SEC \ Speakers

Friday October 19th, 2007

Keynote 1:

Neal Ford

Keynote 2:

Venkat Subramaniam

Keynote 3:

Bjarne Stroustrup

Corporate 1:

Sridhar Vajapey

Saturday October 20th, 2007

Keynote 4:

Ben Galbraith

Corporate 2:

Jon Schwartz

Keynote 5:

Peter Freeman

Keynote 6:

Venkat Subramaniam

10:00 - 11:00

Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.

Neal Ford is a senior application architect at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware, video/DVD presentations, and author of the books Developing with Delphi: Object-Oriented Techniques, JBuilder 3 Unleashed, and Art of Java Web Development. He is also the editor and a contributor to No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology : The 2006 Edition and No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology Volume 2: The 2007 Edition. His primary consulting focus is the building of large-scale enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at numerous developers conferences worldwide. Check out his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.

Polyglot Programming

Java is dead; long live Java! The Java language is over a decade old, and it's starting to show its age, hampered by both backwards compatibility that it didn't need and the changing world. And I have examples! But the decline of the language is offset by the rise of the platform: the Java platform is as robust as ever. This session discusses the coming trends in software engineering, which I call "Polyglot Programming": special purpose, targeted languages running on current virtual machines. We already do this: every application today uses Java, SQL, and Ajax. In the coming years, we'll expand our horizons to start using JRuby, Groovy, Jaskell, and a host of other languages, all targeting the managed environments like Java and CLR. This session also engages in a real conversation about "software engineering" and what that really means. And, it tells how we can get other engineers to stop making fun of us. Come see your future.

11:15 - 12:15

Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects, and speaks frequently at conferences and user groups. He is author of ".NET Gotchas" (O'Reilly) and coauthor of "Practices of an Agile Developer" (Pragmatic Bookshelf).

Domain Specific Languages

Domain Specific Languages or DSLs are languages that target a specific kind of problem or domain. We've had various degree of success with DSLs, over the past several years, in narrow areas. However, DSLs are not widely used in general purpose application partly because the popular widely used languages today do not make it easy. In this presentation we will introduce DSLs, delve into their benefits. We will look at a number of examples as to how we can utilize them for common application tasks. We will take a look at what language developments, tools, and techniques are in the horizon that could bring this to common place.

1:15 - 3:15

Professor and College of Engineering Endowed Chair in Computer Science, Texas A&M University

Bjarne Stroustrup (http://www.research.att.com/%7Ebs/homepage.html) is the designer and original implementer of C++ and the author of "The C++ Programming Language" and " The Design and Evolution of C++" (http://www.research.att.com/%7Ebs/dne.html). His research interests include distributed systems, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages. Dr. Stroustrup is the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at Texas A&M University (http://www.cs.tamu.edu). He retains a link with AT&T Labs - Research (http://www.research.att.com) as an AT&T Fellow. He was elected member of The National Academy of Engineering (http://www.nae.edu) in 2004. He is actively involved in the ANSI/ISO standardization of C++.

C++0x: An overview

A good programming language is far more than a simple collection of features. My ideal is to provide a set of facilities that smoothly work together to support design and programming styles of a generality beyond my imagination. Here, I briefly outline rules of thumb (guidelines, principles) that are being applied in the design of C++0x. Then, I present the state of the standards process (we are aiming for C++09) and give examples of a few of the proposals such as concepts, generalized initialization, being considered in the ISO C++ standards committee. Since there are far more proposals than could be presented in an hour, I'll take questions.

3:30 - 4:30

Corporate 1: Sridhar Vajapey

Sridhar Vajapey is a VP of Technology, Validation and Test at Sun Microsystems Inc.

Sridhar Vajapey is a VP of Technology, Validation and Test at Sun Microsystems Inc. He has been in the semiconductor and computer related business for over 20 years.
In his current role, Sridhar Vajapey is responsible for:

- USIII/IV UltraSPARC processors
- Putting in place infrastructure to enable high quality and volume production of UltraSPARC CPUs, ASICs and systems.
- Advance process technology development: Working with silicon partners to put in place bleeding edge semiconductor process technology.
- Advance packaging, thermal/cooling technologies for processors and ASICs in systems
- Global SRAM technologies: Creating high performance memory technology for UltraSPARC processors.
- S/W tools for validation of complex microprocessors and ASICs both at component level as well as system level and
- Product and Test engineering for components and systems: Validating designs and enabling production testing and flows for all semiconductor components
- OEM engineering for semiconductors

Sridhar Vajapey is also on the advisory board for Stanford University's School of Earth Sciences' Center for Computational Earth and Environmental Science (CEES).

