dave astels

I didn’t find anything compelling at openspace, and so wandered about chatting with people: Scott Ambler, Gregori Melnik, and finally had the chance to meet Norm Kerth. I also finally met Luke Hohmann. The last part of the morning was spent in an openspace session ran by Dave West who is running the Institute for Advancement of Software Arts. Dave’s aggregating a lot of great ideas that have been bandied about for some time now by some very big names. It’s nice to see some real effort behind reinventing computer science education. It’s about time. I think it’s a natural step as the field matures.. the way we teach people has to change as our understanding of what CS is changes.

It was a good morning.

Lunch however, was a blast. I ended up sitting with Ward, comparing backgrounds, and discussing the joys of working close to the metal. Ward filled me in on his latest side projects working with very simple, very cheap micro-controllers arranged in networks and communicating very simply.

The afternoon was spent with more wandering around, chatting and networking. That, to me, is what a this conference is all about.. making new friends, catching up with old ones, finding out what everyone is up to.. what the latest buzz is. The Agile movement is truly a community. It’s nice to see that happening… and it’s nice to be part of it.

So now I’m back in the bar area, blogging and tweaking the pics, and chatting.

Kent Beck just said I was looking more & more like Hagrid… I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not. As Hagrid is my favourite character in the Harry Potter series, I’ll choose to take it as a compliment.

It’s going to be an early night tonight.. tomorrow will be busy… invited talks by Norm Kerth & Josh Kerievsky in the morning, and my workshop with Brian Marick in the afternoon.

Pics from today are here.

Another quiet morning so far. Breakfasted with Miro & J.B. Caught up on J.B.’s move to rural Manitoba. He’s in for some culture shock!

Then a chat with Scott Ambler and Norm Kerth. A bit of work while I sip my coffee then off to check out OpenSpace.

The remainder of today was spent hanging out and chatting with people: Mike Hill, Bob Payne, Josh Kerievsky, Ward Cunningham, Elizabeth Hendrickson, Scott Ambler, the guys from Sphere of Influence, and others.

One cool thing was that Bob Payne interviewed me for the series of Agile 2005 podcasts he’s putting together.

This evening I went to dinner with a group including Bill Wake and Rachael Davis.

Pics from today are here.

Ugh… woke up today with a nasty headache… so i went back to sleep. Got up later, and found Mike Feathers as I wandered into the restaurant for breakfast. Mike & I had a good chat catching up.

Following that I grabbed a coffee and took some time to get up to date with my blogging :) I camped out in the bar area, and was soon joined by Rick Mugridge. Rick & I chatted for a while about Fit before being joined for a bit by Bob Martin.

Rally and DigitalFocus threw a party Monday night. Not bad.. mexican food, drinks, and a decent but far too loud band. The quiet band at the ice breaker was far more appropriate IMHO. You could actually talk (or rather hear) comfortably there. With this band we actually had to leave the room and camp out in the exhibit area to have a discussion.

After having some food & drink.. that’s just what we did. Brian Marick, David Chelimsky, Andy Tinkham and I had a good discussion. We touched on various topics, including what I’m doing with Behaviour Driven Development & RSpec (more on that later). We were joined later by Bob Payne.

Bob & I wandered back into the party after a while, found more food and had the treat of watching (& listening to) Bob Martin joining the band on drums for a song. Pics are here, and a video clip of Bob on drums will be along soon.

I spent the afternoon in Rick Mugridge’s “Representing Business Rules in Fit” tutorial. Having a fair bit of experience with Fit, I did find it (as Rick had warned me) quite introductory.. but informational none the less. If you ever have the chance to hear someone speak about what they’ve “written the book on”.. do so. They always have something new & interesting to share. Rick is no exception. I picked up several nuggets .. mostly relating to FitLibrary.. the details of which were new to me. I got about half way through the Fit Book on the flight here.. and now I’m eager to finish it up. Based on conversations with Bob Martin and Rick, fit is just beginning.. there’s lots of interesting ideas floating around.

The last half of the tutorial was hands on (on paper) creating tests for some sample stories. We had a blast. Photos are here.

Brian talked about fusion.. the community, the methodologies, the conferences. He went on to talk about the British cyberneticists of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. How they did really cool stuff… but nothing came of it. What was interesting is why:

• no institutionalized home (i.e. no university department of cybernetics)
• no common core set of techniques/practices
• no grooming of successors

He went on to liken the Agile community to those cyberneticists… do we face the risk of being considered a fad or a “lost art” in the not to distant future?

What about a home for Agile. We have a virtual home in the Agile Alliance.. but what about something more substantial.. Brian suggests taking over a university CS department.

Brian pointed out that if you hire a physicist you pretty much know what you’re getting. You know that they have a certain set of core skills. But what about hiring an Agile developer? Do they know TDD, do they know about CI? It’s hard to tell.. there is no clearly defined minimal definition of what it means to be an “agile developer”. There is hope, however, as the agile field is merging to some extent… might we someday soon have that core set of competencies defined?

Brian seemed especially concerned by the last point, and described how the Agile Alliance has set up an award for up & coming Agile thought leaders based on their contribution in the last year. Two awards or $5000 each. The first awards will be made Thursday morning.

Also, Bob Martin’s focus on Software Craftsmanship is an important move toward a sustainable way to groom successors to ensure that we don’t die off.

Before handing the microphone over to Bob Martin, Brian invited Jim Highsmith to talk about the new Agile Project Leadership Network. I think this is a very promising development.

A busy but enjoyable day, starting with breakfast where I shared a table with Miroslav Novak, Scott Ambler, and Dave Anderson. Miroslav I know from way back when we were neighbors in Calgary, but haven’t seen since last year at XPAU in Calgary. I tend to run into Scott more frequently at the SD conferences.

The morning was spent in the keynote and Openspace kickoff. The keynote was paired.. the two BMs: Brian Marick and Bob Martin.

Well.. that was a decent time. I managed to catch up with several more folks.. and met plenty of new ones. A band, caricature artist, balloon animal “artist”, tarot reader, food, and drink. Not bad. And lots of people. It was fun.

Pics are here.

I started off the day with a breakfast meeting with my editor at Prentice Hall. For those interested, I’ve finally gotten started on my Behaviour Driven Development book.

Registration opened promptly at 11:30.. with an anxious group waiting. The lines formed immediately but they moved quickly.

After registering I spent some time hanging out meeting people, and chatting. Then it was a quick lunch and off to the afternoon “Engineering Practices of Agile Teams” tag team talk. The talk started off with Gerard Meszaros started it off with a talk on user stories, followed by Mike Cohn on estimating and planning.

During the break I caught up with various people, as shown in the gallery.

After the break Jim Highsmith carried it on with a talk on agile project management. Ward Cunningham and Rick Mugridge finished the afternoon off in style with a talk on Fit and FitNesse. This talk was in a rather large room.. which was packed as can be seen in the pics.

Pics are here.