speakers

Keynote Speakers

The main attractions of CUSEC, these industry leaders will impart their knowledge on eager listeners

  • Jeff Atwood
    http://www.codinghorror.com/

    The founder of www.codinghorror.com, an amazing blog that offers new perspectives about software engineering and development.

    Keynote: Is Writing More Important Than Programming?
    Programming, like all writing, is just another form of communication. Writing code that the compiler understands is easy. Writing code that other people understand is far more difficult. And that's assuming you're persuasive enough to convince other people that your code, in a world positively overflowing with free code, is worth looking at in the first place. Good luck. You're gonna need it. History books are written by the winners and the winners in the software industry were those whose voices were heard over the din. Code speaks, but writing-- for machines and the people who love them-- speaks loudest of all.
  • Dr. Jeffrey Ullman
    http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/

    Jeff Ullman is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Computer Science (Emeritus). His interests include database theory, database integration, data mining, and education using the information infrastructure.

    Keynote: When Theory Matters
    Jeffrey D. Ullman, Gradiance Corp. and Stanford Univ.

    Some of the most profound ways in which the Web changes our lives would not have happened without a heavy dose of computer-science theory. PageRank, and how it makes Google work, is a well-known example, but there are many others. We shall explore briefly some of the interesting algorithms, such as PageRank variants, minhashing, and locality-sensitive hashing that have given us surprising capabilities.
  • Zed Shaw
    http://www.zedshaw.com

    Zed A. Shaw is the most famous Shark Jumper there is. Having jumped his shark a decade ago he still finds time to work for large and small companies implementing large and small software for large and small amounts of money. He is the author the Mongrel web server, creator of the Utu project, recent Factor convert, and absolutely hates Ruby even though he makes money on it.

    Keynote: The ACL Is Dead
    A tale of suspense, intrigue, corporate greed, and the stupidity of an authorization mechanism that isn't turing complete. With code.
  • Tim Bray
    http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/

    Tim Bray managed the Oxford English Dictionary project at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada in 1987–1989, co-founded Open Text Corporation in 1989, launched one of the first public web search engines in 1995, co-invented XML 1.0 and co-edited “Namespaces in XML” between 1996 and 1999, founded Antarctica Systems in 1999, and served as a Tim Berners-Lee appointee on the W3C Technical Architecture Group in 2002–2004. Currently, he serves as Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems, publishes a popular weblog, and co-chairs the IETF AtomPub Working Group. [From Oram & Wilson’s “Beautiful Code”, 2007]

    Keynote: Hard Problems in Network Computing
    The good news is that we make progress in hardware, and in software at both the infrastructure and application levels. The other good news is that there are still lots of hard problems that we don't know how to solve. This will be a tour through some of the gnarliest and ugliest things that keep the leaders of the software community awake at nights. My completely-un-hidden agenda is to get the student audience worried about some of them too, so you can spend some of your nights trying to solve them in ways nobody's thought of yet, instead of wasting your time sleeping.
  • Jon Udell
    http://blog.jonudell.net/

    Jon Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and new media innovator. His 1999 book, Practical Internet Groupware, helped lay the foundation for what we now call social software. Udell has been a software developer at Lotus, was BYTE Magazine's executive editor and Web maven, and has worked as an independent consultant.

    A hands-on thinker, Udell's analysis of industry trends has always been informed by his own ongoing experiments with software, information architecture, and new media.

    From 2002 to 2006 he was InfoWorld's lead analyst, author of the weekly Strategic Developer column, and blogger-in-chief. During his InfoWorld tenure he also produced a monthly series of screencasts about software, and a weekly series of audio interviews with innovators -- which now continues at ITConversations.

    In January 2007 he joined Microsoft as a technical evangelist. In his new role he'll continue to explore and explain a broad portfolio of technologies, both inside and outside Microsoft. He aims to build bridges not only within the technical community but also, and crucially, across the chasm that divides elite technologists from everybody else.

