Conferences, Workshops and Call for Papers

15th Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group

For the first time, PPIG will be co-located with the Empirical Assessment of Software Engineering conference.

As I am sure you are aware, the annual PPIG workshop is a forum in which researchers concerned with cognitive factors in software engineering can present and discuss recent results, findings and developments.

A feature of the PPIG workshops has been their openness to a wide spectrum of concerns related to programming and software engineering, from the design of programming languages to communication issues in software teams, and from computing education to high-performance professional practice.

Similarly, PPIG entertains a broad spectrum of research approaches, from theoretical perspectives drawing on psychological theory to empirical perspectives grounded in real-world experience.

Despite its name, PPIG aims to bring together people working in a variety of disciplines and to break down cross-disciplinary barriers.

Two guest speakers have kindly agreed to attend:

• Dr. Chris Hundhausen
  Information and Computer Sciences Department, University of Hawaii
  Dr. Hundhausen has research interests in computer-based visualisation systems, end-user computing, and collaborative software engineering.

• Prof. Keith Stenning
  Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh
  Professor Stenning's research interests lie in representation, and the learning of formal knowledge and its deployment.

The EASE-invited speaker is:

• Prof. Anthony Finklestein
  Department of Computer Science, University College London
  Professor Finklestein's research interests lie in software systems engineering, especially requirements engineering, software processes and software architecture.

During the morning of 8 April, and at intervals during the rest of the workshop, PPIG and EASE will be hosting activities aimed at research students from both communities. Both PPIG and EASE have always welcomed research students; this is a great community for contacts and discussion.

Further announcements regarding PPIG and EASE will be made on the mailing list.

Agile Development Conference

Agile Development is a conference aimed at exploring the human and social issues involved in software development and the consequences of the agile approach to developing software. A number of techniques and processes have been identified in the use of agile approaches, and we expect more to be found.

The purpose of this conference is to examine the proposed processes and techniques, to report the outcome of studies on human issues affecting the speed and quality of the development, and to collect field reports from projects using agile approaches.

The social-technical goal of the conference is to increase the exchange on these issues between researchers and practitioners, between managers and developers, between social specialists and computer specialists.

The Agile Development Conference will be held between June 25 and June 28 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

More information about the conference can be found at Agile Development Conference

IEEE Symposium on End-User and Domain-Specific Programming

The Symposium on End-User and Domain-Specific Programming is the premier international forum on the theory, design and application of languages for end users.

End-User programming emphasises the needs of users who are not professional programmers, but must engage in some form of programming to accomplish their tasks.

We distinguish domain-specific languages from general purpose languages in that they address the needs of users in a particular field. Both of these research topics emphasise the human requirements of programming tools.

Research in this area almost always requires evaluation - either analytical or empirical - to support claims of benefits to be gained from prototype systems or theoretical research. Empirical studies of programming are particularly welcome at EUP'03.

Specific topics of interest include:

• Analytical investigations of the needs of end-users
• Studies of contexts where domain-specific programming is needed
• Descriptions of novel programming languages and environments
• Empirical studies of end-user or domain-specific programming
• Evaluation of commercial or research programming systems

The symposium will take place in Auckland, New Zealand between October 28 and 31. It's a long way, but organisers promise to make local costs so low that even with the airfare, it won't be much more expensive than attending conferences in the USA.

NSF funding is anticipated to fund travel by a few graduate student researchers working on certain types of end-user programming.

More information can be found by visiting the workshop website

International Workshop on Program Comprehension

IWPC 2003, 11th International Workshop on Program Comprehension will be held between May 10 and May 11 in Portland, Oregon.

More information about the event and the forthcoming programme can be found by visiting the IWPC website

Workshop on Expertise in Design

The forthcoming Workshop on Expertise in Design, is to be held in Sydney, Australia, between 17 and 19 October 2003.

The workshop will focus on what we understand about the nature and practice of expertise in design across all domains of design practice.

More information can be found by visiting the workshop website

Computer Science Education Journal

Moti will be editing the March 2004 issue of the journal Computer Science Education, which will be a special issue devoted to CSE in high schools. Key topics include:

• The pedagogy of CS subjects for high school students
• The cognition of CS students in high schools
• Social aspects of teaching and learning CS in high schools
• Technology of CSE in high schools: laboratories, systems, languages, tools

Preference will be given to papers describing empirical experiments or otherwise presenting evidence of experience, and to papers concerning the teaching of 'academic' computer science subjects.

More information about this special issue can be seen by viewing the web-based call for papers.