Come defend ‘your named cloud’ at Agile Open Holland

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Marc already has the scoop, details and a pretty word cloud to explain the theme, so I’ll keep it short and simple. The next Agile Open conference in the Netherlands will be September 10 & 11, in Baarn.

We chose the theme ‘my method is bigger than yours… or is it?’ because it seems that as this agile software development thing goes mainstream more and more people lose sight of what we perceived was one of the underlying goals of the Agile Manifesto: get continuous experimentation and learning going by developing software and helping others do it across communities – hence the signing by people involved in all ‘lightweight’ methodologies at the time. We like the Named clouds meme and hope it spurs some discussions.

Even if this theme does not speak to you, come to Agile Open Holland anyway – anything goes, and new cloud formations are likely to form during the conference. Named ones in the sessions and the hallways, unnamed ones in the sky (we do hope the sun shines most of the time though..).

XP2009 – workshops and tutorials kick ass by the sea

Friday, May 1st, 2009

I haven’t gone to XP200* for a while. This year is different :)   It has a very strong programme with an excellent balance between practitioner workshops and tutorials and a more focused academic track. Amongst other things, sessions by agile regulars like Jeff Patton on User Story Mapping, David Anderson on Kanban, the Poppendiecks on Lean, Diana Larsen on Retrospectives, Steve Freeman on Mocks, american Mike Hill on CRRAP as well as  workshops by  people you may not yet have heard about: the Scrum Board Game by Wim van de Goor and Stefan van den Oord looked like a lot of fun at the last XP Days Benelux, and the Agile Analysis tutorial by Joke Vandemaele should be very good as well – she is part of a ‘new wave’ of what I call example driven business analysts (a shorter version will also run at mini XP Days in Mechelen, May 11). And there is an Open Space of course, for the latest and greatest insights and the most difficult of problems.

It’s back in Sardinia, in the beautiful town of Pula so the place itself is worth a visit – I was in Sardinia once for XP2001 – it is stunning.

looking to the Sea from Pula fourtress by Alistair Young

Temple of Augustus, Pula by yellow book ltd.

Temple of Augustus, Pula by yellow book ltd

Sunset in Pula by toucego.
Sunset in Pula by Nelson Martin
I’m going to xp2009 learn from the best, and make some photos of my own. I look forward to meeting you there!

Haskell dojo at eXtreme Tuesday Club London

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

Mike Hill and me will be co-hosting a haskell coding dojo at the eXtreme Tuesday Club in London this tuesday.  Prior experience of Haskell not required, just bring your intention to have some fun :) A dojo is a great way of learning together, and I see we have at least one participant with quite a bit of haskell experience; so register to join the fun…

some more agile open photos

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

I just uploaded some more photos from agile open. enjoy!

eXperience Agile, June 25-27

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

We have a few open spaces for the eighteenth eXperience Agile course , which we will be running in Rob Westgeests’ new office in Tilburg, the Netherlands on June 25 though 27. Three days of fun learning and experiencing Agile Software Development (and students who kick more ass after they’ve been :) – more on that later).

One of the few courses that goes in-depth in both Agile planning practices as well as technical practices. See the course page for a full description.

tryout labour turnover June 17th

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Nicole Belilos and I are hosting a trial run of our ‘labour turnover – should I stay or should I go’ workshop – we’re going to also run it during agile2008. We’re doing a trial run next tuesday (June 17th) at the office of Topic in Best. Contact me or Nicole if you want to join. If you want to know more, read the workshop description, or the full trial description in Dutch (below).
(more…)