    Keynote: Hacking the Noosphere
    We learn, teach, and work in an increasingly connected world. Computer and information sciences supply the raw connectivity. But it's people, interacting on networks, in information-rich contexts, who weave the fabric of knowledge and action. To empower them, we need to add a social dimension to our engineering practice.
  • Dr. Peter Grogono
    http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~grogono/

    Peter Grogono built his first computer when he was fifteen. After obtaining a mathematics degree from Cambridge, he accepted a post as a mathematician but quickly replaced the Monroe calculator with FORTRAN. After spending a few years dabbling in operating systems, engineering, electronic music, and accounting systems, he joined Concordia University as a systems analyst. In 1984, he moved from the Computer Center to the Computer Science Department, where he is now Professor and Associate Chair. He introduced the undergraduate Software Engineering program in 1998 and was its director until 2004. He is currently developing a new masters program in Software Engineering, to be introduced in Fall 2006. As well as software engineering, his current interests include distributed computing, graphics, and artificial life.

    Keynote: Living with Concurrency
    Many universities have introduced undergraduate software engineering degrees during the last decade. Are they doing a good job? Is industry getting what it needs? Most current degree programs are doing well for now, but the industry is changing fast, and universities must keep up with it. Herb Sutter says that the "next software revolution" will be about concurrency. Is industry ready for it? Are universities ready for it? Objects, aspects, and concurrency will make a very rich mixture - perhaps too rich. Effective use of new hardware will require drastic change: perhaps even a new programming paradigm. We will outline a modest proposal.

Corporate

  • SAP
    http://www.sap.com/

    Michel Martin comes from Rimouski, a small town in the eastern part of Québec. In 2000, he moved to Sherbrooke to study computer science. Among several internships that were part of the COOP program at the Université de Sherbrooke, he started at SAP in 2003. Michel has been at SAP for five years since then and is now the development architect for the Trade Promotion Management team at SAP Labs Canada.

    Over the last years, Michel participated in a couple of patents as well as the SAP Developer Challenge 2006, and has been a key person within the development of CRM 5.1, CRM 5.2, and CRM 2007. He has also supervised and guided several SAP interns from various universities.

    Title: Evolution of Large Scale Business Software
    In the business software jungle, SAP has stood King for the past three decades. Although you not might be familiar with this business software industry giant, this giant is familiar with you. Its list of customers includes the likes of Nestlé, Hydro Québec, and the Canadian government. In other words, SAP technology has almost certainly been used to manage data pertaining to you. Regardless of its past successes, in this extremely fast-paced and constantly changing environment, the crown could have easily gone to one of SAP's many competitors had it not embraced change and evolution. With locations across the globe anda workforce of approximately 40,000 employees, SAP is a true software engineering powerhouse. With the support of their employer, SAP developers have beenpushing the boundaries of software engineering for years. At the heart of these successes are SAP's core set of values: Customer Focus, Quality, Product Excellence, Passion, Integrity, and Commitment. The technical focus of this presentation will be the strategies and tactics used throughout the evolution of the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software suite over the past few years. This evolution was driven by a rupture with the traditional mode ofdevelopment at SAP, which had an impact on all aspects of the CRM software development practice: planning, development processes, UI development, application architecture, and development methodologies.
  • Idée
    http://www.ideeinc.com/

    Leila Boujnane
    Leila Boujnane is Chief Executive Officer of Idee Inc. She is responsible for all aspects of the company's strategy and operations. Before founding Idée, Leila held positions in international organizations in the commercial and public sectors, including Algorithmics, Infinity Financial Technology and Bank of Montreal.

    Leila is characterized by her peers and colleagues as a passionate and determined team player with exceptional leadership skills. Leila is also an outspoken participant in the imaging and technology industry. She regularly speaks at industry conferences and is an active mentor for young women in technology.

    Paul Bloore
    Paul Bloore has over 15 years of experience designing and implementing innovative commercial software. As Chief Technology Officer, he is responsible for all research and development of new visual search and image recognition technologies. With his solid experience and success in commercial software development and distributed computing systems, Paul has been the driving force behind Idée's research and development efforts in the visual search field.

