On whose shoulders? (Keynote)

Abstract

Bernard of Chartres (via Sir Isaac Newton) reminded us that all progress is achieved “on the shoulders of giants” - that our greatest discoveries and innovations build upon the inspirations, triumphs, and foundational truths established by those who have gone before us. However, in our field of Software Engineering, as new ideas are transmitted at the speed of light, rather than the speed of Bernard's horse, innovations are typically achieved as we, the ordinary people, exchange ideas, deliver incremental improvements, and offer the occasional truly novel idea to advance our field. In this fast-paced environment it is particularly important for us to take the time to build a strong foundation for our knowledge - keeping audit trails of our experiments, sharing our datasets, releasing the code we used to run our experiments, and generally making our work transparent and reproducible, so that we no longer depend on giants to further the field. Instead our successes are a collective effort from our community. Unfortunately, this degree of openness comes with its own challenges. In this talk, Dr. Cleland-Huang will explore some of the success stories in our field and discuss ways to deal with the psychological, philosophical, and practical barriers that impede open collaboration.