After the plenary session, the conference continued with the main conference session.

Conference participants were welcomed by 33rd Bled eConference Research Track Chair Helen Cripps (Edith Cowan University, Australia) and Research Track Co-chair Anand Sheombar (HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, the Netherlands), who shared an overview of the conference. All together 77 submissions from 28 countries were made to 11 conference tracks, which is an unprecedented response under current circumstances.

Due to the online setup of the conference, we decided to host a joint session where Special Interest Track Co-chairs briefly presented contributions of each track and their plans for next year.

You are welcome to read all the accepted papers in the conference proceedings which are already published in open access by Press UM. All of the papers published in the proceedings will soon be available in the AIS eLibrary and submitted for possible indexation to SCOPUS and Web of Science.

Professor Roger Bons (FOM Hochschule, Germany), chair of Outstanding Paper and Reviewer award committee then presented the Outstanding Paper and Reviewer Award Committee and their process for selecting an outstanding paper and reviewer. We are happy to announce that this year we noticed that the overall quality of reviews improved once again. This year the competition was tough and the committee had a hard time selecting the winner – thus they decided to award two Outstanding Reviewer Awards.

2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards went to the following reviewers:

Vanessa Liu, Singapore University of Social Sciences, School of Business, Singapore
and
Stan van Ginkel, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, The Netherlands

We value our authors’ contributions, not only in the form of submissions made to the conference but also in the form of reviews. We are convinced, that recognizing the hard work of reviewers will help to further improve the quality of our papers. For this reason, we list all of our reviewers at the beginning of the conference proceedings book.

With the Outstanding Paper Award – the “Jože Award” – named after Professor Emeritus Jože Gričar, the founder of Bled eConference, we recognize papers that make a difference. The Bled community is special because it comprises both academics and practitioners. The community wants contributions that make a difference, and whose significance they can grasp.

2020 „Jože“ Outstanding Paper Award went to the following authors and their paper:

Do you know if I’m real? An experiment to benchmark human recognition of  AI-generated faces
Stijn Kas, Thomas Hes, Brian Jansen & Ruben Post, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Institute for ICT, Utrecht, The Netherlands

We congratulate awarded authors and reviewers!

Conference Session was concluded with presentations of journals associated with Bled eConference and opportunities they offer to conference authors. We would like to thank editors and representatives of journals who associate with our conference and decided to join the conference session:

  • Electronic Markets – The International Journal of Networked Business
  • International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology
  • International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations
  • Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research
  • Journal of International Technology and Information Management
  • Electronic Commerce Research