ten years of XTC
London’s eXtreme Tuesday Club celebrated it’s ten year anniversary last tuesday. Unfortunately I could not be there, so I’m celebrating here, beer in hand, as one should – I find the weekly meetings in a pub with eXtremely interesting folks and the conferences (XP Days) that are organized around it refreshing.
So, whenever I’m working for a client in London, or otherwise visiting the UK, I try to massage my schedule so that I can be in London on a tuesday (not very often, as I still spend most of my time in the Netherlands or otherwise travelling). As the Michelin guide would say: worth a detour, and the london XP days are always worth the trip. I’ll be making that trip again in December for XP Days, and hope to organize the Open Space there with Rachel Davies. XTC is loosely coupled, so things magically seem to happen and it ‘just works’ – participants organize the weekly meeting, and the conference is organized without much fuss. (In case you want to propose a session for the ‘organized’ track, the deadline is today, and the review process is open). It’s a great place to try out new things, like the Haskell Dojo Mike Hill and I ran in the spring, not only is there great enthusiasm, the breadth and depth of knowledge of who ever is there is amazing, and I’m not sure how I would have otherwise met them.
As Rachel already said it’s hard to convey the energy that is there, but I’m shure that without XTC many ways of developing better software would never have been uncovered.
Sunset & the Thinker by Esparta Palma
Whenever I travel back from an eXtreme Tuesday Club meeting, there’s always lots to think about. So, I hope to see you there (again) some time. Cheers!
