Welcome to the third Mosharaka International Conference on Communications, Networking and Information Technology (MIC-CNIT2009). This event is intended to represent a major forum for researchers, engineers and students from all over the world to meet in Amman to present their latest research results and to exchange new ideas and practical experience in digital communication systems, multimedia communications, communications and computer networks, and communication and information technology.

Coming to Jordan represents a unique opportunity to witness the embrace of history and future. As small in area as it is, Jordan has a rich history spanning thousands of years, that a tourist can only admire. Places like Petra and the Dead Sea are examples of the many one-of-a-kind places to visit in Jordan. Amman, the capital of Jordan, is a living model of a large and modern city that has all kinds of tourist attractions. On top of all that, Jordan, as a peaceful country in a turbulent area, enjoys extreme levels of safety and security. Jordanian people are internationally known for generosity, hospitality and cultural awareness and tolerance.

Despite its age, software development is regarded to be a very young discipline. Although it is growing very fast, it is still very much in flux. We have difficulties to agree on the methods to develop, evolve and maintain software systems, we constantly question their usefulness and are in a continuous quest for improving them.

So far, the prevailing opinion has been that we should apply systematic, disciplined and quantifiable engineering approach to software development. Recently, however, new software development methods are turning out to be less and less engineering-like.

This keynote is going to make a journey through six decades of two still immature disciplines, software development and nutrition field. During the journey, the keynote speaker is going to compare these two disciplines and identify their commonalities in form of their trends, successes and failures. The common characteristics as observed in the two disciplines are typical for very complex domains where there are too many interrelated known and unknown variables and their effect on the stability of the field is not easily recognized.

To reach all types of audience, the keynote is going to be presented in a lightweight and humoristic manner. The goal of this presentation approach is to raise awareness of the trends prevailing and the constant confusion reigning within the past six decades of software development.

Mira Kajko-Mattsson is Associate Professor in software engineering. She is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University (SU) and Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm in Sweden. She is an IEEE member and she has been is a regular member of the program committees of important conferences and journals in the software engineering field, such as, the Transactions on Software Engineering, Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution, Empirical Software Engineering, International Conference on Software Maintenance, Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, and the like.

Kajko-Mattsson is the author of more than 100 international publications. Right now, her work is recommended by two international standards (ISO/IEC 14764 and SWEBOK). She has received 13 international awards. Her expertise lies in industrial lifecycle sofware processes.

Kajko-Mattsson is going to provide a historical perspective of software development and the confusion that the software community has experienced throughout the past decades. The title of her presentation is “Historical Perspective of Software Development (A Lightweight Presentation).