Time for my annual blog capturing the ICSE experience. It is pretty packed, like the conference itself. Sit down with a cuppa (cup of…tea/coffee) as we say in Melbourne – hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed ICSE 🙂

Starting Saturday-Sunday

I was part of a massive Monash and friends contingent on board the LATAM airlines flight from Melbourne to Rio, Brazil. Arriving Saturday evening some 24 years – oops, I meant hours – later, I was a little concerned about jet lag hitting in time for my first ‘gig’ – a Sunday afternoon keynote presentation at the Responsible AI Engineering (RAIE) workshop. By God’s grace, I could rest well and was not only able to present my own talk but also listen to and engage with all others in the workshop, masterfully chaired by the inimitable Muneera Bano.

More on Monday

Monday morning presented a diabolical dilemma – keynotes by Peggy (Margaret Anne Storey), Carolyn (Seaman), and Emmerson Murphy-Hill in three different co-located events, in parallel! Where is Hermione’s time turner when I need it, I thought to myself 🙂 Because they were ever so slightly staggered I did managed to duck my head into each, staying for all of Carolyn’s keynote where she presented our collaborative work on “antipatterns” in using AI for qualitative data analysis (paper draft coming soon on Arxiv!) with Rodrigo Spinola and Victoria Gomes.

After the first tea break, I presented our paper “From framework to practice: designing a real-world telehealth application for palliative care” at the Designing workshop on behalf of first author Dr Wei Zhou and the rest of our team. Later in the evening, we had a lovely dinner with the RAIE and AGENT workshop folks – thanks to Ahmed (Hassan) and Qinghua (Lu).

Turbo Tuesday

Tuesday was a loooooo….oooong day. It started with the AGENT workshop. Two great keynotes by Satish Chandra and Robert Feldt. I opened the lighting round talks with my 2 mins talk showcasing my Agentic SE beyond Code vision paper. This was my first ever 2 mins talk and I decided to have fun with it – slides below, scroll for all slides – tell me what you think 🙂

Next, it was time for a Future of Software Engineering session facilitated by Daniel Russo and co-chaired by Peggy and Andre van der Hoek. Christoph Treude, Chris Poskitt and I had a paper on “rethinking arefact evaluations” in the FoSE track whose seeds were sown over a lunch in Singapore when I was visiting them at SMU during my sabbatical last year (some day I might get around to blogging about that too!) The ‘liberating structures’ approach reminded me somewhat of the Open Spaces and Unconference sessions popular in the Agile and XP (from late 2000’s) and the round table discussions at CHASE back when it was a workshop.

After a lunch meeting, I went back to the AGENT workshop to catch more talks including by Lakshana Assalaarachchi presenting our Agentic Software Project Manager vision paper. Watching our PhD students present their first big conference talk is one of those experiences that fills our hearts with joy and reminds us why we do want we do. Lakshana and Samuel Ferino also presented at the Doctoral Symposium and at poster sessions – well done both!

This was followed by attending some great talks at the CHASE conference including the last one by Muneera who presented our paper on Human-Centered Quantum Software Engineering: A Research Agenda which was done in collaboration with Didar Zowghi, Mohammad Reza Mousavi and Shaukat Ali. Then I was pulled into the CHASE steering committee meeting before having to dash off to the ICSE steering committee meeting from 6-10pm over dinner.

Did I say Tuesday was long? A marathon from 9am to 10pm 🙂 And ICSE hadn’t officially started yet!

Welcoming Wednesday

ICSE openings are always fun and Rio did not disappoint! Drum beats heralded the high energy conference that was about to unfold. General chairs Marcos Kalinowski and Rafael Prikladnicki welcomed the international SE community to Rio with open arms, while PC co-chairs Mira Mezini and Tom Zimmerman reminded us how ICSE 2026 was bigger than football with 51 countries represented, 3 more than the FIFA world cup 2026 🙂 This was followed by two smashing keynotes by Jan Bosch and our Australian colleague Qinghua (Lu) who is making us proud by representing us/SE at the United Nations platform.

At this point, I remembered I had to finalise my slides for our technical briefing that arvo (Aussie for afternoon) so I sneaked back into my room to do this while also catching my midday (Duhr) prayer.

Grabbing a plate of lunch I made my way to the ICSE 2027 organising committee meeting where we heard updates and discussed plans for Dublin, Ireland.

