Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog

The 2020 LASER summer school has been announced. It will take place June 1 to 6* , as always in Elba Island, this year with the theme DevOps, Microservices and Software Development for the Age of the Web. The first five speakers are listed on the conference page, with more to come, from both academia and industry.

This is the 16th edition of the school (already) and, as always, rests on the LASER recipe of “Sea, Sun and Software”: densely packed lectures by top experts with the opportunity to enjoy the extraordinary surroundings of the Island of Elba and the Hotel del Golfo’s unique food, beach and facilities, with lots of time devoted to interactions between speakers and attendees.

This year’s theme is devoted to advances in the newest Web technologies and the corresponding software engineering issues and development models.

*Arrival on May 31st, departure on June 7th.

There is one more speaker at the LASER 2018 summer school two weeks from now: Dominic Woerner from Bosch. Mr. Woerner is a solution architect for Internet of Things and distributed ledger applications with Bosch Digital Solutions, and a researcher within the Bosch Economy of Things research project. He did his PhD at ETH Zurich working at the Bosch IoT Lab and was a visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative. His talk will be on “From the cloud-based Internet of Things to the Economy of Things”.

The 2018 LASER, the school’s 14^th  edition, will take place in Elba, Italy, June 2 to 10, 2018. The theme is

                Software Technology for Blockchains, Bitcoins and Distributed Trust Systems

and the speakers (4 to 6 lectures each):

• Christian Cachin, IBM, on Secure distributed programming for blockchains
• Primavera De Filippi, CNRS and Harvard University, on Social and legal effects of distributed trust systems
• Maurice Herlihy, Brown, on Blockchains, Smart Contracts, & the future of distributed computing
• Christoph Jentzsch, Slock.it
• me, on Software engineering for distributed systems
• Emin Gun Sirer, Cornell University
• Roger Wattenhofer, ETH Zurich

Details at https://www.laser-foundation.org/school/.  From that page:

The combination of advances in distributed systems and cryptography is bringing about a revolution not only in finance, with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but in many other fields whose list keeps growing. The LASER 2018 summer school brings the best experts in the field, from both industry and academia, to provide an in-depth exploration of the fascinating software issues and solutions behind these breakthrough technology advances.

The LASER summer school, now in its 13th edition, will take place this September (postponed from last year). The theme is new for the school, and timely: software for robotics. Below is the announcement.

The school site is here.

Full announcement:

The 2017 LASER summer school will be devoted to Software for Robotics. It takes place from 9 to 17 September in the exceptional setting of the Hotel del Golfo in Procchio, Elba Island, Italy.

Robotics is progressing at an amazing pace, bringing improvements to almost areas of human activity. Today’s robotics systems rely ever more fundamentally on complex software, raising difficult issues. The LASER 2017 summer school both covers the current state of robotics software technology and open problems. The lecturers are top international experts with both theoretical contributions and major practical achievements in developing robotics systems.
The LASER school is intended for professionals from the industry (engineers and managers) as well as university researchers, including PhD students. Participants learn about the most important software technology advances from the pioneers in the field. The school’s focus is applied, although theory is welcome to establish solid foundations. The format of the school favors extensive interaction between participants and speakers.

We have lined up an impressive roster of speakers from the leading edge of both industry and academia:

• Rodolphe Gélin, Aldebaran Robotics
• Ashish Kapoor, Microsoft Research
• Davide Brugali, University of Bergamo, on Managing software variability in robotic control systems
• Nenad Medvidovic, University of Southern California, on Software Architectures of Robotics Systems
• Bertrand Meyer, Politecnico di Milano & Innopolis University, on Concurrent Object-Oriented Robotics Software
• Issa Nesnas, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on Experiences from robotic software development for research and planetary flight robots

The school takes place at the magnificent Hotel del Golfo in the Gulf of Procchio, Elba. Along with an intensive scientific program, participants will have time to enjoy the countless natural and cultural riches of this wonderful, history-laden jewel of the Mediterranean.

For more information about the school, the speakers and registration see the LASER site.

The 2013 LASER summer school, organized by our chair at ETH, will take place September 8-14, once more in the idyllic setting of the Hotel del Golfo in Procchio, on the island of Elba in Italy. This is already the 10th conference; the roster of speakers so far reads like a who’s who of software engineering.

The theme this year is Software for the Cloud and Big Data and the speakers are Roger Barga from Microsoft, Karin Breitman from EMC,  Sebastian Burckhardt  from Microsoft,  Adrian Cockcroft from Netflix,  Carlo Ghezzi from Politecnico di Milano,  Anthony Joseph from Berkeley,  Pere Mato Vila from CERN and I.

LASER always has a strong practical bent, but this year it is particularly pronounced as you can see from the list of speakers and their affiliations. The topic is particularly timely: exploring the software aspects of game-changing developments currently redefining the IT scene.

The LASER formula is by now well-tuned: lectures over seven days (Sunday to Saturday), about five hours in the morning and three in the early evening, by world-class speakers; free time in the afternoon to enjoy the magnificent surroundings; 5-star accommodation and food in the best hotel of Elba, made affordable as we come towards the end of the season (and are valued long-term customers). The group picture below is from last year’s school.

Participants are from both industry and academia and have ample opportunities for interaction with the speakers, who typically attend each others’ lectures and engage in in-depth discussions. There is also time for some participant presentations; a free afternoon to discover Elba and brush up on your Napoleonic knowledge; and a boat trip on the final day.

Information about the 2013 school can be found here.