    Prior to co-founding Idée, Paul was co-founder and a principal of TrueRisk Inc. which developed firm-wide financial risk management software. TrueRisk grew to become one of the leading developers of quantitative financial software for trading and risk management. In 1999 SunGard Data Systems Inc. (NYSE: SDS) acquired TrueRisk.

    Paul Bloore is characterized by his passion for software development and applied technologies. Inspired by his combination of vision and industry experience, Idée continues to produce award-winning technology.

    Topic: Building your software start up and having fun doing it!
    How to conquer technology challenges, build a team and change an entire industry. Leila Boujnane and Paul Bloore are the co-founders of Idée Inc. (http://ideeinc.com). They are both software industry veterans and in this presentation they will take you through their current start up adventures. A day in the life of Idée Inc, a technology retrospective (how far have we come), a lesson in building great technologies, large compute clusters and landing some of the largest clients in the world. All without ever stopping to have fun.
  • TELUS - Chris Collition
    http://www.telus.com/

    Chris is a manager in the Enterprise Architecture group at TELUS in Vancouver. He draws upon over 11 years of consulting experience as a Senior Technology Manager at Accenture helping to deliver large-scale development efforts at companies such as Cisco Systems, EMC, Alcan, Sears, Cablevision, GTAA, and 407-ETR.

    Chris graduated from the University of Waterloo's engineering program (Civil) in 1996. He is a recent Toronto transplant to Vancouver and is fully enjoying the surrounding mountains.

    Topic: Performance Analysis and Tuning Techniques within Enterprise Applications
    Developing and deploying software solutions in enterprise environments often involves integration of components across multiple systems, data stores, vendor COTS packages, and disparate patterns such as J2EE, .NET, or batch processing. An important aspect to successful project delivery and user acceptance is the ability to model and predict the performance characteristics of the overall solution. This understanding is pivotal in complex enterprise 'ecosystems' involving worldwide call centre operations, international consumer web presence, and multiple datacentres.

    Mr. Collition presents an enterprise-grade performance readiness approach highlighting correct design patterns, testing approaches, and tuning techniques. Particular emphasis is on J2EE application stacks involving synchronous, asynchronous, and batch processing using Weblogic and Oracle Real Application Clusters.
  • Google - Jeff Bailey
    http://www.google.com/

    Jeff Bailey works for Google in the Open Source Programs Office. Prior employers includes places like Canonical, Sirius Sattelite Radio, and Hollinger Digital Canada. Jeff is also a member of several Free and Open Source projects, such as GNU, Debian, Ubuntu, and Gnome.

    Jeff is originally from Vancouver, but considers Montréal to be "Home". He is currently studying for his Masters of Science in Computing and Information Systems with the University of Athabasca.

    Topic: Keeping It Fun: Hacking on Open Source After Graduation
    Jeff will be talking about the growth and development of Open Source Software in corporations. This will include a bit on what Open Source is, an overview of some licenses, snippets about the growth of Open Source in corporate Canada over the past decade, and information on how Google (his currently employer) uses Open Source Software. He will also cover what it's like being an Open Source hacker working in these environments, and how to sell OSS to enterprises.

Academic Speakers

From an academic experience, these speakers will share the up-and-coming technologies

  • Dr. Marsha Chechik
    http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~chechik/

    Marsha Chechik received her Ph.D. from University of Maryland. She is now an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. She does research in the use of formal methods to improve quality of software. She is also interested in computer security, requirements engineering, software specifications and model management. She has had a number of joint research projects with industry, including such companies as IBM, Lucent, and AT&T. She teaches programming languages, compiler construction, software testing and verification, logic, and a whole number of other courses at a graduate and undergraduate level. And... she is looking for excellent students to join her research group in the Fall of 2008!

