Thursday, July 07, 2011

WESOA 2011 CFP - Cyprus!

Have again this year happily agreed to work the program committee for wesoa, the always useful workshop attached to icsoc. This year, wesoa will be in Cyprus, which should make my attendance a bit more challenging than last year's event in San Francisco...

CALL FOR PAPERS

WESOA 2011

7th INT. WORKSHOP ON ENGINEERING SERVICE ORIENTED APPLICATIONS

Associated with ICSOC 2011
Dec. 5th 2011, Paphos, Cyprus
http://www.wesoa.org/

Paper Submission Due: September 15th 2011

OBJECTIVES
==========

Many of today's large-scale software projects in the area of distributed
systems and especially enterprise IT adopt service-oriented software
architecture design patterns and enabling technologies. For these
projects, availability of sound software engineering principles,
methodology and tool support is of utmost importance. However,
traditional software engineering approaches are not fully appropriate
for the development of service-oriented applications. The limitations of
traditional methods in the context of service-oriented computing have
led to the emergence of Software Service Engineering (SSE) as a
specialist discipline, but research in this area is still ongoing and
many open issues remain. There is a need for research community and
industry practitioners to develop comprehensive engineering principles,
methodologies and tool support for the entire software development
lifecycle (SDLC) for service-oriented applications. The WESOA 2011
workshop is the seventh in a series of workshops that focus on the
specific aspects of SSE.

The theme of this edition of the WESOA workshop, aligned with the ICSOC
2011 focus on Cloud Computing, is exploration of the synergies between
SSE, Cloud Computing and Service Mashups. In particular, with the lack
of concrete SSE methodologies and approaches the future focus of
combining SSE, Cloud Computing and Service Mashups is as exciting as it
is potentially dangerous. There are risks of providing end-users with
powerful compositional tools to create new service-based applications
without rigorous engineering control mechanisms. This area provides a
strong candidate for future research for quality assurance in SSE. We
especially encourage papers that address the combination of these topic
areas.

Our aim is to facilitate exchange and evolution of ideas on SSE topics
across multiple disciplines as well as to encourage participation of
both researchers and practitioners from academia and industry. In
particular, such collaboration shall be fostered by means of a highly
interactive and fast-paced workshop format with invited speakers. We
also intend to hold a discussion panel on the theme of the workshop to
encourage ideas for future research.

GENERAL TOPICS
==============

WESOA 2011 encourages a multidisciplinary perspective and welcomes
papers that address general or domain-specific challenges of SSE.
Workshop topics of interest include, but are not limited to the
following:

- Software service development lifecycle methodologies & processes
- Distributed & collaborative software service development
- Service-oriented reference models & frameworks
- Architectural styles & standards for software service systems
- Management & governance of SSE projects
- Models, languages, methods for service-oriented analysis & design
- Costing, valuation & quality metrics of software service design
- Requirements-engineering for software service systems
- Service-oriented business process modeling & management
- SSE for cloud computing environments (incl. IaaS, PaaS & SaaS)
- Validation, verification & testing of software service systems
- Service assembly, composition and aggregation models & languages
- Model-driven SOA & service systems development
- Reverse engineering of software service systems
- Tool support for software service engineering
- Case studies & best practices of service-oriented development
- SEE for context-awareness & mobile devices

IMPORTANT DATES
===============

- Paper Submission Due: September 15th, 2011
- Notification of Acceptance: October 23th, 2011
- Camera-Ready Copy Due: about November 7th, 2011
- Workshop Date: December 5th, 2011

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
=======================

Authors are invited to submit original, previously unpublished research
papers. Papers should be written in English and must not exceed 10
pages, strictly following Springer LNCS style including all text,
references, appendices, and figures. Please, submit papers via the WESOA
conference management tool (see WESOA website) in PDF format. For
formatting instructions and templates see the Springer Web page:

http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by members of the international
program committee. Paper acceptance will be based on originality,
significance, technical soundness, and clarity of presentation. Accepted
papers will be included in the workshop proceedings, and circulated to
participants prior to the event. Workshop proceedings will be published
by Springer-Verlag (under negotiation).

