Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development

We are extremely pleased to welcome you to the Sixth ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV) in London. ACM DEV has become the premier conference for computer science research into computing technologies for emerging regions, and this year's program reflects the variety of research challenges encountered in this rich research area. DEV 2015 received 63 submissions, of which 50 were full papers and 13 were short papers. As in the past, we solicited full papers that deeply investigated ICTD-focused topics. We accepted 13 full papers. As a new addition to the program this year, we solicited short papers to provide a venue for the dissemination of the experiences of practitioners and follow-on work of previously published efforts. We accepted six short papers for presentation at the conference. Also new this year was the introduction of submission "tracks" (systems, HCI, and data science) to explicitly recognize the interdisciplinary nature of DEV and the unique perspectives and methodologies brought by the different disciplines. Authors were asked to select the track(s) that best characterized their contribution in order to match their submission with the expertise of the reviewers. As in previous years, the review process was double blind. All papers were reviewed by at least three program committee (PC) members. In a few cases, we solicited extra reviews from outside experts and additional reviewers from within the PC. The final decisions were based on reviews, online discussions, and a three hour long program committee conference call. We would like to thank our talented and hard working PC for their rigorous reviewing and generous donation of their time. This year we also introduced a best paper award and selected a small committee from our PC for this decision. As a community our experiences have helped our techniques and approaches mature over the past six years. This year's program both broadens and coalesces the themes from past DEV conferences and includes new approaches to development challenges. The program consists of work ranging from connectivity challenges to network performance, from systems building to applications and interfaces, and from crowds to specific communities. This year's program reflects the strong quality and innovative creativity of the DEV research community. Other highlights this year include keynotes from Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS and Ed Cutrell, a Senior Researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India. In addition, we look forward to a lively panel led by Joshua Blumenstock of the University of Washington. We look forward to seeing you at ACM DEV-6!