WICSA/ECSA 2012 Conference [Helsinki, Finland]

[Achievement unlocked: live until 23 y.o. without entering the EU]

In late August, I went to the Joint Working IFIP/IEEE Conference on Software Architecture/European Conference on Software Architecture (coupled two of the main events in the field) in Helskinki, Finland. I might as well finish the post saying, "CMU PAYED FOR A GOOD TIME!", but I'll go deeper in the details.

The city of Helsinki

A plaza in Helsinki.

Another view on plaza.

Helsinki happened to become the World Design Capital (in the worse sense of "design").

The central square.

How would I describe the style of Helsinki? I'd say it's like St. Petersburgh redesigned by gays and maintained by hardworking people. It's clean, fancy, and a bit greasy.

A street in the city center.

The city is relatively small: I had a couple of chilly mornings to cross it end-to-end by running.

A long building.

The beer is expensive there (and this the only aspect that CMU didn't cover). 7 euros is no joke. I'd prefer it to be the other way around: CMU'd pay for all alcohol and not cover food. Reasoning: in a good company, one can survive for several days with the beed yet without food, but not otherwise.

Sort of a business center.

All labels in the city are in two languages: Finnish and Swedish. The Finns speak the former - this is kinda obvious. Swedish language is a contract obligation between IKEA and the government of Finland. Having a larger budget than Finland, IKEA managed to enforce a joke restriction on this deal (otherwise the Finns would have to create their own IKEA, right?). And indeed, everything is in two languages -- take a glance at google street view.

A sea fortress. We actually had a dinner there.

Helsinki has a couple of mid-sized parks. Now I have a good example for the concept of overly-civilized. 

A distant relative of Phipps Conservatory.

Pheasants? God knows what.

Trams in Helsinki are like cars on the West Coast: both a symbol and an important means of transport.

Tram 1.

Tram 2.

Long buses also pop up once in a while.

An airport bus.

Two tall cathedrals form a horizon line in Helsinki, as well as do they create a symbolic contraposition between the western and the eastern worlds at the city scale.

One cathedral is a classic Catholic one. Founded by the proud Finns and such.

Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral.

The other one is a Russian Orthodox cathedral. Founded by the Russians who used to chill out on Finnish lands once in a while in old times (to the great frustration of the modern Finns, haha).

Uspenski Cathedral.

Helsinki stands on water, which is a real tragedy for people who don't like to swim in cold water. Or just cannot swim. But nobody cares.

The first obvious consequence is the presence of seagulls (cute) and their poo (<no judgment here>). 

A Tzar-seagull.

The second consequence is that large cruise ships go here and there, distracting folks from the conference.

A floating town.

Oh yeah, the conference! I almost forgot.

Conference venue

The conference venue was located at a small quasi-peninsula of Katajanokka. Mastering this word's pronunciation occupied me for the whole flight from Moscow. I stayed in Scandic Grand Marina -- a hotel which impressed by with its price. I would've stayed impressed until today, had I not gone to DC last week where they pay $250-300 per night in an economy room.

Grand Marina.

The conference venue was Grand Marina Convention Center - right in front of the hotel.

Grand Marina, again.

Grand Marina, rear exit.

The room was nice, nothing too special...

A real cozy stool for legs!

... except myself, of course.

In a branded uniform.

Conference Contents

Now, the boring part for you, and the interesting one for me.

143 participants, with a huge percentage from industry.

Here's the spectrum of problems discussed:

• Classic architectural design, quality attributes, scenarios. 
• Decision modeling, documentation, and elicitation.
• Architectural knowledge management.
• Architectural formal modeling and analysis.
• Views and viewpoints. 
• Enterprise architectures. 
• Service-oriented architectures. 
• Variability and evolution. Product lines.
• Architecture and requirements. 
• Architecture and process. Agile.

What one of the conference rooms looked like.

Now, a bit on the people involved. They are by far more interesting (for the general public) to see than the papers.

Tomi Mannisto - the general chair.

Kai Koskimies, with a very topical slide for the SHARK workshop.

Olaf Zimmermann: moar on decisions.

A panel on the field of software architecture.
Left to right: Alex Wolf, Len Bass, Richard Taylor, Philippe Kruchten, and Ivica Crnkovic.

Ipek Ozkaya, from SEI, on quantifying technical debt.

Grace Lewis, also from SEI.

My humble self, during a breakout discussion at one of the workshops.

Marcin Nowak and Uwe Zdun.

Varvana and Mary-Ann -- very active and productive organizers.

Myself again, gathering insights from Richard Taylor.

Participants of the conference, out for the social programme.

There were three workshops, several keynotes and panels in the conference. Without going into the details, I learned a lot from them.

Also, the foods were delicious. They served an unbelievable salmon with every meal!

So it was a very good time.

P.S. The next WICSA is in Australia, and the next ECSA is in France.