me.andering – Willem van den Ende

I was just chatting with Bernard Notarianni. The first Agile Open France is about to happen … Probably on March 7 and 8 (update: it is now March 5,6 and 7), somewhere near Paris – Bernard, Emmanuel and Raphael are finalizing the location details and hope to start marketing next week.

They plan to have the conference site in the general Agile Open website, so I made it bi-lingual, technically at least, translations are probably best left to the french

“France Villandry” by Francisco Antunes

What?

It’s the Return of the Naked Agilists. What? In case you haven’t guessed it’s a conference. A different one. You can attend this conference from the comfort of your own home- you only need Skype to be able to attend.  Save the date now:

Date:     Saturday 19-Jan-08
Time:   20:00 GMT – 21:30 GMT
Venue:  Your place, or mine

You’ve got until the end of December to propose a few-minute presentation or a one minute question. After review, the most interesting ones will be put on the agenda.

Thanks to Kevin Rutherford for bringing this to my attention.

I’ve just returned to the comfort of my own home, after staying in the comfort of other people’s homes and hotels around XP days London. I’m planning to procrastinating on writing about XP Days, a guest lecture plus live coding on Test Driven Development at the university of Bath, upcoming coding dojos (public ones in the Netherlands, and another one live at the BBC).

More later, perhaps. I was afraid expecting it would be difficult to keep posting a blog entry every day while on the road. I was right… I get more out of conferences by being fully present at the location (real or virtual) and not splitting my attention over the conference, e-mail and blog posting.

Reading the title you might go, what on earth is Smidig? Well, let me help you:

“Smidig 2007 er Norges første konferanse rundt smidig systemutviklin”

I guess that means:

“Agile 2007 is the first conference in Norway on agile systems development”

(Smidig might also mean Lean, I cna’t quite make that out from the context. Agile was my best guess)

And it gets better:

“Begge dager vil bestå av Lightning Talks før lunsj og Open Space etter lunsj”

Wich probably means:

“Both days will consist of Lightning Talks before lunch, and Open Space after lunch”

Now for the disclaimer: I don’t speak Norwegian, nor have I ever been to Norway. However, I do understand lunch (and I have been to lunch) – and lunch is written as some people in the Netherlands pronounce it…

This looks like a promising conference format – the Lightning Talks are probably submitted fairly just in time, and feed the Open Space, which is, as always, as just-in-time as it gets. If you actually understand what is written on the Smidig 2007 page, I recommend you go there, November 26 and 27 in Oslo, Norway.

this picture from smidig.net who seem to be ‘cake builders’ doing ‘fast delivery’ . Fitting

November seems agile conference month, there’s a lot going on… One could theoretically continue on from XPDays Germany 2007 before the weekend to Smidig after the weekend and then on to AgileNorth 2007 in Manchester on the 29th.

… Smidigs’ conference format seems to be ‘more than two days, more eXtreme than XP days‘ .

Or not? I’ll be co-hosting an open space during XP days Benelux next week. Deb Hartman recently ran an open space at XP Day Manhattan 2007 . XP Days London seems to be missing an open space, but it has… The Pub .

And there is the virtual world wide open space called the internet…. the latest edition of carnival of the agilists is out, featuring my post on making more money without certification, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on Challenges When Communicating Designs, Michael Feathers on Elegant Byte Counting, and something about remote work and not washing down shavings in the laundry room.

Check carnival of the agilists out, ladies and gentleman. And then book a place at a Smidig or XP days near you, before heading out for the weekend…

I read in several places that systems thinkers tend to keep their work to themselves, and that stories work best to get more people to do it.

So, here is a story with a diagram of effects – want more traffic? .

Context: Last week, Marc Evers and I were working on a quote for a community website, based on a request for proposal we got. We made the diagram to clarify our interpretations about the clients ‘business’ – a not for profit foundation supporting a community of practice.

I’m involved in a number of websites, e.g. to support my business, conferences and as of recently wyrd web – a budding company to support more of that. The diagram helped me understand this client, and some of my other contexts involving a community and its’ website(s) – e.g. systems administrators don’t always see why uptime and responsiveness provides business value to a community of practice (which if done well supports a thriving eco-system).

