International Workshop on Software Engineering for Social Sustainability (SE4SS)

International Workshop on Software Engineering for Social Sustainability (SE4SS) to be held in conjunction with the International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) 2015, on 6th of September, 2015, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Programme of the day:

9.00 – 9.15: Welcome and Introductions
9.15- 10.30: Panel session “Fostering Social Sustainability through Software”
10.30-11.00: Break and summary point collection on panel
11.00 – 11.30: Eliciting Research Questions – What do I want to know about Software Engineering for Social Sustainability?
11.30 – 13.00: Group work session 1 (working on specific questions identified earlier, using a case study)
13.00- 14.00: Lunch (and research questions elaboration)
14.00 – 15.15: Group work session 2 – Building framework for a research paper: How can our Research Question be answered?
15.15 – 15.30: Break
15.30 – 17.00: Fishbowl panel: What are Questions and Methods for Solutions
17.00-17.30: Agenda: “Research, Collaborations, Summary” then closing

Attendance

All interested attendees are welcome (paper submission is optional). Please sign up through the EnviroInfo & ICT4S registration system.

Key Dates

  • Registration for workshop (with no need to register for conference) for 20 Euros:  http://enviroinfo2015.org/fees-and-registration/).
  • Optional paper submission: Thursday, 20 August 2015 (Pago Pago (UTC-11))
  • If paper submitted, Review notification: Tuesday, 25 August 2015
  • If paper submitted, Final versions for web site: Thursday, 3rd September 2015

Background

Social sustainability is often deemed to create the basic framework for society, including cohesion of community for mutual benefit, connectedness between groups of people, standards of ethics, rules, laws, and information. It lowers the cost of working together and facilitates cooperation, e.g., trust lowers transaction costs.

Software too has now become one of the cornerstones of societal infrastructure. Yet, the question on how software engineering impacts social sustainability still remains largely unaddressed. This workshop aims to mobilise an inter-disciplinary community focusing on how software engineering principles and practices must change to ensure maximised positive contribution of an engineered system towards the social sustainability of the societies affected by it.

Objectives

The Workshop objectives are:

  • To bring together an inter-disciplinary community, including, for example, software engineers, sociologists, anthropologists, ethics researchers, legal scholars, environment scientists and others, in order to mobilise a community focusing on how software engineering can contribute to better social sustainability.
  • Identify on-going research efforts pertaining to software engineering and social sustainability and foster inter-disciplinary collaborations amongst participants.
  • Motivate and demonstrate the relevance of this topic to both research and practitioner communities and report on concrete examples of such relevant research and practice.

The workshop will result in:

  • Initiating discussions/collaborations between those working on various aspects of social sustainability in/through software engineering;
  • Initiation of an online repository of example projects to illustrate, motivate, and educate research and development in Software Engineering for Social Sustainability.

Submissions

Registered attendees are invited (if they wish to) submit the following types of submissions, which will be published in the workshop web site:

  • Full papers (up to 8 pages)
  • Extended abstracts (up to 2 pages)
  • Case studies (2 pages + artefacts).

Example Topics to be discussed at the workshop include, but are not limited to:

  • Case studies on effects of software use on communities and individuals;
  • Requirements for socially sustainable software;
  • Modelling social sustainability;
  • Impact of software architecture on social sustainability;
  • Topics on assessment of social sustainability effects of software;
  • Impact of technology on social sustainability

All submissions will be reviewed by at least two program committee members. The purpose of the reviews is to provide feedback for further improvement of the submitted work.

Papers should be submitted as a PDF document using Easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=se4ss

Templates for papers are available at http://enviroinfo2015.org/calls/submission-of-papers/  in both .doc and .tex formats. Please see the “Template for papers and extended abstracts” heading at this page: http://enviroinfo2015.org/calls/submission-of-papers/

Workshop Activities

The workshop activities include:

  • Panel-centred paper presentations: where the submitted papers will be presented, and the presenters will then hold a panel discussion with question and answer session with audience participation.
  • Small Group work on Topics of interest (from submissions and keynotes) and Case Studies.
  • Plenary discussion on Research Challenges, Case Studies and Suggested Guidelines

Organising Committee

Programme Committee

  • Sedef Akinli Kocak, Ryerson University, Canada
  • Pauline Anthonysomy, Google Research, Switzerland
  • Christoph Becker, University of Toronto, Canada
  • Stefanie Betz, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, Germany
  • Phillip Brooker, University of Bath, UK
  • Leticia Duboc, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Patricia Lago, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands
  • Effie Law, University of Leicester, UK
  • Corinne May-Chahal, Lancaster University, UK
  • Ana Moreira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
  • Stefan Naumann, University of Applied Sciences Trier, Environmental Campus Birkenfeld
  • Birgit Penzenstadler, California State University Long Beach, USA
  • Monica Whitty, University of Leicester, UK