Munir Mandviwalla

Fox School of Business and IBIT announce $50,000 Big Data Grant Program

IBIT’s Big Data Conference attracted 119 attendees, of whom 89 percent were practitioners representing 57 firms. The conference featured 19 speakers from companies such as Walmart, NASA, Campbell Soup, Chartis, Lockheed Martin, Merck, Pfizer, Independence Blue Cross, Wawa and others.

The conference had 12 sponsors, including well-known Big Data practitioners such as Accenture, SAP and GreenPlum, as well as local startups such as ColdLight and Global IDs. IBIT members Lockheed Martin, Campbell’s, Merck, LiquidHub, Sabre Systems and Transaction Network Services also sponsored the conference. More information is available at http://bigdata.temple.edu. The Sept. 27 Big Data conference was the second big data event organized by IBIT in 2012. A Big Data Symposium was held May 21.

Members of the Big Data Conference/Grant Program Committee will review proposals, which can be sent to IBIT Director Laurel Miller at Laurel.Miller@temple.edu.

Big Data Conference/Grant Program Committee

George Llado, Vice President, Merck
Jonathan Brassington, CEO, LiquidHub
Craig Conway, Chief Technology Officer, Transaction Network Services
Jeff Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Business Technology, Pfizer
James Golden, Lead Partner, Analytics Practice, Accenture
Paul Pavlou, Professor, Management Information Systems, Fox School of Business
David Schuff, Associate Professor, Management Information Systems, Fox School of Business
Munir Mandviwalla, Associate Professor and Chair, Management Information Systems, Fox School of Business

For more information on Temple’s Institute for Business and Information Technology, visit http://ibit.temple.edu.

MIS Academic Leadership Conference – November 1-3, 2012

MIS Academic Leadership Conference (MALC) 2012

The Fox School’s Department of Management Information Systems hosted the second annual Management Information Systems (MIS) Academic Leadership Conference (MALC 2012) from Nov. 1-3, 2012 at Alter Hall.

Academic leaders of MIS departments across the world were invited to network and learn from others facing similar responsibilities and challenges. The format was small and highly interactive, with 70 professionals with leadership responsibility for MIS at their respective college or university in attendance. Attendees represented 53 universities, including some of the top schools in the nation.

The conference featured a keynote presentation by Joseph C. Spagnoletti, senior vice president and chief information officer at Campbell Soup Company, as well as a keynote deans’ panel led by Fox School of Business Dean M. Moshe Porat.

Temple Provost Hai-Lung Dai introduced Porat by saying, “the business school under the leadership of Dean Porat is recognized as a powerhouse of Temple University, and our MIS program is a gem of the Fox School.”

Former Temple President Richard M. Englert praised the accomplishments of Fox MIS faculty and students and called MIS “one of the most dynamic academic disciplines,” adding that it “is an essential and powerful tool in business development and economic growth.”

The deans’ panel was titled “The Digitalization of Business Schools” and included Leonard Jessup, dean of the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Business, and Peter A. Todd, dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Quebec.

Opportunities and threats posed by the digitalization of business schools were debated, and discussion focused heavily on online learning. “I think it’s inevitable we will have to provide all of these things online,” Porat said, stressing that online classes cannot lose quality.

The panelists shared varying views. Jessup noted the importance of online classes at Arizona while Todd shared that McGill does not see much of a need for them yet. “I think it depends on the culture of the institution and the strength of the brand,” Porat added.

In the general sessions, conference presenters represented schools from Boston College to Aalto University in Finland. Each shared insight as to what their schools are doing on topics such as information systems advisory councils and best practices for MIS graduate programs.

Associate professor and founding chair of Fox’s MIS Department, Munir Mandviwalla, organized the conference and presented at the session titled, “Where will MIS go in 2015? 2020?” Another MIS faculty member, Professor Paul A. Pavlou, chaired the session.

Assistant Professor Richard Flanagan presented in the “Recruiting Strategies” session. Flanagan is the director of Fox’s new Master of Science in IT Auditing and Cyber-Security program in the MIS Department. Assistant Professor Mart Doyle and Fox IT Advisory Board Chair Bruce Fadem also moderated sessions.

The MIS Academic Leadership Conference is the only conference specifically designed for individuals responsible for leading MIS in higher education to network and learn. The conference was co-sponsored by Temple, the University of Arizona, University of Minnesota, Indiana University and University of Texas at Dallas.

Topics included:

Undergraduate Majors and Minors: Curriculum and partnerships
Specialized Masters Programs: New areas and markets
IS Advisory Councils and Boards: Best practices for setting up and managing
Careers and Placement: Target industries and statistics
Recruiting: Strategies and best practices

To learn more visit the MALC 2012 site

Big Data conference attracts leading practitioners to discuss a data-driven future

BIG DATA Conference

On Sept. 27, 2012, the Big Data Conference was organized by Temple’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT), based at the Fox School, and connected practitioners from agencies and firms ranging from NASA and Lockheed Martin to Walmart and Campbell’s Soup Co. to discuss “The Business Value of Big Data: Potential, Reality, and Success Stories.”