We decided to send the diagram to the client, and then I posted it. The diagram itself is isomorphic with part of its message: quality content drives traffic, which in turn drives quality content. The post attracted a nice comment, which helps me to write more about this topic .

We’ll see in the coming weeks whether this diagram helped the clients’ contact person in sharing our understanding of an effective website’s value with the not-for profit’s board.

Tomorrow and the day after sees Agile Open California come to life. With a strong theme “Sustainable Agility: Thriving in the Mainstream” , and a good number and variety of participants, it looks like an interesting addition to earlier Agile Opens in Europe and Agile Open Northwest.

At Agile Open, I have heard rumours that there is going to be a Guerilla Open Space @ XP 2007. Today I have heard a rumour that the Agile Alliance is going to sponsor it.

I heard good stories on the Open Space being run last year at XP 2006 in Finland – Many attendees, extra rooms needed etc…

This year, the conference organisers decided not to have an Open Space. Charlie Poole, who facilitated it last year, offered to organise it again this year. He heard nothing from the organisers for a long time. At the last moment they said they are not going to have an Open Space. Does the word ‘stonewalling’ sound familiar?

Question: Why would a conference organisation not support a part of the conference that was highly succesful last year??

So, if you are in Como for XP 2007 or otherwise (for the guerilla open space you probably will not have to register), I recommend you check out whether this Guerrilla Open Space rumour is actually true. Quality is guarenteed by the passion of the people who choose to be there .

(Answer: the ‘acadamic paper’ programme at xp200* is weak and people spontaneously apply ‘the law of two feet’ – they go if they can learn or contribute more somewhere else).

Agile Open Europe, the Summer 2007 edition is coming up soon (June 11 and 12, Hilversum, the Netherlands). So far we have eleven registrants from five different countries: France, Poland, United States, Great Britain and, last but not least, The Netherlands – host country . That means that we have about nineteen places left. They are going moderately fast. If you are thinking about joining us, please register soon-ish, so we can keep all the rooms we booked.

More about the location

Diana Larsen asked us whether the location was easy to reach from Schiphol/Amsterdam Airport.

We chose Hilversum specifically, because it is not far from Schiphol Airport (www.schiphol.nl) (the main airport, near Amsterdam), hoping to attract people from the US who would be ‘around’ in that time of year anyway…

There is a direct train connection from Schiphol to Hilversum (takes bout 40 minutes, connection about every 15 minutes), and then it is about 10 minutes by Taxi to the conference location. ( train connections are at http://www.ns.nl/ – the ‘english’ switch is on top right of the page). Train stations are called ‘schiphol’ and ‘hilversum’.

I mentioned a Taxi ride, since the location is surrounded by heath with patches of forest, and walking from the bus stop down the entry lane would take you about ten, fifteen minutes maybe…

If we fill up, it will be a very nice location indeed – the conference location is on fairly large grounds, with only a few buildings on it, one will be dedicated to Agile Open. We hope to see you there

Agile Open NorthWest gave me a lot of energy. The participants were amazing, newbies and old hands alike – because everyone was actually doing stuff with it in the real world, following the theme “Agile for Real”. I got some answers on questions I had and I came out with stuff to continue working on.

This blog entry is a bit late, which is in no small part due to the fact that I’m still buzzed by this event…

I did not take many photos during the event, as I was too busy participating. I enjoyed most of the sessions I went to, and at several timeslots wished I could be in multiple places at the same time, so I could go to other sessions.

Sessions I enjoyed & gave me almost instant business value:

FunctionalTestingTools, Agile Testing with Testers, TDD for Managers (I still have to post the notes for that one… a session on how to let non-technical people experience Test Driven Development), Green Eggs and Ham, Tools/Techniques for Distributed Communication, Filling out SCRUM with XP, CoEvolutionPicnic. Two sessions I wished I could have also gone: AppreciatoriumProject, and FutureOfUnitTesting .