    Topic: Guarding Against Software Accidents
    A talk about software accidents and techniques for checking whether software is prone to them.
  • Jeremy Cooperstock
    http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~jer/
    Jeremy Cooperstock (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1996) is an associate professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a member of the Centre for Intelligent Machines, and a founding member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology at McGill University. He directs the Shared Reality Lab and leads the technical development of the Ultra-Videoconferencing system, for which he was recognized by an award for Most Innovative Use of New Technology from ACM/IEEE Supercomputing and a Distinction Award from the Audio Engineering Society. Cooperstock's past accomplishments include the Intelligent Classroom, the world's first Internet streaming demonstrations of Dolby Digital 5.1, uncompressed 12-channel 96kHz/24bit, multichannel DSD audio, and three simultaenous streams of uncompressed high-definition video. Cooperstock is a member of the ACM and chairs the AES Technical Committee on Network Audio Systems.

    Topic: Music and Games: How Fun Applications Stimulate Core Technologies
    Musical interaction and games have long been ignored by the mainstream of engineering, perhaps considered as unworthy of serious attention. On the contrary, these applications pose serious design challenges and present important opportunties to test core technologies, with implications to a broad range of other activities. Examples of such technologies, motivated by the needs of music and games, include video tracking systems for identifying body pose and position, low-cost accelerometers with efficient gesture recognition algorithms, low-latency network transport protocols, high-fidelity spatilized audio, and advanced video rendering. This talk illustrates the development of some of these core technologies along with their associated research challenges and implications to future applications.
  • Dr. Ettore Merlo
    http://www.polymtl.ca/recherche/rc/en/professeurs/details.php?NoProf=123

    Ettore Merlo received his Ph. D. in computer science from McGill University (Montreal) in 1989 and his Laurea degree - summa cum laude - from University of Turin (Italy) in 1983. He was the lead researcher of the software engineering group at Computer Research Institute of Montreal (CRIM) until 1993 when he joined Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal where he is currently a full professor in the computer and software engineering department. His research interests are in software analysis, software reengineering, software security, user interfaces, software maintenance, artificial intelligence and bio-informatics. He has collaborated with several industries and research centers in particular on software reengineering, clone detection, software quality assessment, software evolution analysis, testing, architectural reverse engineering and genetic linkage analysis.

    Topic: Automatic Detection of SQL Injection Vulnerabilities
    An approach that combines static, dynamic analysis, and re-engineering to automatically detect and protect PHP Web applications from SQL-injection attacks is presented. Results from 31 versions of phpBB are shown. Software engineering perspectives include continuous security assurance, regression security validation, and software evolution. Research perspective include security models and static analysis.

    Une approche qui combine l'analyse statique, dynamique et la ré-ingénierie est présenté pour la détection et la protection d'applications Web écrites en PHP contre les attaques par injection SQL. Les résultats obtenus sur 31 versions de phpBB seront présentés. Les perspectives en génie logiciel incluent l'assurance qualité continue, la validation de régression de la sécurité, et l'évolution du logiciel. Les aspects de recherche comprennent les modèles de sécurité et l'analyse statique.
  • Kate Hollenbach
    http://web.mit.edu/kjhollen/www/

    Kate Hollenbach has a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is currently pursuing an M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. She is a research assistant in the Physical Language Workshop, where she is developing software tools for information visualization and creative expression in digital media.

    Topic: Developing Visualizations of Web Content with E15
    E15 is a graphics platform designed for creating dynamic, 3D data visualizations. It consists of an OpenGL graphics engine with a scripting interface that can be used to generate objects and textures or fetch data from the web. The scripting interface, an embedded Python interpreter, enables the visualization designer/developer to change visual parameters without having to recompile code, making it easy to rapidly prototype different visual designs. This talk will cover the key features of E15 as a web visualization platform and showcase some of the visualizations created with it. More information about E15 can be found at http://e15.media.mit.edu.

