A TRIBUTE ON THE 25 TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION (IIMA) AND ITS CO-FOUNDERS: C. E. TAPIE ROHM JR., PATRICK J. MCINTURFF JR. AND WALTER T. STEWART JR.

Abstract

Welcome to the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the International Information Management Association (IIMA) on this afternoon of Monday, October 13th, 2014 at the CSUSB Palm Desert Campus (PDC) in Palm Desert, California. OPENING REMARKS BY JAKE ZHU CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN BERNARDINO IIMA is a special place for all of us. For twenty-five years, it has served as a forum for all of us to gather together to engage in intellectual conversations, to disseminate knowledge, and to renew our profession. Over the many years, IIMA has helped many us with our tenure and promotion, and has made our manuscripts available worldwide through our publication outlets, the three IIMA journals and the seasonal conference proceedings. Also for many of us, IIMA is not only a forum for academics, but also a place for friendship, family and fun. Many of us have become life-long friends and some of our families are known to each other. We eat, drink, walk, chat, dance and laugh. No matter it is in New York, Houston or Chicago, or it is in Beijing, Dublin or Amsterdam, we all had fun and enjoyed the collegiality, professionalism and friendship that IIMA has brought to us. As we gather here today to celebrate the 25th IIMA anniversary, we would like to thank and offer tributes to our long-time friends, the IIMA co-founders, C. E. Tapie Rohm Jr., Patrick McInturff and Walt Stewart. Many IIMAers who have run or helped run our annual conferences, served or are serving as IIMA Officers, and Journal Editors. Tributes also go to them. In a private conversation, my friend, Warren Adis, Professor at Iona College in New York made a comment on organizing conferences, he said, don't realize how much work is involved until they actually run one themselves. I believe we all would agree. No matter you are a regular IIMA attendee or an occasional visitor to our conferences, we thank you, too, for your support of what we do at IIMA. In this sense, we are here to celebrate each other and the entity that has brought us together, the IIMA. In a series of remarks this afternoon, presented by colleagues who have attended IIMA conferences over many years, we will enliven the specialness of the IIMA that offered a place for all of us to come together and make a contribution to our disciplines, to become mature intellectually, and to learn from one another. We each have become better because of IIMA and the many people who have contributed to it. Presented now, in alphabetical order of last names of colleagues, are several tributes to the IIMA founders, Tapie Rohm Jr., Patrick McInturff and Walt Stewart in celebration of the 25th anniversary of IIMA. REMARKS BY WARREN ADIS IONA COLLEGE, NEW YORK While each year with Tapie at IIMA has been memorable, I would like to tell three stories that capture those times. The first is 25 years ago in San Bernardino. The very first conference I attended, it was there that I met Tapie and we hit it off, right from the start. My guess is that is everybody here has felt the same way, when they first met Tapie. He makes everyone feels immediately at home and important. I liked how he talked--with lots of Folks and All and Oks He had a plan to create IIMA, it was supposed to be People Centered rather than Organization Centered like those large conferences that we all have attended. And he was right, in that if you grow the people and then everything falls into place. Whatever challenges there were, and there were many, Tapie was handling them. Whether it was hauling the newly published IIMA journals through O'Hare Airport, then by subway to our Hotel in Chicago. That is Tapie. Numerous Airports numerous subways, numerous hotels. Talking about journals, figuring out how to start our Journal (actually 2= JIIMA and CIIMA), get them printed cost effectively (Prison System), get them edited (Tapie was Editor in Chief). So in his own folksy way, with lots of hard work, here we are 25 years later. …