Dear Colleagues:
I am just back from a visit to Nashville's Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. With ample space, natural light, and I kid you not-a river running through the middle of the hotel-it will be a stunning venue for the 2019 Industry Studies Conference, being held May 30th-June 1st. Given that abstract submissions are due in just a month, I thought now would be a great time to tell you more about the venue and some of what have in store for the program.
With respect to the venue, you'll need to see it to believe it. Seriously, check out the link above, Google it, or find some pics on our Twitter feed at @industrystudies. However you seek it out, you'll see that there are 14 sit-down eateries on site ranging from Italian to Japanese to steak. And, you might want to bring your family to enjoy the resort and to sample the fare: while you are busy learning from your industry studies colleagues, they can take advantage of the brand new indoor water park (it opened while we were there!), catch a show on site, or take one of the shuttle buses downtown to Music Row.
Speaking of feeding your mind, aside from our usual menu of parallel panels categorized by research track, we are organizing two plenaries that leverage the city's unique industry landscape. One focuses on innovations in healthcare delivery and financing, particularly those developed in Nashville that are now being adopted by systems throughout the country. And, as you can imagine, we would not invite you to Music City without offering you a healthy taste of music and the arts. Towards that end, our local hosts are planning a pre-conference excursion with visits to historic music venues, across a range of music genres (possibilities include: Ryman Auditorium, Bluebird Café, and Jack White's Third Man Records), with time for in-depth conversations with local arts leaders/activists. They are also aiding us in the development of a plenary on evolution and change in the music and creative arts businesses.
One more feature new to this year's conference..."Idea Incubators." Is there a broad topic that you just want to know more about from an interdisciplinary, industry studies perspective? Perhaps you would like to try to better wrap your head around the ways different industries are leveraging artificial intelligence, aiming to achieve social and environmental sustainability, or managing domestic political risk? If so, we ask that you propose a topic along these lines as the basis of an Idea Incubator thematic discussion. Along with the topic, please suggest four questions that you would ask in order to prompt these discussions, as well as any specific individuals that you believe ought to anchor such a discussion. We will do our best to bring these ideas to fruition as the basis for our first set of "Idea Incubators," an idea that we plan to make a regular feature henceforth in our annual conference program. Please submit your "idea incubators" to our Executive Director, Stephanie Rink at stephanie.rink@industrystudies.org.
Remember-the submission deadline for abstracts is January 11th, 2019. Check out the call for papers for further information; it is attached to this email and can also found on our website at https://www.industrystudiesconference.org/call-for-papers.
For proposal questions, please contact either program committee co-chair:
Adam Seth Litwin, Cornell University, aslitwin@cornell.edu
Liz Reynolds, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lbr@mit.edu
For conference details or questions, please contact our executive director:
Stephanie Rink, stephanie.rink@industrystudies.org
I look forward to seeing you in Nashville next year!
Adam Seth Litwin
Program Committee Co-Chair
Industry Studies Association
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Adam Seth Litwin
Cornell University
Ithaca NY
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