Tutorials

Interested in learning a technology but have never been able to get past "Hello, World!"? Look no further than these insightful and instructional sessions

  • Adrian Thurston
    http://www.cs.queensu.ca/~thurston/

    Adrian Thurston is a Ph.D. student at Queen's University, where he hacks on source transformation systems. His current work focuses on the analysis and manipulation of real-world languages. Many computer languages cause trouble for the grammar-based generalized parsers that are normally used in generic transformation systems. His current project, Colm, is a new transformation system that will solve this problem. Adrian is also the creator of Ragel, a software development tool that allows for the embedding of arbitrary code into statically compiled regular expressions. It can be described as a regular language parser generator; as such it can be used to make very fast parsers. Adrian did his Master's degree also at Queen's and his Undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo.

    Topic: Creating fast, maintainable and secure parsers with Ragel
    A talk on what Ragel can do for you and what it requires of you for effective use.
  • Sylvain Carle
    http://www.praized.com

    Sylvain Carle dwells in emerging technologies, he has been on the bleeding edge of new media and networked applications for more than 10 years. Communications tools, XML web services, digital media and Free Software, Open source and open standards are amongst his core expertises. Strong communicator and advocate for pragmatic IT, he's one of the cofounders and CTO of Praized Media, a newly funded startup in local search, and serves as an advisor for several startups in the Montreal area.

    Topic: We didn't start the fire
    How startups have everything to do with lighting a fire and keeping it alive.

  • Julian Spillane
    http://www.frozennorth.net

    Julian Spillane is the co-founder and CEO of game development company Frozen North Productions, Inc. Julian attended the University of Waterloo for Software Engineering and has taken a great interest in applying principles of engineering design to software development in the games industry. Julian is also the founder and Chair of the Toronto Independent Games Conference.

    Julian is also no stranger to CUSEC. He's managed to climb the ranks by going from the University of Waterloo Head Delegate in 2007 all the way to speaker in 2008!

    Topic: Microsoft's XNA as a Tool for Rapid Game Prototyping
    This talk will provide an introduction to game prototyping and how MicrosoftÕs XNA 2.0 technologies make it easy for people familiar with .NET languages to rapidly realize ideas to test their viability.

Events

  • Direct Energy Presents Bruce Miner
    Bruce Miner has over thirty years of IT experience, specializing in enterprise grade systems architecture, large scale development, database design, database internals, operating systems internals and management consulting.

    Bruce's assignments include a mix of development, strategic planning, business analysis, enterprise architecture, project management and marketing. Industry verticals include an international mix of banking, insurance, telecommunication, Internet, government, education and energy. He has participated in various industry standards based initiatives including the eLearning shareable content object reference model (SCORM), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and the Object Management Group (OMG).

    In addition to his teaching assignments, Bruce has spoken at numerous industry events including the World Wide Web Symposium in Hong Kong and the Object-Oriented Programming Systems and Languages Association Conference in Austin.

    Father of five children (all daughters), Bruce lives in downtown Toronto with his wife, children and cat. He is very busy in various community activities and volunteer board positions in both Toronto and Wainfleet Ontario where he owns a century cottage on Lake Erie. Additionally he is a regular sailor, SCUBA diver and skydiver. Bruce holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Toronto.

    Topic: Technology, Creativity, Stress and Hockey
    The underlying themes of thinking strategically and taking risks are applied to a variety of real life experiences ranging from Internet giants to up and coming environment applications.
  • Birds of a Feather (BoF)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_a_Feather_%28computing%29

    CUSEC is a great opportunity to learn but also to exchange with others. These lunchtime sessions will allow you and your fellow attendees to connect and share on any and every topic. Pick up a spot in the conference, write up your topic, and chat away!
  • DemoCampCUSEC2
    http://www.barcamp.org/DemoCampCUSEC2

    DemoCamp brings together people who want to show off their projects and get feedback as well as those who just want to see and get excited about what other people in Montreal and other Universities are up to. Entrepreneurs, hobbyists, students and professionals are all welcome... demo or not. If you'd like to find out more about DemoCamp, there is additional info at http://barcamp.org/DemoCamp.