The 4th International Conference on Global Software Engineering

ICGSE'09 on Twitter

2009-07-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

The conference started yesterday with workshops, tutorials and a doctoral symposium.

More about what's going on today, on the first day of the main conference, can be found on Twitter.
Hashtag: #icgse
We have several twitterers around, but they all seem to have gone quiet.

Accommodation at Dromroe Village

2009-06-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

We were announced that has been a decision taken to close the Cappavilla student village over the summer (for economy reasons).

We were invited to choose between the other two student villages, Thomond and Dromroe. Gabriela Avram (the local organisation chair) and Miriam O'Riordan(the student volunteers coordinator) together with Dolores Hanly, the business development manager of Limerick Conference and Sports Park ,visited both villages yesterday and decided to host our guests in Dromroe village, which is the closest to the buildings where the conference is taking place.

This means you won't have to walk over any of our beautiful bridges to get to your apartments, but if the weather is good, you'll get the chance to do it anyhow.

In Dromroe, the buildings are named after trees (they have birds names in Thomond and flowers names in Cappavilla). Each apartment consists of six bedrooms with double beds, each of them with its own bathroom en suite, a comfortable living area, kitchen and TV.
The cost of a room is 58€ per night, and a breakfast basket is brought to the apartments every evening. If you want to share the apartment with specific colleagues, don't forget to mention their names on the booking form.

The village has a Village Centre with a large arts space and two smaller meeting rooms, a convenience store, a self-service launderette.

Ciaran's Café, a famous vegetarian restaurant, is located in the village; besides the excellent vegetarian dishes, they also serve freshly-squeezed vegetable and fruit juices and good coffee.

The village reception can help you get a taxi if you're planning to go into town or you need one for getting to the airport.

Check the map below for a better idea on locations and distances:

A different insight from our campus

2009-05-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

The UL photo society has a fantastic website, where they share some of their members' work. The pictures are taken inside and around the university. This particular galler focuses on wildlife.

Look at these fantastic baby herons, and check the wildlife gallery for more!

Hopefully you'll get the time to take a walk around the campus yourself when you'll be here, especially if you'll be staying in the Cappavilla student village and will have to cross the Living Bridge at least two times a day!

Lero Industry Event on Global Software Development

2009-05-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to promote ICGSE'09 to the Irish industry audience, Enterprise Ireland and Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, teamed up to host an industry event relating to Global Software Development. A previous similar event took place in March 2008.

The event was hosted by Enterprise Ireland in the East Point Business Park in Dublin. It started with an introduction on Lero- The Irish Software Engineering Research Centre given by Dr. Jack Downey, followed by a line-up of 3 speakers.

The first presentation was given by the head of Lero’s Practices, Processes and Methods research area, Dr Ita Richardson. Ita’s talk focused on how global software development processes need firstly to be integrated into existing software process standards, such as Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) and the International Standards Organization’s ISO15504. Then these process standards need to be reviewed in the context of the regulated industries, such as medical devices, where organizations such the U.S. Food and Drug Administration insist on traceability throughout the development of products. However, while they insist that the standards applied to hardware and medicines be also applied to software, they have not indicated how this is to be done. Adapting the existing software process standards seems a pragmatic approach to take.

Following Ita, was Dr Gabriela Avram, whose research into the social and cultural aspects of Global Software Development has drawn her attention to the role of collaborative practices such as informal communication, socialisation and cultural mediation. She spoke about the various field sites where she has undertaken research using ethnographic methods. In order to give the audience a better understanding of the kind of problems she focused on, she shared a number of stories illustrating the role of instant messaging, Skype and social networking applications in day-to-day collaboration between distributed team members. She concluded with a number of recommendations, emphasizing the role of direct and frequent communication between sites, flexibility in organisational practices and cultural mediation.

Finally, Vikas Sahni of Softedge Systems provided the keynote address. This industry counterpoint reinforced what the academic speakers had presented by recounting how Softedge has been successful in its Global Software Developments by starting small and using an agile iterative approach. However, he stressed the importance of always looking ahead to the next iteration when planning the current one. This allows the architecture to develop in a smoother manner. Like Gabriela, Vikas supported all means of communicating, placing particular emphasis on Skype.

In all, 29 people attended the event, an even mix of managers and developers. In conclusion, Jack Downey and Ita Richardson spoke about the forthcoming ICGSE'09 conference at the University of Limerick, draw the attention to the workshops and tutorials, and gave the audience details about and the keynotes and the main themes of the papers selected for the conference .

