This year, the track will feature a number of invited contributions with particular interest to software engineering practitioners. These include keynotes, invited industry presentations, panel discussions and a technology transfer speed dating session that matches users of research results with potential providers.

This track further solicits high quality contributions from the ICSE community that are focussed on industrial practice and practical applications of software engineering foundations, methods, practices, processes and tools. We welcome, in particular, results produced by partnerships between industry and academia that are pragmatic, practical, highly relevant, and thoroughly researched. 

The Software Engineering in Practice Track this year will have a number of innovations for ICSE aimed at creating a more lively dialogue between its stakeholder communities. To facilitate this innovation, the conference solicits different forms of contributions:

• Papers: The conference would like to receive experience reports or case studies that describe the context of a problem of practical importance; discuss why the solution of the problem is innovative; provide a concise explanation of the approach, techniques, and methodologies employed; the best practices that emerged; the tools developed, the software processes involved, and their broader applicability; overall assessment of effectiveness, risks and mitigations, and other lessons learned.
• Goldfish bowl proposals: A goldfish bowl is a panel discussion where audience members can join and leave the panel during the course of the session. Goldfish bowls will be scheduled for the length of a session (90 minutes). The proposal for a goldfish bowl should identify a topic to be discussed, argue why this topic is of interest and timely, identify an initial panel membership 
• Business plans: The Software Engineering in Practice Track at this year’s ICSE will run a business plan competition. Business plans submitted to ICSE identify intellectual property about a software engineering method, technique or tool that has commercial relevance, describe a team of individuals who seek the investment, discuss how the intellectual property can be brought to market and calculate both the level of investment needed for market entry and the likely returns that will be made from an investment. The business plans will be presented during the track and be discussed by a panel of business angels, investors and venture capitalists. The best business plan will receive the Zuhlke Ventures cash price.
• Mini tutorials: Mini tutorials are 90 minute state of the art reports that summarise a particular software engineering discipline and make it accessible to an industrial audience. We seek proposals for mini tutorials, which should identify the topic, provide a biography of the tutorial presenter(s), outline why the topic is timely and relevant, and describe the content of the tutorial in sufficient detail to judge the relevance of the proposal.
• Master classes: A master class is an interaction between an apprentice, who wants to learn about a particular technique and a master who will make the technique accessible to the apprentice. In the context of this ICSE track, the role of apprentices will be assumed by industry representatives who have a particular need and the role of a master will be played by a researcher who knows a software engineering technique that can be used to meet the need. In the Software Engineering in Practice track, we solicit both identifications of needs from industry and proposals of master classes from researchers. The track is very interested in proposals of master classes that have matched apprentice and master, but the PC is equally interested in proposals that identify a need and will undertake to find a master who can deliver the class in the research community.

All authors of accepted papers will be asked to complete an IEEE Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera ready versions. At least one author of each paper must register for ICSE 2012 in Zurich and present the results at the conference. The organisers of goldfish bowls, panels, mini tutorials and master classes also need to register for the conference. Note that there will be no discounted registration fees for authors or event organizers.

All accepted contributions will be published in the conference electronic proceedings which will also be available as printed proceedings.

Submission Due Date: October 27, 2011

Notification Date: January 27, 2012

Camera-Ready Date: March 16, 2012

Wolfgang Emmerich, Zühlke Engineering, UK

Michael Whalen, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA