Swinging at ICSE

ith ICSE in full swing, program chairs Mary Jean Harrold and Wilhelm Schäfer stopped by the WOW Press room for a quick chat.  
WOW: What led up to ICSE’s debut in Canada? 
Harrold: There has been a group of people working on having ICSE in Canada for nearly ten years. ICSE is required to be in North America every other year, but this is the first time it’s been in Canada.
WOW: Why was Toronto chosen?
Schäfer: I guess there were two things. First was the local industry, which was very supportive. Second was the interest from several Canadian universities. Toronto worked out very well; it’s a great place to have the first Canadian ICSE.
WOW: How were the program tracks reviewed?
Harrold: Last year it was suggested that it is very difficult for a single committee to review and assess papers on education, case studies, and technical papers. So this year we had separate committees for each track. Wilhelm and I coordinated them all; we ran the technical program, but the other committees were run by other co-chairs. I think that was a good move, because the people selecting papers could focus on the quality of a single track.
WOW: How were the program tracks selected?
Harrold: We always have tracks for papers; ICSE is built around the papers. Typically we select between 40 and 50, which gives us two tracks. Then you try to build a program from that. We decided to add an education track, plus tracks for Challenges and Achievements in SE (CHASE) and Invited Industry Presentations (IIP).
WOW: What is new at ICSE this year?
Schäfer: We tried to create something innovative. The CHASE track is an outgrowth of the Future of Software Engineering (FoSE) track held last year. The goal is to demonstrate the impact that software engineering has had on industry. It looks at topics from the perspectives of academia and industry, and tries to push software engineering forward a little bit, and assess the impact it has or hasn’t had. We would like to see it continued.
WOW: Why do the session titles sound so much more seductive this year?
Schäfer: That was a special effort done the night of CASCON last fall. We tried to make the titles reflect what the sessions are about, to tell you what is new, what is interesting, and what is different from others.
— Scott M. Pike and Ross McKegney