Broadening the Range

By Lainie Berger

Alfonso Fuggetta is one of the Program Coordinators for ICSE 1997. When asked what advice he would give to ICSE 1997 attendees, he said, "Check the program carefully. You'll see a lot of events that can really be interesting and challenging, whatever your role and professional activity." This sets the stage for the whole conference, really. All of those involved in the production of ICSE 1997 would agree that the "scope of the events being planned has been extended to attract both practitioners and researchers from close communities, such as the www and the internet."

Fuggetta's involvement was primarily concerned with "the paper selection and program definition activities in 1996. I travelled to the United States a few times and spent several weeks at home [in Italy] working on ICSE 1997 planning."

The major challenge of the Program Coordinators was gaining the involvement of varied industry people in the conference. Having overcome this, he credits the "experience and commitment of Rick Adrion and Dick Taylor" for the overall success of ICSE 1997.

There were a few surprises for Fuggetta while serving as a Program Coordinator. He said that among other valuable lessons, he learned that, "all those things that appear easy are much more difficult to carry out when you are in charge. The perspective is completely different It is especially difficult and critical to find the right balance in the evaluation of papers and in making the acceptance/rejection decisions."

Overall, Fuggetta was happy to be part of the planning adventure. He said he learned a lot and he just hopes that all of his efforts, and those of his colleagues, produce a successful event that will "be instrumental to the development and promotion of software engineering."