[Academic News] The iConference 2017 was Held in Asia for the First Time

On March 22nd, iConference 2017, jointly organized by the School of Information Management of Wuhan University and Sungkyunkwan University, was held in Seoul. This was the first time that the annual meeting was held in Asia, attracting more than 500 domestic and foreign experts and scholars in the field of information management.

The theme of the conference is "Influence, Expansion, and Promotion: Global Cooperation Across the Information Community." The conference reports cover topics such as interpersonal interaction, information behavior, data mining, information retrieval, knowledge discovery, social media, data science, information education, information organization, etc., demonstrating the theoretical frontier of international information management research and providing experts and scholars from various countries with a platform for multidisciplinary blending and knowledge sharing.

At the opening ceremony, Prof. Dou Xiankang, President of WHU, delivered the first speech. He said that the School of Information Management of Wuhan University is the oldest, largest, and strongest information management education and research institution in China. The school was the first in China to have successfully applied to join the iSchool, and the first member of a developing country and the second member of the entire Asia League to be selected as a core member group. He hoped that the meeting would bring together leading innovations at home and abroad to promote the deepening of cooperation and comprehensive innovation among the members of the field.

Prof. Fang Qing, Dean of the School of Information Management of Wuhan University, and Sam Oh, Professor of the Department of Information Science and Data Science at Sungkyunkwan University, delivered speeches respectively. Mike Eisenberg, Founding Director of the Washington College of Information Technology, Jason Rollins, former Senior Director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Division of Thomson Reuters, and Li Dongmin, General Manager of Baidu Maps Division, delivered keynote speeches respectively.

It is learnt that iConference is the top academic gathering in the field of international library and information. The president of the world’s top information science academies, the dean of the core group, and the vice dean in charge of scientific research must attend the annual academic conference. The successful convening of the conference has expanded the international influence of China's information field, and has played an important role in improving the international academic status and research and teaching capabilities of China's information industry.