I just came back from CUSEC last night, hosted by Carleton University. As could be expected, there were some interesting and less interesting speakers.

Some of my favorites, were J. B. Rainsberger who started off the conference by giving us the straight facts about team projects in school and in the real world. Although I have already worked in companies and have spent lots of time observing how people work (or don’t work) in groups, he really explained his points well. Also, there was Alistair Cockburn who described how software is a “Cooperative Game”. Greg Wilson had a great presentation on using CVS (or basically any type of Version Tracking software) for student assignments. We hope to bring this presentation to Concordia. His presentation not only dealt with the benefits to students but the benefits for markers/professors as well. Also to note, Dan Berry gave a surprisingly good presentation on “Is Emotion Relevant to Requirements Engineering?”

Concordia showed a strong presence by its delegates as well as multiple presenters who did a great job at representing themselves and the school .

On the downside, there were two presentations that were cancelled, including Tony Bailetti, a keynote. I am very curious to see what happened with that guy (he was even from Carleton University). Other criticisms include a moderator for the panel discussion who did not know how to moderate (You are a Moderator, you Do Not Speak and give your opinion!) as well as lack of attention to detail. Also there were “super cool” hotel parties that were completely disrespectful to any other guests that were in the surrounding rooms.

Slides are available at Protose.org which describes itself as “Keeping you up to date with everything software engineering!”

CUSEC 2006: The plan seems for it to be held in Montreal by a diverse group of individuals. I’m pretty sure I will end up having some degree of involvement in this. In the worst case, I will at least attend the conference. All CS/SOEN people should attend!