Speaker: Alexey Zagalsky

Title: Studying a Participatory Culture in Software Development

Abstract: The formation of communities of practice and the emergence of socially enabled tools and channels, have led to a transformation in software development—from a solo activity into a collaborative activity. Modern software development is collaborative, global, and larger in scale. However, collaboration is a complex and challenging activity, that relies on awareness, communication, and coordination. In this talk, I'll present few recent studies that focus on the study of the participatory culture in software development. 

We'll discuss the evolution of social media tools and channels in software development, and discuss the challenges involved. We will further discuss collaboration in software development, examine a model for evaluating collaboration tools, and introduce the model of regulation. As part of that I'll present how GitHub (a software development tool) can be a game changer for other domains as well (e.g., education) - promoting a culture of collaboration.