Then it was time for the “qualitative data analysis and theory development” technical briefing. Since introducing socio-technical grounded theory, I’ve been running TBs at ICSE for a few years but this was the first time I had a co-presenter, Dr Hashini Gunatilake, an excellent empirical researcher with first hand experience of applying STGT. We had a most amazing time conducting hands-on exercises with a super engaged audience of ~50 people for the full 90 mins, with many staying over time for Q&A. Thank you to all those who came and engaged, even as our TB was running in parallel to the award talks! #ICSE_FOMO_isReal

Good as I may be at handling several things by God’s grace, I confess I was really tired after the high octane session delivery and zoned out a bit. In the meantime, Vasu Malhotra presented our SEET paper on the lived experiences of women teaching support staff which is very close to our hearts, written in collaboration with Rhea dSilva.

Top up Thursday

Thursday morning started early with the ICSE 2028 OC meeting where we brainstormed how to make Hawaii an awesome and memorable experience (it will be 50 years of ICSE and 60 years of the NATO SE conference in 2027).

What’s better than receiving a distinguished paper award? Presenting them – for the track one worked hard to co-organise for all of the previous year and a bit! I was delighted to present the distinguished paper awards for the SE in Practice (SEIP) track with my co-chair Gustavo Pinto. We are so proud of all the 74 accepted papers and so appreciative of our amazing PC team – thank you everyone for helping shape the SEIP program. (Oh another ICSE_FOMO: I couldn’t be there to present the distinguished reviewer awards as it was in parallel with my technical briefing – thanks to Gustavo for representing us.)

Next came another two smashing keynotes by Laurie Williams and Silvio Meira. Rest of the day for me included the SE.next panel hosted by Ahmed Hassan – super engaging and thought provoking – and other planned as well as random catch ups (the best part!) Maria (Teresa Baldassarre) gave an excellent overview of our mixed methods research paper (journal first) which we wrote together with Peggy and Alessandra Milani over a few years.

Of course we had to take a Monash and friends photo – although not everyone could make it at that time, many of us did – see our happy faces. Once again, Muneera closed the day with our SEIS paper on exploring societal biases in Gen AI using social science constructs and theories.

Fleeting Friday

How is it the closing ceremony already? Many of us wondered even as we were both tired and energised from the past 5 days of world class research experience. Marcos and Rafael received the longest standing ovation in my ICSE memory – richly deserved!

With endings come new beginnings. I felt blessed to join the ICSE 2027 OC teams on stage as we announced Dublin as the next destination. A highlight was our ICSE 2027 finance chair, Jim Buckley, pulling at our heart strings with his beautiful song about immigration. As someone who has migrated multiple times in my life (a self proclaimed #GlobalDesi), the tears at the edge of my eyes caught me by surprise as I tried to ‘keep it together’ on stage. Next, Rick Kazman enthused us with his ICSE 2028 Hawaii announcement, as did Hironori Washizaki with his ICSE 2029 Tokyo teaser.

And just when I thought the keynotes couldn’t get any better, in came Alexander Serebrenik and Virgílio Almeida with their mind blowing keynotes! I said goodbyes to many colleagues and friends as I prepared to pack up and leave for my looooo..ooong flight back home.

Few More Highlights and Thoughts

Meeting with new and old colleagues is always a highlight. Watching PhD students and early career researchers from home and around the world rocking it at their presentations, posters, receiving awards, and co-organising events restores my faith that the future of the SE community is in good hands 🙂

It was especially incredible to witness up close some powerhouse women (and men) balancing work and caring responsibilities. Some dropping kids off at childcare before literally running in and walking up on stage to present, others pulling it together after rough times with sick kids. Reminds me to never forget the humans behind the researchers. Giving each other hope and encouragement is the least we can do, especially during whirlwind conferences!

Ah yes, at some point in the week, I was mercifully ‘rescued’ by Muneera from my crazy schedule to go for some sightseeing (note to self: keep some breathing space in the schedule next year. Wait, did I say that last year too?!).

Rio is stunning! I am glad I was able to immerse in the city’s sights, smells, and sounds. The view from atop was breathtaking. The red cable car ride to the top reminded me of Wellington, New Zealand 🙂 The waves in Rio were something else – “multi agent waves” as I joked, they kept coming in full force, one after another.

Overall, it was a whirlwind week at ICSE 2026 in Rio – one that I will cherish for years to come. Thank you Marcos, Rafael, the entire OC, and especially the amazing student volunteers! So blessed to be part of this beautiful and ever growing international SE community, and to be able to travel (albeit long the journey) given all that is going on with the world right now.

Signing off with a little prayer for world peace.

See you in Dublin, if not sooner, God willing!