Canadian University Software Engineering Conference

The Canadian University Software Engineering Conference (formerly Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference), or CUSEC, is a conference held yearly around mid-January at various cities of Canada since 2002. The conference promotes software engineering around a unique theme each year. Its audience is mostly the undergraduate students from different parts of Canada, with occasional participants from the academia or from the industry. Keynote speeches, tutorials, and corporate and academic presentations are given by the top figures and personalities in software engineering. In Canada, it is one of the most well known technological conferences among the academia and the industry, and an important development in the still young and rapidly evolving discipline of software engineering.

History

In 2000, John Kopanas, then an undergraduate student in the new software engineering programme at Concordia University, envisioned the creation of a conference "by students, for students" in the field of software engineering. He and fellow students in the same programme then put together plans and set them in motion. The result of their effort was the first edition of the conference, CUSEC 2002, which took place in Montreal, lasted 2 days, and attracted an audience of over 150 students from across Canada.

Witnessing the success of the first conference, Kopanas decided to continue the tradition and expand the conference. Today, in 2007, the number of attendees has grown to over 350 students and professionals. The number of keynote speeches has also increased to five while the conference now lasts three days instead of two.

CUSEC editions and keynote speakers

* CUSEC 2002: Montreal, Quebec
** Timothy Lethbridge
** Peter Grogono, Professor and Associate Chair, Concordia University
** Morven Gentleman
** Ahmed Seffah
** Jacob Slonin

* CUSEC 2003: "Adapting the Process", January 16th-18th, 2003, Montreal, Quebec
** Kent Beck, Founder and Director, [http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/ Three Rivers Institute] and creator of Extreme Programming
** Peter Grogono, Professor & Software Engineering Program Director, Department of Computer Science, Concordia University
** Hal Helms, Co-Creator of [http://www.fusebox.org/ Fusebox]
** Dr. Philippe Krutchen, Director of Process Development (RUP), Rational Software
** Craig Larman

* CUSEC 2004: "Ensuring Quality", January 15th-17th, 2004, Montreal, Quebec
** Pierre N. Robillard, Chair of Computer and Software Engineering Department, École Polytechnique de Montréal
** Joel Spolsky, Founder, [http://www.fogcreek.com/ Fog Creek Software]
** Lionel C. Briand, Canada Research Chair in Software Quality Engineering, Carleton University
** Krzysztof Czarnecki, Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo
** David Lorge Parnas, Professor of Software Engineering, SFI Fellow and Director of the Software Quality Research Laboratory, University of Limerick

* CUSEC 2005: "Thinking Outside the Cubicle", January 14th-16th, 2005, Ottawa, Ontario
** Branislav Selic, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Rational Software Canada
** Alistair Cockburn, President, Humans and Technology
** Alan Wassyng, Associate Professor, McMaster University
** J. B. Rainsberger
** Gregory V. Wilson, University of Toronto

* CUSEC 2006: "Engineering Useful Software", January 19th-21st, 2006, Montreal, Quebec
** Chad Fowler, Author, "My Job Went To India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book)"
** Peter Grogono, Professor and Associate Chair, Concordia University
** Connie Heitmeyer, Head of the Software Engineering Section of the Naval Research Laboratory's Center for High Assurance Computer Systems and Chief Designer of the Software Cost Reduction toolset
** Kathy Sierra, Co-Creator of [http://headfirst.oreilly.com/ Head First Series] , Co-Winner for a 15th Annual Software Development Jolt and Productivity Award, founder of [http://www.javaranch.com/ Javaranch.com] and blogger at [http://headrush.typepad.com Creating Passionate Users] .

* CUSEC 2007: "Designing for the Future", January 18th-20th, 2007 Montreal, Quebec
** Dave Thomas, Author, "The Pragmatic Programmer"
** Pete McBreen, President, Software Craftsmanship Inc.
** Ralph E. Johnson, Research Associate professor, University of Illinois
** James R. Cordy, Professor and Director, School of Computing, Queen's University
** Venkat Subramanian, Founder of Agile Development, Inc. and Adjunct Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies CS, University of Houston

* CUSEC 2008: "Making it Fun", January 17th-19th, 2008 Montreal, Quebec
** Jeff Atwood, Founder of [http://www.codinghorror.com/ Coding Horror]
** Dr. Jeffrey Ullman, Author, Dragon Book, Professor, Stanford University
** [http://www.zedshaw.com Zed Shaw] , Author of the Mongrel web server
** Tim Bray, Co-invented XML 1.0, Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems
** Jon Udell, Author, Information Architect, Software Developer, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft
** Peter Grogono, Professor and Associate Chair, Concordia University

External links

* [http://cusec2006.soen.info/ CUSEC 2006]
* [http://2007.cusec.net/ CUSEC 2007]
* [http://2008.cusec.net/ CUSEC 2008]
* [http://2009.cusec.net/ CUSEC 2009]