SPLASH's mission is to engage software innovators from all walks of life -- developers, academics and undeclared -- in conversations about bettering software. Bettering software involves new ideas about programming languages, tools, conceptual models, and methodologies that can cope with, evolve, and leverage, the complex software-intensive socio-technical system of systems that has emerged in front of our eyes during the past decades. Bettering software requires a deep understanding of the nature of these systems, an understanding that rides on the trends of the moment, but that goes well beyond.