It is with great sadness that we learned about the passing of our dear Professor Rolf T. Wigand, esteemed colleague and dear friend, one of the founding members of the Bled eConference community.

We will always remember Rolf as a truly inspiring professor, colleague, and above all as a great man whose words would always encourage everyone around him to give and achieve their best. We will truly miss our dear friend Rolf. Our thoughts and prayers are with his dear wife Dianne Lux Wigand, also a member of the Bled eConference community.

Obituary

This year’s conference was concluded with Students Bazaar, which for many years has been a Bled eConference Monday afternoon session.
The session was hosted by Students Bazaar Co-chairs Pascal Ravesteijn (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Marijn Plomp (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and jury members Gregor Pipan ( Xlab, Slovenia) and Urban Schrott ( ESET, Ireland).

This year’s participants joined us from Germany (3 teams) and from the Netherlands (1 team). Teams presented 4 very different prototypes listed below:

Smart Postbox Business Case
Simon Bäuerle, Benjamin Buchwald and Dennis Sakacilar
, DHBW Heidenheim, Germany

Greenhouse 4.0
Manuel Remlinger, Felix Schuessler, Matthias Eck and Kerstin Hartung
, DHBW Heidenheim, Germany

Connect the garage with your Smart Home – Smart Garage
Benjamin Dorn, Julian Germani and David Ollmann
, DHBW Heidenheim, Germany

Clarify
Robbert Schuurmans and Simon Parmet
, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Netherlands 

At the end of presentations Bled eConference participants voted for the winning idea and Students Bazaar Co-chairs awarded 2 separate award certificates:

The Jury Award went to:
Greenhouse 4.0
Manuel Remlinger, Felix Schuessler, Matthias Eck and Kerstin Hartung
, DHBW Heidenheim, Germany

And the Public Vote Award went to:
Clarify
Robbert Schuurmans and Simon Parmet
, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Netherlands 

We thank all of the participants and congratulate the winners!

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

On Monday, June 29, 2020, our conference went online for the first time in its history.

Participants were welcomed by conference chair Professor Andreja Pucihar, Ph.D. and Dean of the University of Maribor, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, Professor Iztok Podbregar, Ph.D.

We were honored that the session was once again joined by Professor Emeritus Jože Gričar, Ph.D., who envisioned and founded the Bled eConference back in 1988.

The keynote speech was given by Ms. Violeta Bulc, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Slovenia and former EU Commissioner for Transport, who is nowadays curator of Ecocivilisation initiative, envisioning and planning for more prosperous and sustainable future for everyone, including our planet and all the species.

Despite time differences, the plenary session was joined by 90 participants from more than 20 countries.

Bled eConference team would like to thank each and every one of you who joined us and contributed towards this year’s conference in any way.

We feel honored and humbled by your response. Thank you all!


Our Sunday sessions continued with the PC meeting. Despite the current situation in which many of us are unable to travel, our colleagues from all over the world joined us.

We discussed this year’s conference as well as plans for the next year’s 34th Bled eConference.

Next year we are planning to meet again in our usual location – Bled, Slovenia on June 20 – June 23, 2021.

Next year’s conference theme is Accelerated digital innovation from the crisis.

On Sunday, June 28, 2020, we started our conference sessions with Doctoral Consortium.

We thank our Doctoral Consortium co-chairs Doug Vogel (Harbin Institute of Technology, China), Roger Bons (FOM Hochschule, Germany), and Johan Versendaal (HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and the Open University of the Netherlands, the Netherlands) who provided feedback to Ph.D. students participants.

This year we had participants from Croatia, Slovenia, and the Netherlands.

Ph.D. students who joined the session and their presentations are listed below:

Platformization of Data Sharing: Multi-Party Computation (MPC) as Control Mechanism and its Effect on Firms’ Participation in Data Sharing via Data Marketplaces
Wirawan Agahari
, Delft University of Technology

Motor insurance policies exposure risk assessment
Boris Peršak
, Generali zavarovalnica d.d.

Digital Transformation in Maritime Transport and Seaports
Marija Jović
, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime Studies

Automatic Generation of Test Cases from Use-Case specification using Natural Language Processing
Marko Pribisalić
, University of Rijeka, Department of Informatics

We sincerely hope that students received valuable feedback that will help them to continue their research.

Dear Bled eConference participants,

today we sent emails with links and instructions on how to attend the online conference to all registered participants.

If you didn’t receive an email with the link for the online event, please register again.

Registration is still open at https://domino.fov.uni-mb.si/Bled2020.nsf/Registration2020?OpenForm

All newly registered participants can expect to receive a link to the online event in an email on Monday, approximately an hour before the event starts.

If you have any questions, let us know. We are available at bledconference@um.si

Ms. Violeta Bulc, former EU Commissioner for Transport, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, curator of Ecocivilisation is a 33rd Bled eConference keynote speaker.

“It is a global movement based on global awareness. It has no name, no leader, no coordinated actions. It is emerging from within. More and more of us are feeling it, sensing it, acting upon our inner calling. We know that it is time to live differently. To be more connected to the living world around us. To be in balance with the Planet, the Universe, with ourselves and our fellow humans.”
Violeta Bulc, Curator of Ecocivilisation

Due to the COVID -19 pandemic situation, the Bled eConference, like many other conferences, will be held online for the first time in history.

To enable participation for everyone, the management of our Faculty has decided to enable free of charge participation.

Nevertheless, everybody is required to register for the conference to attend the online sessions.

The conference will take place on Monday, June 29th, 2020.

After registration the URL address of the online event will be sent to your email address.

Registration: https://domino.fov.uni-mb.si/Bled2020.nsf/Registration2020?OpenForm

You can find the conference program here.

Please note that since the conference will be held online, the format will be reduced. There won’t be individual paper presentations, however, conference chairs will present an overview of the tracks, recommend best paper and reviewer award, and present possibilities of cooperation with journals.
The session will offer opportunities to audience to ask questions and contribute to the discussion.

Conference proceedings will be published before the conference and will be available through our website.

We are looking forward to meeting you soon,
Bled eConference team