Voices of the Industry TrackCHASE 2026

Call for Submissions

CHASE is the premier venue for research on cooperative and human aspects of software engineering; the conference emphasizes the important role of people in software development, how people cooperate, collaborate to design and develop software systems, and how these processes can be improved. Bringing together academic researchers and industry practitioners is a major goal of the conference, and the CHASE Voice of the Industry track aims to foster a deep exchange between academia, industry and non-commercial organizations by inviting practitioners to share their experiences with other practitioners and the research community.

We're inviting those in industry including engineers, managers, product leaders, designers, data/ML practitioners, SREs, and community builders to share concrete, real-world lessons about the human and cooperative sides of software engineering —how people, teams, and organizations actually get software built, operate it, and adapt to change.

This is not a research paper track. We want talks that demonstrate case studies, postmortems, lived experiences, and playbooks that others can adopt. Bring your war stories—what worked, what didn't, why, and what you'd do differently.

Why speak?

• Influence the global SE community with practical guidance grounded in evidence.
• Shape research agendas with industry realities.
• Learn from peers facing similar socio-technical challenges.
• Build connections with researchers, tool builders, and other practitioners.

Talk Topics of Interest

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Human-centric delivery at scale: team topologies, platform engineering, DevEx/SPACE & DORA metrics, socio-technical architecture, Conway's Law in practice.
• AI + Software Engineering (hands-on): integrating LLMs/copilots/agents into developer workflows, prompt engineering in the large, governance and risk controls, change management for AI adoption, new roles & skills, measurable impact on quality/productivity.
• Collaboration in modern development organizations: hybrid/WFX models, onboarding, knowledge sharing, psychological safety, cross-functional rituals, and design reviews.
• Leadership & organizational change: shifting from projects to products, product ops, stakeholder alignment, incentives, budget and portfolio decisions, incident leadership.
• Trust, ethics, and responsibility: responsible AI/ML, safety and compliance in high-consequence contexts, fairness and transparency practices that teams actually use.
• Open source & communities: inner-source, governance, maintainership health, contributor experience, standards and ecosystems.
• Equity, diversity, and inclusion: practical strategies that improved inclusion, allyship, accessibility in tools/processes, measurable outcomes.
• Education & enablement: upskilling at scale, path-to-practice programs, playbooks for socio-technical capability building.
• Data for improvement: telemetry for human-centric decisions, experiments in process/tooling, privacy-preserving measurement, "what the metrics missed."
• Failure & recovery: blameless postmortems, socio-technical root causes, organizational learning loops that stuck.

In short, if your talk helps others do better work with people, it's in scope.

What Makes a Great VoI Talk

• Specific: Concrete scenarios, constraints, timelines, and stakeholders.
• Evidence-informed: Data, observations, or well-documented lessons (anonymized is fine).
• Actionable: Takeaways, templates, or heuristics attendees can use or learn from.
• Candid: Pitfalls, trade-offs, and what you'd change next time.
• Accessible: Clear narratives and plain, accessible language.

How to Submit

No paper required. Prepare a short proposal:

• Title
• Abstract (200–300 words) — problem, context, what you did, outcomes
• Role & Org
• Speaker Bio(s) (100 words each)

To submit a talk, please go here: Link to Submit

Want to Contribute But Can't Attend?

While talk submissions require in-person attendance, we recognize that many in industry are unable to travel, but this conference would still benefit immensely from your thoughts. For this reason, we invite industry practitioners to contribute CHASE Lived Experiences in Practice. We invite practitioners to provide:

• Stories of triumphs and failures.
• Instructive examples with lessons learned.
• Hard-won wisdom and informed opinions.
• Diverse perspectives on the good and the bad when it comes to human factors in software development.

Accepted stories will be shared with conference participants and used to inform discussions among researchers and practitioners. Participants may submit stories anonymously, but otherwise will receive recognition for contributing on the conference website. Stories will be anonymized to remove specific company names and personally identifiable information. Submission indicates that the conference organizers have permission to use the content during the conference to inspire discussion.

To submit an experience story, please go here: Link to Submit

Important Dates

• Submission deadline for talks and stories: February 2^nd, 2026 (AOE)
• Notification to speakers: February 6^th, 2026 (AOE)
• Event dates: April 13^th - 14^th, 2026

Contact

Please direct questions or comments to the track chairs: Luiz Alexandre Costa (luiz.costa@edu.unirio.br) and Reed Milewicz (rmilewi@sandia.gov)