ECIS? ERCIS? What?

Some of you may have noticed a small logo reading "ERCIS" on the ECIS webpage and may have wondered what it is all about. The logo is even similar to this year’s ECIS logo (which was, as you might guess, intended). The Germans would say "Ein verwandelter Elfmeter ohne Torwart": "A converted penalty without goaly", at least we think so. This makes us talk about "ECIS @ ERCIS".

So, what is ERCIS about?

Let’s start with the acronym: ERCIS stands for the "European Research Center for Information Systems". It is NOT ERICS! This would be, maybe, Erics Angling Centre: "Erics Angling Centre is widely regarded as one of the best tackle shops in the country." Not us, not really. It is also not Erciş. That's a village in Turkey. Makes us receive funny spam emails.

ERCIS is pronounced [ɛər:zis]. We are an international research network in the field of Information Systems, which was founded in 2004. And who is "we"? Let’s try: The administration, i.e. the headquarters is located at the Department of Information Systems at the University of Münster. All the staff running around at the Department are members of the ERCIS. Our partner research institutions are universities from around the world, working with us on various IS-related topics and forming the ERCIS network. Apart from conducting research together we also advanced our teaching portfolio by conducting international PhD seminars and virtual seminars for Master students, or co-supervising Bachelor or Master theses with different partner institutions from the network. Oh, and we also, for example, organize ECIS 2015!

Jörg is Academic Director of ERCIS, Jan is our partner from Liechtenstein, and Marco is our old friend and first partner from Italy. In addition, the ERCIS has an advisory board consisting of several companies working with us on current topics and discussing our research projects.

If you are interested in our various activities, our partners, opportunities to collaborate or you just want to find out more about our network, have a look at our webpage www.ercis.org or get in contact with us via info@ercis.org. If you are bored, think about the reason why it is "Center", although it is an European institution... ;-)

About the author: Armin Stein

Since 2010, after finishing his PhD at the University of Münster, Armin is Managing Director of the ERCIS network. Together with Katrin (see her other blog entry), Sara (one of our post docs), and the directors, he shapes and puts into actions the network's ideas. Oh, and aside from this, he organizes ECIS together with Katrin and Michael. If you handed in a paper, you for sure received an email from him ;-)