HotSoft

Oh Agile: so ever-changing. In Chicago this year, huge attendance and huge industry involvement in this bad year for conferences. More diverse than ever, UX, Kanban, Real Options, a real bazaar of ideas for the new in making software happen. Buzzy yet familiar. New faces and old friends. The UX stream organized by Angela Martin and Lane Halley was really mainstream this year, and the closing keynote by Jared Spool still took focus on the Agile-UX potential. Angela and I also presented two papers based on her thesis work about the customer role in XP, and I presented tutorials on Activity Theory and on the role of culture in software development practices. Busy busy! Next year at Opryland. Robert Biddle

ISSNet is an NSERC strategic network on computer security. Each year, a week long summer school is organized for members of the network. This first year, it was held at the École Polytechnique de Montréal from August 2nd to August 7th. It is an opportunity for ISSNet researchers and students across the country to get to know each other, discuss on-going research, and learn about various security topics. Each day, in-class and hands-on lab sessions were taught by instructors from participating universities on subjects like experimental security research, phishing, and network device and protocol abuse. Two members of our lab, Robert Biddle and Sonia Chiasson, co-presented a one-day workshop on usable security and HCI methodologies with Kirstie Hawkey from UBC.  Students from our lab found that the week-long summer school was “cool and seriously informative”.