Conference Updates: ECSA, ICSA, SummerSoC, EuroPLoP 202x

Difficult times for conference organizers… ECSA 2020 and Microservices 2020, two events I helped organize in 2020, took place online. What is happening in 2021?

ECSA 2021 and SummerSoC 2021

The European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) 2021 is a virtual event. The the industry track is described here, the research track here. I co-authored a paper in the industry track and served as chair of one research paper session (see Agenda).

Virtual SummerSoC 2021 issued its CFP here. Our first paper on API refactoring was accepted and presented at this conference.

EuroPLoP 2021

EuroPLoP took place online too, see the Call for Papers. The deadline for for initial paper submission was February 18, 2021. I contributed to two papers on mining API design patterns, joint work with researchers from Vienna, Austria and Lugano, Switzerland.

ICSA 2021

The IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2021) is an online event (March 22-26, 2021). I was a member of the PCs of the tracks Software Architecture in Practice (SAIP) Track and Technical (Research) Track, and I contributed to one accepted paper as well.

ECSA 2020 and Microservices 2020

I was one of the co-chairs of the Industry Track of ECSA 2020 and one of three program chairs of Microservices 2020. Both conferences decided to keep their dates, but to morph into virtual/online events.¹ This post started as the pre-conference call for submissions and participation, later updated with the conference program.

So you did not have to travel to be able to give a presentation or get a paper published.

1. The European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) takes place from September 14 to September 18. The deadlines for papers has passed, presentations proposals could be submitted until June 24. There are different formats in the Industry Track, from presentation-only to tutorial to full paper. The non-exclusive list of topics blends technical trend topics such as AI, blockchain and containers with architecture classics and coverage of “the human factor”. All submissions to our track should actually report real-world experience; academic papers belong in the research track.
2. Microservices 2020 (September 8-10) brings together industry and academia to foster discussion on practice and research of microservices. Extended abstracts are sufficient as submissions; full papers may be submitted for the post-proceedings later. Some of the topical themes in the call for papers are cyber security, service identification and patterns for cloud-native application architectures.

Some of the reasons to get involved with these conferences are:

• High-profile keynotes, for instance by Diomidis Spinellis, Ivica Crnkovic and Michael Keeling at ECSA 2020 and Vaughn Vernon, Sanjiva Weerawarana and Antonio Brogi at Microservices 2020.
• An opportunity to reflect and get feedback from peers.
• Networking (we’ll see how that part goes online).

With your participation, you can help bridge the infamous gap between industry and academia, and learn some unexpected things that will serve you well on your next project — or during your next career move.²

As Henry Muccini, the general chair of ECSA 2020 put it: “Don’t stop architecting!” (and reflecting on it). So we do look forward to your submissions… by the way, you may want to have a look at these hints for technical writing while preparing it.

Update 1: The papers accepted for the industry track of ECSA 2020 are listed here. The Microservices 2020 program is here.

Update 2: The Industry Track of ECSA 2020 features an interactive panel “Life as an IT Architect in 2020”.

Update 3: Both conferences are over now, and the online setups worked really well 😌 See this post for notes from one of the industry day working sessions (and an ASR test). Michael Keeling’s and all other keynotes were recorded and are available on YouTube. His slides are available here.

– ZIO (a.k.a. socadk)