The observant among you will have noticed that the Code Generation 2010 web site is now live.

The conference will take place from June 16 – 18 2010 at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge – the same venue as for Code Generation 2009.

A Call for Speakers will be issued next month and we expect the full programme to be announced towards the end of February 2010.

If you can’t wait until then to find out more about Model Driven Software Development then please consider joining the Model Driven Software Network in the meantime.

I promised earlier that I would talk a bit about my own plans when I take part in October’s Practical Product Lines conference.

Being a co-organiser of the event I can’t be too biased but putting that aside for a moment here are the sessions I plan to take part in:

Mapping Product Line Value Streams – Marc Evers and Willem van den Ende. My reasoning – I’ve read about value streams but never applied them in a product line setting. I like getting my hands dirty in sessions and this promises to have lots of groupwork.

The challenges of implementing lifecycle management for Product Lines - Danilo Beuche. My reasoning – whole life cycle management for product lines is an emerging area. (We are also UK & Ireland distributors for pure::variants and a certain amount of loyalty must be shown…)

Productivity as a Management Tool - Peter Mazereeuw – My reasoning – I’ve never heard Peter speak and in my role as a product line consultant questions about measuring the success of the product line are key for senior management. I’m also keen to hear how other participants measure their product lines – and what sort of figures they’re seeing.

There are many other great sessions at the conference but having parallel streams always means I miss out on some good stuff. No doubt I’ll be kicking myself after I find out that people have got even more from the sessions I didn’t attend…

The early-bird deadline for October’s Practical Product Lines 2009 conference closes tomorrow. Save 100 Euro by booking now!

The 1st Practical Product Lines conference takes place from 20-21 October in Amsterdam.

The conference has 4 great keynote speakers lined up:

Jan Bosch (Intuit) – well-known software product line practitioner and researcher will talk about Software Product Lines: What got us here, won’t get us there - describing how companies using software product lines must adapt to changes in the development landscape in order to continue to have success with software product lines.

Markus Voelter (independent / itemis) – Model-Driven Software development guru and all-round nice guy will give a forward-looking talk on Language Workbenches and Software Product Lines - showing how these two concepts can come together in a way that will lead to Product Line Engineering for programming languages.

Dieter Rombach  executive and founding director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) – will describe his organisation’s leadership in applying product line methods in industrial settings in his talk  Software Product Lines in Practice – A Fraunhofer Experience Report.

Dirk-Jan Swagerman of FEI presents a new (to me at least) experience report - Platform diversity and Innovation in electron microscopes - I’m hoping to learn a lot from this session, particularly around supporting product lines over a long time span – up to 20 years in this case.

There are 12 other sessions at the conference and I’ll comment on what I’m planning to attend later.

The early-bird booking period for the conference closes on 31st August – save 100 Euro by booking now. OMG and SPIder members get 10% off conference participation.

The Call for Speakers for the 2010 ACCU Conference is now available.

Call for Participation – ACCU 2010
April 14-17, 2010. Barcelo Oxford Hotel, Oxford, UK
Submission deadline: 30th of September 2009

Highlight: Special track on software testing, please read on
Email proposals to: Giovanni Asproni, conference@accu.org

We would like to invite you to present a session at this leading software development conference.

We have a long tradition of high quality sessions covering many aspects of software development, from programming languages (e.g., C, C++, Java, C#, Ruby, Groovy, Python, Erlang, Haskell, etc.),  and technologies (libraries, frameworks, databases, etc.) to subjects about the wider development environment such  as testing, development process, design, analysis, patterns, project management, and softer aspects such as team building, communication and leadership.

In particular, this year we are going to have a special track on software testing–we are interested in experience reports, techniques, lessons learned, etc.

Sessions may be either tutorial-based, presentations of case studies, or take the form of interactive workshops. We are always open to novel formats, so please contact us with your idea.

The standard length of a session is 90 minutes, with some exceptions.  In order to allow less experienced speakers to speak at the conference without the pressure of filling a full 90 minutes, we reserve a number of shorter 45 minute sessions.

If you would like to run a session please let us know by emailing your proposals to conference@accu.org by the 30th of September 2009 at the latest.

Please include the following to support your proposal:

• Title (a working title if necessary)
• Type (tutorial, workshop, case study, etc.) 
• Duration (45/90 min) 
• Speaker name(s) 
• Speaker biography (max 150 words)
• Description (approx 250 words)

Proposals about specific products and technologies will be taken under consideration only if they are open source and available for free (at least for non-commercial use). If you are interested in talking about a proprietary technology, there is the possibility of “sponsored sessions” which are presented outside the standard conference schedule. Please email conference@accu.org for more information.

If you are interested in knowing more about the conference you may like to consult the website for previous years’ editions at
www.accu.org/conference for background information.

Speakers running one or more full 90 minute sessions receive a special conference attendance package including free attendance, and assistance with their travel and accommodation costs. Speakers filling a 45 minute slot qualify for free conference attendance on the day of their session.

The conference has always benefited from the strength of its programme, making it the highlight of the year for many attendees. Please help us make 2010 another successful event.

I’ve taken part in the past three ACCU Conferences and spoken at the last two. It’s a large audience – for a UK conference – and knowledgeable – so very rewarding for a speaker.

The Call for Speakers for October’s Practical Product Lines 2009 conference in Amsterdam is Friday 26th June 2009.

Proposals are invited covering topics on any practical aspect of System and Software Product Lines.