The action planning at the end of the event turned out to be pretty succesful. Future of Unit testing is getting its’ own workshop (hosted by Kent Beck), some people started preparing a product owners’ workshop, to collect experiences from product owners and… yet another Agile Open got initiated – a group from the San Francisco Bay Area got together to plan one .

This goes to show that open space can be very goal- and action-oriented, and that whatever happens in the sessions is actionable – because people do what matters most to them, just in time.

Some of the few photos.

Elizabeth Hendrickson hosting a session on educational games

Charlie Poole welcomes the participants

I’m having an open space themed week:

• I’m going to CITCON in London – the unconference on continous integration and testing, friday evening and saturday.
• Preparations for the International Open Space Technology Training in Berlin (November 2 through to 9) have started. Another participant has created a mailing list, to virtually open the space, and the organisers inform us there are still a few places available (currently 41 participants, 15 places left). I’m looking forward to this. Since leaving university I haven’t been on a course this long… (it’s a full week, including a weekend).
• Two sessions in the XP Days Benelux program have joined forces to form an open space track divided over two afternoons. Thursday afternoon features a themed open space track on How can your business benefit from agile facilitated by Anko Tijman and friday afternoon wil be ‘open’ open space (the session previously known as the planned unprepared session) intended to let the participants reflect on sessions they’ve attended so far and discuss important last-minute topics. We’ve got an energetic bunch of people together preparing these – if the sessions are going to be as much fun as the preparation… A manager says:
  

  I spend a lot of my time dealing with and talking to managers about agility and how the principles of XP are relevant to the non programmers in the organisation. It may seem obvious to us but sometimes it needs to be spelled out. There is a sort of fear of loss of control from most of the management people I talk to. I have to assure them that control is an illusion at the best of times and that trust is a better, more productive way. One of the things I like about the open open session is that it grasps that fear and says “ok lets see what happens if you do relinquish control – will people mutiny and waste time or will they rally and try to address the issues.”. We can use these sessions to show that people will naturally allow the real priorities to surface and in a more direct way than they might otherwise be able to on a rigid agenda.

• Diana Larsen said at Agile2006 there might be an american open space conference on agile. Her company’s event calendar says its on January 30 – 31, 2007 and it goes by the name Agile Open NW in Portland, OR USA. More Agile Opens . The website isn’t up yet apparently, hope it will be soon.

I’m proud to announce the next

XP Days Benelux 2006

16-17 November 2006

Mechelen, Belgium

This year, even more than in previous years, we have a program that is balanced along the lines of the agile manifesto, a fairly equal dosis of individuals and interactions, working software, responding to change and customer collaboration.

Quoting xp days london, it truly is more than eXtreme programming, more than one day… Given the amount of interactive and experiential sessions I’d be more inclined to call them eXPerience Days . I’m also very happy to see a growing number of sessions around coaching, facilitation (with many highly qualified facilitators) and management. There is a mix of introductory, intermediate and advanced sessions, and we arranged the schedule so the beginning of the conference contains more introductory sessions, facilitating new participants to join more advanced sessions during the conference.

Official conference blurb follows:
XP Day Benelux is a two day international conference about agile software development, intended for software development and business people from all walks of life. It provides a good opportunity for exchanging ideas and sharing experiences and is suited for both experienced participants and beginners in agile software development. The focus of this conference is on practical knowledge, real-world experience, and active participation of everyone.

The number of participants is limited to 120, so we can keep sessions small and highly informative.

Some photo’s from last year (you can see and read more about last year here and here) to get a flavour of what’s to come.

I see Emmanuel is puzzling on why people take pictures at conferences. I take them, not to provide people with shortcuts, but to serve my and other participants’ memories and to give people who haven’t participated in the event (or a particular session) a flavour of it, so it hopefully encourages them to come next time (and that works as I heard for instance from someone who went to the second agile open after seeing the photos from the first). As for safety, I usually ask people for permission before taking photographs, and I don’t publish the ones where people don’t look good . Most of the time, experiential sessions are lots of fun, so that gives photos of smiling, active people – I don’t think there’s many people that object to seeing a happy picture of themselves (and if they would, I’d remove it, but I never had such a request).

So I hope when people see their own picture, it helps them re-live the fun they had when doing the session.