The BAM e-Business & e-Government Special Interest Group successfully organised a Workshop at Newcastle University Business School on 9-10 November 2006, following a discussion by SIG members at BAM2006 annual conference at Belfast.  The workshop focused on New Frontiers in e-Business, e-Government and e-Learning. Over 40 people participated in this event.  It was so successful that a new event is already being planned, which is most likely to take place at Brunel University in west London – so watch the space and information will be released in due course.

The Newcastle workshop was organised by Professor Feng Li, Dr Savvas Papagiannidis and Dr Alexis Barlow.  The event lasted two half days and an evening, which consisted of five keynote presentations by leading experts in their respective sub-areas, four focused discussions, and a social networking event in the evening.  The event was jointly funded by the eBusiness@Newcastle team, the Institute of Policy and Practice (IPP) at Newcastle University, and the British Academy of Management (BAM).  Participants presented, discussed and debated a wide range of emerging issues in the broad area of e-Business, e-Government and e-Learning, ranging from the uncharted territories of MMORPGs and its profound business, social and policy implications, to the very sophisticated conceptual, methodological, theoretical and practical issues in the e-Government and e-Public services. 

A journal special issue is currently being prepared for the International Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, which should be published in early 2007. We are also in the process of preparing one further journal special issue and possibly an edited book.  The call for papers will be released in due course.

The keynote presentations were delivered by:

• Prof Tony Manninen, University of Oulu, Finland – "MMORPG: Is it a product or is it a service - challenges and implications of online games";
• James Cornford, AIM public services fellow - "Focusing on Customer Focus in E-government"
• Professor Mike Martin, Newcastle University: "Identity AND Relationship Management: The new challenges in public and commercial services".
• Gianluca Misuraca, Managing Director of the highly innovative e-Governance executive masters programme, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland - "Linking research and practice at the European level the EFPL Executive Master Programme on E-governance"
• Professor Paul Beynon-Davis, University of Cardiff - eBusiness maturity and regional development

The long discussion sessions explored a wide range of emerging issues, from the emerging opportunities and challenges in MMORPGs, the new media industries, emerging technologies and applications and new Challenges in e-Government and e-Public services, to using e-Business to facilitate regional economic developments.  The evening dinner enabled members of the SIG to continue the discussions and to network with other like-minded participants. 

The workshop clearly demonstrated that e-Business and e-Government is still an exciting and rapidly evolving area, and numerous opportunities and challenges in this area remain unresolved.  It is the mission of this SIG to promote focused research in this area and contribute to the development of theory, practice and policy in the increasingly networked, knowledge based economy.