At least one author of an accepted paper must register and participate
in the workshop. Registration is subject to the terms, conditions and
procedure of the main ICSOC conference to be found on their website:
http://www.icsoc.org/


ORGANISING COMMITTEE
====================

- George Feuerlicht, Prague University of Economics, CZ
- Winfried Lamersdorf, University of Hamburg, DE
- Guadalupe Ortiz, University of Extremadura, ES
- Christian Zirpins, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE

- Invited PC Chair: Howard Foster, City University London, GB

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (to be confirmed)
===================

- Sudhir Agarwal, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE
- Marco Aiello, University of Groningen, NL
- Djamal Benslimane, LIRIS, FR
- Sami Bhiri, DERI Galway, IE
- Alena Buchalcevova, Prague University of Economics, CZ
- Robert Castaneda, CustomWare, AU
- AnisCharfi, SAP Research CEC Darmstadt, DE
- Jen-Yao Chung, IBM T.J. Watson Research, US
- Oscar Corcho, University of Manchester, GB
- Vincenzo D'andrea, University of Trento, IT
- Florian Daniel, University of Trento, IT
- Valeria de Castro, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, ES
- Keith Duddy, Queensland University of Technology, AU
- Schahram Dustdar, Technical University of Vienna, AT
- Paul Greenfield, CSIRO, AU
- Birgit Hofreiter, Hochschule Lichtenstein, LI
- Dimka Karastoyanova, University of Stuttgart, DE
- Rannia Khalaf, IBM watson Research, US
- Agnes Koschmieder, University of Karlsruhe, DE
- Mark Little, Red Hat, UK
- E. Michael Maximilien, IBM Almaden Research, US
- Massimo Mecella, Univ. Roma LA SAPIENZA, IT
- Daniel Moldt, University of Hamburg, DE
- Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks, US
- CesarePautasso, Universitz of Lugano, CH
- Greg Pavlik, Oracle, US
- Pierluigi Plebani, Politecnico di Milano, I
- Franco Raimondi, University College London, GB
- Wolfgang Reisig, Humboldt-University Berlin, DE
- Norbert Ritter, University of Hamburg, DE
- Colette Rolland, University of Paris, FR
- Willem-Jan van den Heuvel, Tilburg University, NL
- Jim Webber, ThoughtWorks, AU
- Olaf Zimmermann, IBM Research Zrich, CH

If you have further queries please email to the workshop chairs on:
chairs wesoa.org

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Japanese Disaster Aid

Latest from the New York Times.

Please consider giving relief aid to Japan for the worst disaster since the second world war. Appended is a list of relief agencies accepting donations for Japanese relief work compiled by the Associated Press:

U.S. organizations accepting donations to assist Japan included:

Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA)

Donations: 800-424-ADRA (2372)

Donations address: ADRA International, 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring MD 20904

Website: http://www.adra.org

All Hands Volunteers

Donations: 919-830-3573

Donations address: PO Box 546, Carlisle MA 01741

Website: http://www.hands.org/donate/japan-tsunami

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Donations: 212-687-6200

Donations address: 132 E. 43rd St PO Box 530, New York NY 10017

Website: http://jdc.org

American Red Cross

Donations: 1-800-RED-CROSS

Donations address: PO Box 37243, Washington DC 20013

Website: http://www.redcross.org

AmeriCares

Donations: 203-658-9500

Donations address: 88 Hamilton Ave, Stamford CT 06902

Website: http://americares.org

Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT)

