A portrait of a scientist

Received: 24 July 2005 Revised: 21 September 2005 Accepted: 28 September 2005 I did not have the good fortune to meet Claudio Ciborra until relatively late in life. Not that his reputation as a scholar was by any means unknown to me. Many colleagues had spoken of him, I myself had struck upon a number of his highly incisive and stimulating articles, I had even begun to gather some presentations in which he had demonstrated his remarkable originality but I had still not had the opportunity to hear him speak in person. In some scholars the sum of their thought can be quite easily located in a single work; Claudio’s ideas eluded the confines of a single contribution. Continuously revisited and extended, his reflections spilled out over a multiplicity of academic publications and far beyond. Not surprisingly, then, it was with a great sense of anticipation that I set off for the 1996 ECIS (European Conference on Information Systems) meeting in Aix-en-Provence where he was expected to be present. The ECIS meeting has now become an important part of the annual academic calendar. In that initial stage Claudio had made an enormous contribution to the initiative and in the years that followed the conference would become a must for the scholars of the field. Indeed, thanks in large part to the intelligence and passion which Claudio dedicated to it, the ECIS meeting evolved in the space of a few years into a key event for anybody who sought to confront information systems from the point of view of the social sciences – an event that one could simply not miss, because it was there that all new perspectives on the subject were advanced and it was there that the discussion of them at an international level took shape. Our first encounter took place in the university cafeteria. Never having seen Claudio before, somewhat cheekily I ventured the famous line: ‘Professor Ciborray I presume?’. It was well-known at the time that in Italian academic circles, as well as having many enthusiastic admirers, Claudio had also some foes and that he himself constituted a highly controversial figure, even though even his most fierce opponents could not but acknowledge his academic and cultural superiority. I had been fearful that, precisely because of his past skirmishes with the Italian academic establishment, I would find him a little wary and somewhat reluctant to embark upon discussions that could lead to collaboration or even joint projects with his fellow countrymen. But quite to the contrary, to my great delight, I was greeted by a man who was not just open and friendly but who seemed to be actually waiting for the opportunity to make his thought available to his Italian colleagues in a direct, personal manner. Since that first encounter our relations became ever more frequent and affectionate. Without planning or even anticipating it, we discovered that we both had the same objective. For some time my aim had been to encourage those of my Italian colleagues engaged in the study of Information Systems – especially the younger generation – to integrate into the mainstream of European academic activity. An approach to Information Systems from the point of view of the social sciences had not made great headway in Italy at that time and it appeared clear that the quickest way to affect such an outcome was to establish a close relationship with the academic institutions where debate on the subject was already well underway. For his part, Claudio was only too keen to incorporate into European Journal of Information Systems (2005) 14, 442–445 & 2005 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/05 $30.00