Siegfried Reich

Panel on Web Engineering

At ICWE 2010, Martin Gaedke organised a panel on “How to Successfully Teach Web Engineering?“. The panelists where Fabio Casati, Yogesh Deshpande and myself. See the following pictures of the panel:

More photos are available at http://icwe2010.webengineering.org/Conference/photos.aspx.

After a short introduction, we mainly discussed the following two questions: (1) if you would have a chance to study “Web Engineering” today, where would you do that? (2) If you were in a position to hire Web Engineers, where would you require your students from and what profile would you expect?

My personal message I take home from this panel: perhaps we are trying to much too educate “miracle-students”. From my experience at Salzburg Research I know that Web Engineering, i.e., the systematic development of Web applications, is a truly interdisciplinary task. But it is not the people/researchers as single individuals that are of interdisciplinary nature, it is the teams that are interdisciplinary: so I guess we must not aim at establishing curricula that teach everything from Web technologies, via Web science, design, information architecture, etc. That will be too much for one (single) curriculum and also, it will be unfocused and there students would have a hard time to get a job. What we need is a set of complimentary curricula, e.g., technical engineers, information architects, etc.

Add comment August 8th, 2010

Opening of ditact summer school 2009 …

… with Prof. Sissi Closs as Keynote Speaker.

She started her carrier by studying computer science at the University of Munich. Interesting to see that she came to research because she wanted to do dance courses and Siemens Munich was the only employer that offered flexible working hours at that time (that was in the seventies), so that she could do her dance courses (and work part-time). IMHO an excellent example how flexible working hours are part of a good habitat for acquiring young researchers!

She founded “COMET-Computer” which focuses on technical documentation (not just the technical part, but of course this domain is very technology centric). Naturally, COMET offers flexible working hours.

She argues for the necessity of role models to attract other female students/researchers/etc. And, of course, it is important that women are equally represented on the management (board) level.

News coverage (in German) is available at http://www.salzburg.gv.at/lkorr-meldung?nachrid=43449. And, most important: the ditact summer school is online at http://www.ditact.ac.at/.

Add comment August 24th, 2009

Europakloster Aich

… a truly inspiring experience: I happened to be invited to visit a “monastery on Europe”, the Europakloster in Aich. See http://www.europakloster.com/. Pater Johannes Pausch introduced us to the idea and background of this Benedictine Monastery (and also some of the monastery’s products including cordial spirits ). Also, the monastery is providing mediation services concerning ethics, rules, etc. with respect to Europe.

Add comment April 7th, 2008