Donations: 301-738-7122

Donations address: AMURT, 2502 Lindley Ter, Rockville MD 20850

Website: http://amurt.us

Baptist World Alliance/Baptist World Aid

Donations: 703-790-8980

Donations address: 405 N. Washington St, Falls Church VA 22046

Website: http://www.bwanet.org

Brother's Brother Foundation

Donations: 412-321-3160

Donations address: 1200 Galveston Ave, Pittsburgh PA 15233

Website: http://brothersbrother.org

Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation

Donations: 1-888-989-8244

Donations address: Tzu Chi USA HQ, 1100 S Valley Center Ave, San Dimas CA 91773

Website: http://www.us.tzuchi.org/usa/home.nsf/other/donateCharity

Catholic Relief Services

Donations: 1-877-HELP-CRS

Donations address: PO Box 17090, Baltimore MD 21203-7090

Website: http://crs.org

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

Donations: 800-55-CRWRC

Donations address: CRWRC, 2850 Kalamazoo Ave SE, Grand Rapids MI 49560-0600

Website: http://www.crwrc.org

Church World Service

Donations: 1-800-297-1516

Donations address: PO Box 968, Elkhart IN 46515

Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org

Direct Relief International

Donations: 805-964-4767

Donations address: 27 S. La Patera Ln, Santa Barbara CA 93117

Website: http://www.DirectRelief.org

Giving Children Hope

Donations: 714-523-4454

Donations address: 8332 Commonwealth Ave, Buena Park CA 90621

Website: http://gchope.org

Habitat for Humanity International

Donations: 1-800-Habitat

Donations address: 270 Peachtree St NW Suite 1300, Atlanta GA 30303-1263

Website: http://habitat.org

International Medical Corps

Donations: 800-481-4462

Donations address: 1919 Santa Monica Blvd Suite 400, Santa Monica CA 90404

Website: http://internationalmedicalcorps.org

International Rescue Committee

Donations: 1-877-REFUGEE (733-8433)

Donations address: 122 E. 42nd St, New York NY 10168

Website: http://www.rescue.org

Mercy Corps

Donations: 800-852-2100

Donations address: Dept. NR, PO Box 2669, Portland OR 97208

Website: https://www.mercycorps.org/donate/japan

Operation Blessing

Donations: 800-730-2537

Donations address: 977 Centerville Tpke, Virginia Beach VA 23463

Website: http://www.operationblessing.org

Relief International

Donations: 310-478-1200

Donations address: 5455 Wilshire Blvd Suite 1280, Los Angeles CA 90036

Website: http://www.ri.org

Save the Children

Donations: 1-800-728-3843

Donations address: 54 Wilton Rd, Westport CT 06880

Website: http://savethechildren.org

World Vision, U.S.

Donations: 1-800-777-5777

Donations address: Federal Way, WA 98063

Website: http://www.worldvision.org

Source: InterAction, www.interaction.org

I'll note also IOCC, who we've had personal contact with and know their work is reliable:

Website: http://www.iocc.org

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Money for nothing

A few years back I participated in a study on early stage investing in Russia - motivated by the fact that there is a lot of money staged by both the Russian government and Russian investors. What's become even more intriguing since then is the flow of Russian money to Silicon Valley investments - DST-Facebook investments getting the most attention recently. These high value deals are definitely bold and working - for now.

The latest news is the super cheap angel funding that Yuri Milner is engineering. Whether this is sustainable long term is hard to say, but this will surely shake things up around here for the foreseeable future. One thing is certain: the already hot startup environment just got a lot hotter.

Feedly: the iPhone just got a lot better

For several years, I've been using Feedly on my personal computer to quickly browse across lots of content from news feeds, blogs, and other sites of interest. It's been a very handy way to keep up on information from lots of sources without getting bogged down - scan lots of feed titles and previews and dive in on items that seem interesting.

But my usage patterns with Feedly have been uneven - primarily because I don't have much time to sit and scan on my pc - I'm either doing meetings, working on documents or trying to stay on top of email during the day. My "dead time" tends to be "in between" times like running between office buildings. That's when I'll check news feeds to see what's going on in industry or the world. Typically, it means manually browsing to reliable sites - which is not all that convenient.

Well, now Feedly is available on the iPhone and things just got a lot better for me. I can manage all my feeds through the desktop, but take advantage of very quickly scanning information over hundreds of sources. It's now virtually the only iPhone app that I use regularly and I don't lose any time. In fact, since I've been playing with it, I really haven't needed to open Safari at all. My only "wish" for Feedly is that the digest would show the latest feed entry for each source by title, which would save me some wasted navigation. For me, this is all about getting the right information to me quickly.

A seriously great app that bridges all my normal working environments seamlessly. Highly recommended - thanks Edwin and company for pulling this off!