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 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.

History

In 2000, John Kopanas, then an undergraduate student in the new software engineering program 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 program 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. By 2007, the number of attendees had grown to over 350 students and professionals. The number of keynote speeches had also increased to five and 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, 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 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, 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 Head First Series, Co-Winner for a 15th Annual Software Development Jolt and Productivity Award, founder of Javaranch.com and blogger at 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 Coding Horror.
• Dr. Jeffrey Ullman, Author, Dragon Book, Professor, Stanford University.
• 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.

CUSEC 2009: Software (R)evolutions, January 22nd–24th, 2009 Montreal, Quebec

• Avi Bryant, Creator of Seaside.
• Dan Ingalls, Designer of the language Smalltalk.
• Giles Bowkett, Creator of Archaeopteryx.
• Richard Stallman, creator of the GNU Project and pioneer of Copyleft.
• Leah Culver, co-creator of Pownce.
• Francis Hwang, founder of Ruby-NYC, software engineer at Diversion Media.

CUSEC 2010: 20 GOTO 10, January 21st-23rd, 2010 Montreal, Quebec

• Matt Knox, Evil Genius, Twitter.
• Reginald Braithwaite: "Beautiful Failure"
• Gregory V. Wilson, Professor at University of Toronto: "Bits of Evidence: What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True"
• Douglas Crockford, Senior JavaScript Architect at Yahoo!
• Thomas Ptacek, co-founder of Matasano Security.
• Jacqui Maher: "Saving the World with Ruby" (slides (pdf))

CUSEC 2011: Hello, world, January 13th-15rd, 2011 Montreal, Quebec

• Drew Conway
• Yehuda Katz
• Michael Lopp, author of Rands in Repose blog
• Mike Shaver, Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation
• Julie Steele

External links

• CUSEC 2006
• CUSEC 2007
• CUSEC 2008
• CUSEC 2009
• CUSEC 2010
• CUSEC 2011
• CUSEC 2011 Coverage in Technophilic Magazine