PPIG 2020 - 31st Annual Workshop 17 - 21 Aug & 30 Nov - 4 Dec 2020, online

Notice: As with many other conferences needing to adjust to the new circumstances, PPIG will be going online as well. At the core of the PPIG annual workshops is the fostering of a community of people interested in all aspects of programming. We aim to maintain and support these goals in the transition to the online setup as well.

We are replacing the single event initially planned for July with two one-week-long virtual events in August (17th to 21st) and November (16th to 20th). During each of the weeks, we’ll meet for two to three hours a day for presentations, discussions, panels and social activities. We’re encouraging all our attendees to keep in touch during and between the two events, and we’re planning for some additional activities to support this.

You can check the programme page for more details.

Original CfP follows –

The 31st Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group will be hosted for the first time in North America, at OCAD University’s Inclusive Design Research Centre in Toronto, Canada, during the week of July 29-31, 2020.

Cultivating the Margins

The speed, growth, and increasing entanglement of computational systems is actively changing our work, social, political, and creative lives. Yet the apparent success of these systems in reshaping social and economic landscapes has also come with enormous costs—putting fair and stable employment, the veracity of information, respectful use of data, and democratic participation at risk. Perhaps the ways we create and study these systems, and the normative assumptions and values that are embedded within them, need to be reconsidered in a new light?

This critique has been present at PPIG for a while, from End User Programming, Live Coding, to even the idea of studying the psychology of programmers. We’ve always been a community that invites other perspectives on what it means to program, and we want to continue to extend this interest.

This year’s theme prompts us to reflect upon what we’re missing—the practices, theories, people, and technologies that have been excluded, set aside, or overlooked by mainstream programming research. What are the edges and limits of programming and programmed systems? Who has agency to participate in their creation and study, and who is relegated to the passive role of user or research subject?

What new or overlooked possibilities are growing at the margins of programming, away from the prevailing industrial and technoscientific values of speed, efficiency, measurability, and scale? What would an ecology of programming look like, in which we have a responsibility to cultivate communities, invite diverse perspectives, and grow a plurality of approaches and epistemologies?

The Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) was established in 1987 in order to bring together people from diverse communities to explore common interests in the psychological aspects of programming and in the computational aspects of psychology. “Programming”, here, is interpreted in the broadest sense to include any aspect of software creation. As always with PPIG, we accept the widest range of submissions on a variety of topics, such as:

  • Programming and human cognition
  • Programming education and craft skill acquisition
  • Human centered design and evaluation of programming languages, tools and infrastructure
  • Team/co-operative work in programming
  • End user programming
  • Distributed programming, programming distribution
  • Gender, age, culture and programming
  • New paradigms in programming
  • Code quality, readability, productivity and re-use
  • Mistakes, bugs and errors
  • Notational design
  • Unconventional interactions and quasi-programming
  • Non-human programming
  • Technology support for creativity
  • Music(al) programming
  • Liveness and interactivity in programming

We welcome the following categories of submissions:

  • Papers: No explicit limit - as long as the reader’s interest is maintained, usually < 10 pages
  • Reflections, artworks, and system demonstrations, typically 1 page abstract or < 2.5 days long, depending on the medium
  • Doctoral consortium submissions: Up to 2 pages long

Please use our templates for papers. Submissions for the workshop should be uploaded to EasyChair.

Important dates:

  • Abstract submission deadline: Wed 18 March 2020 extended to Wed 8 April 2020
  • Paper submission deadline: Wed 1 April 2020 extended to Wed 22 April 2020
  • Authors will be notified: Wed 29 April 2020
  • Conference: Wed 29 - Fri 31 July 2020 at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. Room: Inclusive Design Institute, 49 McCaul St.

We look forward to seeing you in Toronto!
Colin Clark, Mariana Marasoiu, and Luke Church