Speaking Engagements

SEMAT: Cleaning Up the Confusion, Jargon and Fads of Software Engineering — An overview of the SEMAT initiative to re-found the field of software engineering on more firm definitions and theory. I presented this talk at the November 2011 meeting of Boston SPIN.

Research Notes Tool — This talk presents the Lotus Notes application I wrote that helps track and organize references and ideas for academic research. The tool itself is on my downloads page.

Open Source Projects Manage Themselves? Dream On! — A Powerpoint version of my article with the same title.

Error Handling Within LotusScript — This talk pulls together several articles I have written about proper programming techniques in LotusScript. Included is information about compile-time error detection, checking the validity of Notes objects at runtime, and using the NotesLog class to write permanent error logs for scheduled agents. The talk references a database of sample code. (Outline in HTML.)

HIPAA, Security, and Domino/Notes — This talk provides a summary of the entire HIPAA law for healthcare reform, then drills down into the computer security parts of the rules. The talk finishes with some detailed information about how the Lotus Domino/Notes products can meet the security requirements. (Outline in HTML.)

Healing Sick Software Projects — A talk aimed at project managers and technical leads about how to turn around software projects that are in crisis.

Why Software Is (Almost) Always Late — A description of my top six reasons why software projects so often run long, and what to do about them.

Enhancing Email Security with S/MIME — A detailed look at the S/MIME email protocol, with background about the cryptography principles involved.

Can We Estimate Software Development Time? — A response to a paper by J. P. Lewis, which claims there are hard limits to our ability to estimate software tasks. Lewis's paper, and this talk, touch on results from Kolmogorov complexity and complexity theory. (Outline in HTML.)

Capability Maturity Model (CMM): An Overview — A summary of this important software development framework. This is a balanced presentation, including a discussion of CMM's weaknesses.  (Outline in HTML.)

About This Page

I have spoken at software quality conferences, graduate seminars, corporate training sessions, and user group meetings.