A collaboration platform for the GSE community

2009-04-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Lero- the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre- is now hosting a collaboration platform meant to bring together researchers and practitioners with an interest in the Global Software Engineering domain.

The ICGSE wiki is meant to serve as a pointer to events, resources, individuals and research groups connected to the Global Software Engineering topic. Please bookmark the page, as it will not be very easy to remember later on.

You are invited to add your own name to the people list, and also add links to webpages of your group, your projects, your papers/presentations/podcasts/videos, or any other resources you will find appropriate.

You can also add events related to the GSE topic.

For those of you who are not very familiar with wikis, please have a look at the MediaWiki User Help page.

We also created a Google Group for the use of the emerging community around the ICGSE conference. You can join the mailing list by visiting this page and using the "Join this group" button on the right.

We believe that both the collaboration platform and the mailing list could be useful tools for preparing the ICGSE'09 in Limerick and for keeping in touch afterwards. So please join in!

Registration is now open!

2009-04-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

ICGSE'09 registration is handled by IEEE. You canfill in the IEEE conference registration form online OR complete the printed copy of the registration form and email it/fax it to IEEE together with your payment details.

We kindly require you to confirm your participation in the social events, in order to get the numbers right! This can be done through the local arrangements form put together by Limerick Travel, our local partner.

You can book your accommodation through the same local arrangements form as well.

Alternatively, you can download the booking form as a Word document and email it to the address indicated on the form.

Last, but not least, please check if you need a visa for visiting Ireland. You can do so on the site of the Irish Government Department of Foreign Affairs.

In case you need to apply for a visa, we will issue you a letter of invitation to the conference upon request, but only after registering for the conference. On the registration page, you will find a form for requesting a letter of invitation.

Accommodation at Castletroy Park Hotel

2009-04-07T23:48:00.000-07:00

The Castletroy Park Hotel is a 4 stars hotel at walking distance from the University campus.

The special rate offered to the conference attendees is 95€ per night for a single and 120€ per night for a double room. These rates include breakfast.

Situated in the immediate proximity of the University of Limerick campus, the Castletroy Park Hotel offers excellent accommodation and leisure ammenities.

Accommodation at Cappavilla

2009-04-07T23:35:00.001-07:00

The Cappavilla student village is situated on campus and will provide excellent accommodation at a reasonable rate during the conference.

The village is situated on the Clare side of the campus, next to the Health Sciences Building.

The rate is 58€ per person per night for a single room in appartments with 2-6 bedrooms with shared facilities.

For more information, please check this page on the Limerick Conference and Sports Park website.

The University of Limerick campus

2009-01-16T01:19:00.001-08:00

You might have seen this text - the HR department uses it whenever it publicizes job vacancies on various mailing lists:

The University of Limerick (UL) with over 11,000 students and 1,300 staff is a young, energetic and enterprising University with a proud record of innovation in education and excellence in research and scholarship. UL is situated on a superb riverside campus of over 130 hectares with the River Shannon as a unifying focal point. Outstanding recreational, cultural and sporting facilities further enhance this exceptional learning and working environment.

But the words are not enough to describe the place. So we thought of adding a few pictures:

This is the Computer Science building, where the main conference will take place.

And this is a view toward the Clare side of the campus - on the other side of the Shannon. What you can guess there is the Health Sciences building, but the focus here was really on the rainbow! No idea if there was any pot of gold at the end of it, we couldn't go searching, we're too busy here preparing the conference!

Why a conference blog?

2008-12-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

The preparation for ICGSE'09 actually started 2 years ago in Munich, when, on behalf of Lero- the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, we first proposed the University of Limerick as the venue for 2009.

In Bangalore in 2008, we started talking about the organization in much more detail, and once returned to Limerick, the actual preparations began.

We're starting now a conference blog, 7 months before the actual conference.

Why a conference blog?!

It might be interesting for the potential participants to get a few glimpses of the preparations.
It can be used for the organisers of the next editions for duplicating what went well, and avoiding what went wrong (hopefully not too many things in this second category!)
It is a handy way to get feedback from the people who attended the previous editions and would like to make suggestions for this year.
It could be a consolation for the ones who won't make it to Limerick, but would like to keep an eye on what happens.

You'll have the chance to read about the venue, the social events, about how to get here, about places to go while in Limerick and, of course, about the famous Irish weather!

And to end this first post, an Irish blessing for all our readers:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand!

May the leprechauns be near you
To spread luck along your way!