ItAIS (the Italian chapter of AIS) remembers Claudio

Received: 3 August 2005 Revised: 3 October 2005 Accepted: 3 October 2005 ItAIS’s officers and members express their profound gratitude to Claudio Ciborra for his commitment to starting and supporting the Italian chapter of AIS. Claudio was a co-founder of ItAIS, which he considered an instrument for the Italian community to join the international discourse on IS. He brought us his enthusiasm, vision, experience and contacts. The first ItAIS annual meeting was held in Naples in 2004, chaired by Claudio, on the issues of what should be included in an IS syllabus and what are the major themes of research. Claudio as ItAIS vice president encouraged his young Italian colleagues to tackle what were the key themes for understanding the relationship between information systems and organisation. Upon the foundation of ItAIS thanks to its international contacts Italian Ph.D. students were able to work for their thesis in London at LSE. One of his major drivers was to bring the Italian information systems academic community to an international level and have it participate in the debates on the issues of the discipline. Claudio’s academic career was marked by great success abroad and scarce recognition in Italy, his home country, although in the final stage of his life an attempt was made to offer him a position adequate to his international academic standing. The vision of Claudio in terms of ‘social studies of IT’ has been collected by ItAIS and it has become a polar star leading our work. As Vice-President of ItAIS, he encouraged us to organize events with the maximum degree of openness to young academics in order to have them to discuss their work in front of more senior colleagues to get hints, suggestions and encouragement. This year’s annual meeting of ItAIS still listed his name in the conference officer list. Although we miss his physical presence his legacy is very strong and clear and we will try our best to keep up with it.