The MISRC is involved in a number of corporate outreach activities that are central to its mission and that our MISRC Corporate Partners depend upon from us.

MISRC SEMINAR SERIES
The core outreach offering is the Friday MISRC Seminar Series, which involves a variety of speakers and events that deal with topical issues related to the IS/IT management and emerging technologies. Each year, we plan these seminar events in conjunction with the interests or our Corporate Partners. Some of our most memorable Friday Seminars in the past several years dealt with topics such as managing customer relationship management projects, international outsourcing, knowledge management, information security and privacy, electronic markets, and geography and time-independent solutions in IT-based service operations. Beginning in the 2002-2003 academic year, we began to offer Web casting service for the Friday MISRC Seminar Series. We also retain all of the slides and presentation materials for our members who are not able to come to the Carlson School for a given event. Typical Friday Seminars draw between 20 and 120 attendees, depending on the topic chosen, the time of the year and the weather!

EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD ON CURRICULUM
A second important activity is the work of the Executive Advisory Board for Curriculum (EABC). The EABC is intended to provide the Information and Decision Sciences administration and faculty with a sounding board for how to make the Undergraduate and MBA-level IS curricular content effective for the students that we teach, and the recruiters and employers that we hope our students will work for someday. The EABC has an industry-side chair, and participation involves other IS professionals and Carlson School faculty. It meets roughly on a monthly basis, for a breakfast meeting or participation in an Information and Decision Sciences faculty meeting. The EABC has been a driver of Course Sponsorships, where companies and their interested IS professionals become involved with teaching faculty in the department's courses.

ANNUAL CONFERENCE
A third aspect of our corporate outreach activities has been our hosting of an annual conference for MISRC member firms and the Twin Cities business community as a whole, and participants from various units of the University of Minnesota (e.g., the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the Digital Technology Center, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Institute of Technology, the Law School, and Journalism and Mass Communication in the College of Liberal Arts). During 1996 to 2003, Professor Les Wanninger chaired a series of high-impact conferences called "The University of Minnesota Electronic Commerce Conference." The last in that series, "The Internet: The New Public Utility" occurred in April 2003, shortly before Professor Wanninger's retirement from the university. The MISRC leadership, in consultation with its corporate membership and the faculty of the Information and Decision Sciences Department, is now exploring what our next steps will be in terms of themes for future annual conferences.

Update: January 2005 - The final e-commerce conference was held in 2003

We continue to explore new ideas and new possibilities for serving the Twin Cities business community, and look forward to continuing our efforts to create value with MISRC corporate outreach events.