OpenSPARC of UltraSPARC CMT

Revolutionary changes in microprocessor design techniques are taking place. Chip level multi-threading (CMT) design methodology delivered by Sun, maximizes CPU performance and performance/Watt of power. CMT technology delivers dramatically increased performance for today's highly parallel and thread rich applications. The methodology hides memory latencies and maximizes utilization of CPU resources to return performance. This revolutionary change in design is also driving a change in the programming models - a change required to take full entitlement of performance in the new multi-threaded machines. Through Sun's OpenSPARC program, this technology, the full CPU design, is now downloadable for free that students can learn from and further innovate.

9:30 - 10:30

CEO of Feature50

Ben Galbraith is the CEO of Feature50, a consulting company dedicated to creating compelling user experiences in software. He has delivered hundreds of technical presentations world-wide, produced several technical conferences, and co-authored over a half-dozen books. Ben has long juggled interests in both business and tech, having written his first computer program at six years old, started his first business at ten, and entered the IT workforce at twelve. Prior to Feature50, Ben co-founded and served as CEO of Ajaxian.com, CTO of Amirsys, Inc., and software architect to a variety of organizations.

Creating a Compelling User Experience

Relationships are generally successful when the parties involved meet each others expectations. This is especially true of software systems and the people with whom they interface. The early pioneers in our industry had it easy: so often their success was simply getting something to work. As time has marched on, expectations have changed, and today, delivering a working system is often not enough to achieve success. Instead, the system must be user-friendly, and in some situations, it must be compelling and provide a "wow" factor.
How exactly can developers create a compelling user interface? What other elements are involved in ensuring that those with whom software interfaces have an enjoyable experience? Can aspects of this end- result be distilled to a repeatable process? Are there objective principles against which a system can be measured, or is an innate aesthetic sense required?
For an hour, I'll address these questions and provide the answers I've discovered during my own software development adventures.

10:45 - 11:45

Founder of The Phrogram Company

Jon Schwartz is a founder of The Phrogram Company, inventors of the Kid's Programming Language and of Phrogram. Jon has previously worked at Microsoft and at IBM. His work on KPL and Phrogram focuses on two primary goals: 1) simplify game development so that even beginners and hobbyists can create their own games, and 2) encourage the study of computer science through the use of graphics and game programming. He is glad to be local again to the Triangle, after 10 years on the west coast.

When User-Created Content Meets Gaming: a Revolution is Coming

User-created content is arguably the hottest trend in computing today, as demonstrated by the global success and impact of Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube and others. Games also continue to be a very important and growing business, with 100% growth in sales from 1995 to 2005, and 50% further growth projected from 2005 to 2010. Recent technology is - for the first time in decades - allowing mainstream computer users to create their own graphical and game programs. This change is setting up a coming creative revolution in gaming which will inevitably result when this statement is true: "If you can read and you can type, you can create your own computer games." This presentation will summarize the data that defines these trends and opportunities, will offer live demonstrations of Phrogram to show that this revolution has already begun, and will project near-future implications of these trends.

1:00 - 2:00

Former Assistant Director of NSF. Emeritus Dean and Professor, Georgia Tech

PETER A. FREEMAN was Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation, heading the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate, from 2002-2007. In this position, he was responsible for initiating and leading the GENI Project in addition to a number of other new programs. He was Founding Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech in 1990 where he is now an Emeritus Dean and Professor.

GENI at Age Three: Origins, Objectives, Outlook

It is clear to almost all observers that radically new approaches to networking and distributed systems are needed to build the the digital world of the future being envisioned by so many. In early 2004 the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) began the GENI Project with the aim of enabling a wide variety of experimental research that will help show the way to this future world. This talk will describe the origins of the project, its objectives, and the outlook for the future.

2:15 - 3:15

Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects, and speaks frequently at conferences and user groups. He is author of ".NET Gotchas" (O'Reilly) and coauthor of "Practices of an Agile Developer" (Pragmatic Bookshelf).

Practices of an Agile Developer

You have worked on software projects with varying degree of success. What were the reasons for the success of your last project? What were the reasons for those that failed? A number of issues contribute to project success - some non-technical in nature. In this presentation the speaker will share with you practices in a number of areas including coding, developer attitude, debugging, and feedback. The discussions are based on the Jolt 2007 Productivity Award winning book he coauthored with Andy Hunt.