points can be identified and to influence developments of tools and standards in the field. The first ICEIMT was held in 1992 in Hilton Head Island, NC, USA and the second one was held in Torino, Italy in 1997. ICEIMT’02 in Valencia, Spain, was the third edition of this 5-year event. The conference has been preceded by four preparatory workshops (Paris, Dec. 2001; Singapore, Jan. 2002; Gaithersburg, USA, Feb. 2002; Berlin, Feb. 2002). The Conference was held at the University Polytechnic of Valencia in Spain, on 2002-04-24/26, with an attendance of over 70 people from academia and industry coming from all five continents - Africa (South Africa), America (Canada, USA), Asia (China and Japan), Australia, and Europe (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK). The conference had only one stream of presentations and the agenda (see attachment) was organised ac-cording to the themes of the workshop arranged in the sequence of the workshops. Each of the four work-shop themes sessions -
The opening sessions started with welcome addresses by the Valencia regional government and the University followed by presentations from the two main sponsors – the European Commission and NIST - and a key note paper on enterprise modelling. A special session at the end of the conference provided information on international projects. The closing session of the conference was changed and rather than presenting the paper on the history of the ICEIMT it was devoted to a discussion on the future of the initiative on international consensus. The planning for next steps identified discrete areas of need. These are listed below in no particular order. Discussants had diversity of opinion on priorities. Everyone agreed that the core focus of the community (enterprise integration) must be maintained. Also, voices expressed unanimous agreement that the inter-disciplinary nature of the work (in terms of approaches) be emphasized. Most participants seemed to agree that the "demand" side of the equation (attracting users) should not be a focus, rather emphasizing the "supply" side: consistently improving solutions and the supply of practitioners. In supporting the "supply" side, all agreed that the future of the community should be taken into its own hands as an international concern; this is opposed to counting on forthcoming support from the EU as the driving factor. Independently, the immense influence of the web indicates that the EI community needs to be more active in relevant web developments. Action list:
In addition, several enterprise modelling tools have been demonstrated during the conference. All tool demonstrators had also the opportunity to present their tool before or after conference sessions in the plenary room to a large audience (see agenda). The conference was preceded by meetings of ISO/TC 184 SC5 (WGs 1 and 4) and of the European IST Project UEML. |