During the course of the day, more than 100 attendees and nearly 20 speakers and panelists explored topics ranging from predications of global climate change, to data-driven marketing strategies, to the role of social media in politics. There was tremendous interest in the program, and the conference sold out weeks in advance.

Conference sponsors included well-known big data practitioners such as Accenture, SAP and GreenPlum, as well as local startups such as ColdLight and Global IDs. IBIT members Lockheed Martin, Campbell’s, Merck, LiquidHub, Sabre Systems and Transaction Network Services also sponsored the conference. The proceeds from the sponsorships and registration funded a new $50,000 Big Data research fund.

Keynote speaker Adrian Gardner, director of information technology and communications directorate and CIO of NASA Goddard Space Center, discussed the many ways in which NASA is using big data to benefit citizens, businesses and government agencies. He cited examples including the use of satellites, which have been aggregating millions of data points since 1978, to pinpoint ideal windmill locations for private energy companies, share predictions about hurricanes with the National Weather Service and monitor the impacts of global climate change.

“Organizations who wish to truly leverage big data must be agile enough to change and grow,” Gardner said. “Today is an opportunity to think about how big data can help your sector.”

During a morning session titled “Redefining Healthcare,” Independence Blue Cross Director of Informatics Ravi Chawla discussed improving marketing campaigns using data-driven insights. With the help of a SAS data tool he called “one of the Cadillacs of data mining,” Chawla helped whittle 200 data variables down to several key variables that drive customer attrition. The resulting predictions proved more powerful than those of previous models.

“It’s not enough to have just good data or a lot of data,” Chawla said. “Being able to analyze and make sense of the data is critical in making better business decisions.”

The conference was organized in partnership with the senior executives of the Fox IT Advisory Board, corporate members of IBIT and the Department of Management Information Systems (MIS). MIS faculty also presented or chaired conference sessions, including department Chair Munir Mandviwalla, Professor Paul A. Pavlou and Associate Professor David Schuff.

The conference committee, which included executives from Merck, Pfizer, Accenture, LiquidHub and Transaction Network Services, as well as Fox School faculty and staff, collaboratively planned all aspects of the event, including its theme, speakers, sponsors, format and implementation.

IT Career Fair a great success

What better place for a career fair to go high tech than one for IT-centric students?

IT Career Fair 2012 Temple’s Fox School of Business and the Institute for Business and Information Technology hosted its first IT Career Fair on Wednesday and, in another first, business students with majors and minors related to information systems carried business cards with QR codes for recruiters, who were equipped with iPads to scan the codes and access students’ e-portfolios.

Also known as electronic resumes, e-portfolios allow students to manage their online identities and showcase experiences and sample work in a more dynamic format than a LinkedIn profile.

“We do a lot of career fairs and sometimes it’s tough to keep track of who you met, and this helps put a face to a resume,” said Paul Zaengle, vice president of U.S. Resource Management for global management and technology consultancy Liquidhub, one of nearly 20 recruiters at the event. “It’s my first time using e-portfolios at any career fair. It’s easy to use, and the iPad integrates some cool technology into the career fair.”

The e-portfolio initiative, overseen by the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT), includes custom design elements and a search engine for employers to find students by relevant criteria. There are 1,023 e-portfolios in active use.

IT Career Fair 2012 Before the career fair, the IT services arm of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) student organization led the creation of customized QR codes to link directly to each participating student’s e-portfolio and the distribution of business cards with the codes printed on the back. AIS members also trained employers in how to use the QR code reader on each iPad.

Management Information Systems major Yolandra Brown’s e-portfolio, combined with knowledge of WordPress, helped her land an internship last summer.

“My e-portfolio also helps remind me of everything I’ve done before speaking with employers,” said Brown, one of nearly 200 students registered for the career fair. “It gives me extra confidence.”

Eric Soll, a systems architect at Dow, said his Temple interns last summer supplied e- portfolio links on their applications, and recruiters found it to be a “much more powerful way to connect that goes beyond a simple resume.”

“It was especially interesting to be able to read papers the students wrote to get a better insight into their school work,” Soll added.

For Zaengle, using an iPad to access the e-portfolios gave him an easy way to bookmark leading candidates to review their material later. “I really am liking using this feature,” he said.

New Temple Fox media index leverages LexisNexis and software agents to score candidate’s performance in campaigns

Temple University creates media index leveraging LexisNexis news and business content to score candidates’ performance in campaigns. The research tracks 900 candidates across traditional and social media to determine potential impact of media on campaign outcomes.

The index, called TEMPO, for Translating the Effectiveness of Media into Performance, analyzes media-related data for more than 900 candidates nationwide by using customized software and direct access to the extensive content resources of LexisNexis. The TEMPO index represents one of the first and most comprehensive studies of different types of media, their effects on one another – and how they ultimately influence campaigns.

Read the Press Release