From RE Cares to SE Cares: Software Engineering for Social Good, One Venue at a Time

As software practitioners, we can help society by using our communities of experts to address a software need of a socially-conscious organization. Doing so can benefit society in the locale of a software engineering conference, and provides access to international experts for local organizations which may otherwise not have access. Furthermore, established Software Engineering (SE) researchers as well as practitioners and students have the opportunity for a unique learning experience. In this paper, we argue that the SE community should use SE conferences as the focal points for activities that benefit society at the locations of the conferences, and make such activities an integral, valued, and recognized part of the conference programs. The proposed series of events, termed SE Cares, can follow and learn from the model of Requirements Engineering (RE) Cares events that took place in 2018 and 2019, and can be a co-located event at all interested SE-related conferences.