Evolving Roles and New Faces

Evolving Roles and New Faces

It is with a sense of great excitement and grave responsibility that I assume the role of editor-in-chief of the e-Service Journal from my predecessors, Laku Chidambaram and Carol Saunders. I am genuinely honored to follow in the steps of such valued colleagues. Even though the journal is only in its second volume of published papers, Laku first conceived of the idea about three years ago and has worked tremendously hard to realize the vision. Many people helped along the way, but I owe Laku a special debt of thanks for involving me early on. Laku's concept of the journal was entrepreneurial and forward- thinking, and I hope to retain that spirit. We are indeed fortunate to have both Laku and Carol continuing their involvement with the journal. Laku has assumed the role of Executive Editor and Carol has become a Senior Editor. Sincere thanks to both of them for past and future contributions.

We also owe a special thank you to Bob Zmud, who served as the first Executive Editor of the journal, providing invaluable counsel in its early phase. We are delighted that Bob has agreed to continue his affiliation with the journal as a member of the Distinguished Board of Advisors, and we look forward to his continuing counsel in that capacity.

There are a number of additional changes taking place in the editorial board, as we introduce a natural rotation in its membership. Sincerest thanks to Henk Sol, who served as Senior Editor and is now moving to the Distinguished Board of Advisors. We look forward to his continuing support. We also wish to thank the following Associate Editors who are rotating off the board: Kim Viborg Andersen of Copenhagen Business School, Tad Hogg of Xerox PARC, Byungtae Lee of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Simha Magal of Grand Valley State University, and Ash Soni of Indiana University. We are grateful to the contribution that these scholars have made to the journal.

We take particular pleasure in announcing that Bernard Tan of the National University of Singapore will be joining the board as a Senior Editor. Bernard's contributions to the field of information systems are well known, and we are honored that he is going to play a major part in the journal's future. We will have additional announcements in the next issue, but we do not want to forget our warm thanks to the continuing members of the board.

The journal has been fortunate to have the help of talented and dedicated staff. Sincere thanks to Henry Croes for his timely and effective work as Assistant Editor for the journal. We want to welcome to Dr. Linda Wild of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, who has assumed the job of Assistant Editor. We also thank Kate Caras and Pam Wilson of the Indiana University Press for their continuing support and hard work in all the activities that happen in the background but are essential for getting us in press. Finally, thank you to the Center for the Management of Information Technology here at the University of Nebraska at Omaha for taking on the sponsorship of the journal.

This column reads somewhat like an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony, and I can already hear the orchestra gently starting to play, to indicate that I may have gone on too long. But I am sure that each of you appreciates how many people it takes to start and maintain such an amazing effort. I have worked in a variety of editorial capacities and learned from each one. The lesson that stands out as the most important one is that efforts such as this are first and foremost collaborative efforts. We ourselves are the community that breathes life to the journal. We contribute to it, we evaluate its submissions, we read the published outcomes, and we reference its papers. I look forward to fruitful and spirited collaboration with each of you in this...