Sessions could cover topics such as:

• Migrating legacy systems to Product Lines
• Model-Driven Software Development for Software Product Lines
• Product Line evolution
• Domain Analysis and Domain Engineering
• Agile methods for Software Product Lines
• Product Line Scoping, Requirements Engineering for Product Lines, Testing Software Product Lines, Variability Management etc.
• Tool and technology development and adoption
• Any other topic related to the practical realisation of Software Product Lines

Case studies and interactive sessions based on any aspect of these and related approaches are particularly encouraged although more theoretical sessions are also welcome.

Take part in Practical Product Lines 2009 and find out how you can boost your productivity while improving the quality and time-to-market of your products.

In addition to paying no conference fees, being a speaker gives you a unique opportunity to discuss your experiences with other Software Product Line practitioners.

Visit the Practical Product Lines 2009 web site for more information and to submit a proposal.

The first keynote speakers for October’s Practical Product Lines 2009 conference in Amsterdam have been announced as Jan Bosch (Intuit) and Markus Völter (independent / itemis).

Jan is a well-known product line speaker, practitioner and researcher with a long history working on software product lines and strategic software reuse with organisations such as Intuit, Nokia Research, Philips and others. Jan is the author of the book “Design and Use of Software Architectures: Adopting and Evolving a Product Line Approach” – probably my favourite book on Software Product Lines – and has published on, advised and implemented specific techniques and methods around, among others, software architecture, software variability management, the link to business strategy, organizational models, assessment frameworks, adoption frameworks and quality attributes.

Markus will be well-known to regular readers due to his participation in our Code Generation conference. He is an independent consultant and coach for software technology and engineering for itemis Stuttgart. He focuses on software architecture, model-driven software development and domain specific languages as well as on product line engineering. Markus is (co-) author of many magazine articles, patterns and books on middleware and model-driven software development and is founder of the popular Software Engineering Radio podcast.

Practical Product Lines 2009 is a new event for the System and Software Product Lines communities. The event has a strong practical focus with an emphasis on sharing successful practices in these areas. A Call for Speakers runs until 26th June and accepted speakers have their conference fees waived.

Please visit http://www.practicalproductlines.org/ppl2009/ for more information.

Booking for this year’s Code Generation conference in Cambridge, UK will close shortly.

Participants at previous year’s events have said it was the best conference they’ve been to in a long time with 100% of participants at last year’s event saying it was good value for money.

This year we have a very strong programme of 30+ sessions focussed on practical experiences with Code Generation and Model-Driven Software Development. This includes 3 extended hands-on sessions and lots of case studies, experiences reports and tutorials.

Discounted participation is available for our partners, participants from previous years and for academics.

Don’t miss out – book now at http://www.codegeneration.net/cg2009/booking.php - don’t say you weren’t warned if you leave it to long and the conference has sold out.

A quick reminder that the booking fees for next month’s Code Generation 2009 conference in Cambridge increase by 10% next week.

This is to reduce our stress levels ahead of the event – knowing how many people will be coming to the event is very important If you don’t believe us – try organising a three day international conference yourself…

With just 4 weeks to go before this year’s Code Generation conference things are hotting up around here.

After seeing how successful the lightning talks were at this year’s ACCU conference we’ve decided to run some ourselves. The format will be a 10 minute session using only PDF slides – no demos. These will take place concurrently with the BoF sessions. More details will be available at the conference.

We’ve negotiated a few more partnership deals. BCS SPA members, Embedded Masterclass attendees, DSL Devcon attendees & Microsoft MVPs are now eligible for a 10% discount on conference fees. Thanks to these organisations for supporting the event.

Bookings seem to be conforming to last year’s pattern i.e. most people leaving it to the last minute to book rather than taking advantage of our generous early-bird offer. People seem to want this flexibility but it does mean they could miss out and they will end up booking at a higher rate. It certainly doesn’t make things easy for us as organisers; my hair is even greyer than last year. Please note that we’ll be increasing prices by 10% in June to reflect the added cost (and stress) for us of not knowing firm numbers until very late on. If you’re planning on coming get your booking in now

Accommodation at the college is now sold-out. But there are plenty of other options nearby so don’t panic! See http://www.codegeneration.net/cg2009/accommodation.php for options but don’t leave it too late – Cambridge is a popular destination and other accommodation options will also be filling up. Drop us a line (contact details here) if you’ve tried the listed options but still haven’t been able to find somewhere to stay. Unfortunately we don’t have any floor space to offer so do try and book up somewhere to stay sooner rather than later. Although it’s June Cambridge can get a bit cold in the evening so sleeping rough isn’t necessarily an option although we can provide a blanket and hot drinks if necessary

Peter Bell and Andrew Watson have been in touch and are putting the finishing touches to their panel sessions:  The State of the Art in Domain Specific Modeling & Migrating to Model-Driven Development. We expect to announce the panellists in the next week or so – Steve Cook (Microsoft) has confirmed for Peter’s panel. If you have any questions you want to be asked then you can either save them for the panels or let us know in advance and we’ll pass them on.

I’ve also been thinking about plans for our Tuesday night social event. It’s risky planning something outdoors here – even in June – but we’re going to try and go with our original plan of a punt trip along the stretch of river with the various historic colleges. This should be a great experience (assuming it’s not raining heavily) and will act as a good orientation for further exploration of the city. Should also be a great opportunity to get some photos online – MDSD specialists on (or in) the river or somesuch caption.

I’m personally looking forward to another great conference. Despite being ‘in charge’ I always have time to have fun and catch up with everyone. There’s rarely a dull moment…