Head On

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• Agila Sverige 2008

edit: I have been up pretty late hacking the site for the upcoming Agila Sverige conference. Somehow I must posted the localhost link without noticing. Updated - even though it is not live just yet.

I just found out that the talk I gave at Smidig 2007 is available online. If you think there is something wrong with the sound, it is in swedish.

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After reading Aslaks post on his upcoming conferences it is obvious to me that Stockholm is sorely lacking in the conference space.

Aslak mentions RubyFools in Copenhagen and Oslo, and Smidig 2008 in Oslo. RubyFools seems to be great, and I know that Smidig was awesome in 2007.

The only conference I can think of in Stockholm is JFokus, which I hear is very good but Java only. Looking to the whole of Sweden we have Øredev which I always has found too unfocused, and Expo-C which I cannot tell if they exist anymore.

I guess I have no right complaining if I am not prepared to do anything about it. So, after Smidig 2007 in Oslo, we have had talks within the Agile Sweden network about running a similar conference in Stockholm this spring. And while this is no announcement by any means, I am putting pressure on myself to actually contribute to make it happen by speaking openly about it.

Look out for Agile Sweden 2008 this spring.

I am at the SIME07 conference in Stockholm. It is is a conference focusing on entrepreneurship, media, Internet etcetera, at a pretty high level. At the conferences I normally attend people speak about what thay have done. This one has a lot of “what do you think will happen” going on.

This morning there was a very interesting panel with three venture capitalists on stage, giving feedback to three companies pitches, and VC strategy in general.

Perhaps not spot on for what I do every day, but providing a nice new perspective on things.

I am subscriber of the Test Driven Development mailing list as well as the RSpec ones. One thing that strikes me continually is the lack of innovation and new ideas in the former one, as opposed to the flurry of brilliant ideas constantly coming out of the RSpec one. It seems to me that communities stagnate and that the people who once were the revolutionaries turn into keepers of their own revolutions ideas. The free thinkers become conservative.

Guy Kawasaki gave a brilliant keynote on the MySQL conference, talking about innovation. He said that the only way most people think about how to improve themselves is by using the tools they know more proficiently. No makers of horse carriages became car manufacturers. And the original TDD’ers are still talking about the same things they did five years ago. The revolution has moved on.

I just got an email saying that my lightning talk proposal for Smidig2007 was accepted. I will speak about the experiences we have had at WeMind when trying to run a lean enterprise.

I am really looking forward to this conference, it is all lightning talks and open space.

Sitting in Stockholm reading blogs, it feels like being home on a friday night knowing that there is a great party going on and you are not going.

I’ll be traveling to Dallas, Texas this weekend to speak about agile documentation at Valtech Days.

I am looking forward to attending other sessions, the rest of the conference is looking really interesting. If you are in the area and want attend the conference, I believe there are still a few seats available.

Javapolis is held in a combined conference center / movie theater complex. This makes for very comfortable chairs, really good audio and no daytime sunlight what so ever. So far the talks I’ve been to have been really good.

It seems that my problem with wifi jas something to do with size - I can send short emails, but not long. Also, it seems that I have to keep my posts short to get them to my server. This for €20/24 hrs

I’ll be attending the conference part of Javapolis. Anyone else?

I am really excited about my new position as a consultant at Valtech. After selling software products for five years, I am ready to go back into consulting.

Valtech Stockholm is very strong Java shop and really into agile methodologies. This was the cause of my intitial interest with them. The thing that finally got me though was the interview process which really impressed me. I certainly was not sure that I would get through it myself, and I figured that if everybody working there had passed it, they must be a really exceptional group of people. That impression has intially been confirmed by spending a day and evening with them at a conference.

As my wife also got a really cool new job, this fall is looking very bright indeed.

Long time, no blog. Too much holiday and managemental duties to keep me away from the development trenches. But I keep up with what others are writing and it has mostly been discussions about code standards and how stupid people think George W. Bush is. Oh, and that really weird C# vs Java thingy.

But hey presto! Things are living up again! And let's start of with that good girl Chiara who I enjoy immensely but not necessarily agree with.

I don't think Kent Beck has neither the expertise nor the talent to make decisions about how programmers should work.

Uhhm … how shall I put it … how can I express how much I disagree? When I first was introduced to XP I hated it, since it was shoved down my throat, much the way french geese are fed. Turning point #1 was when I went to, the most excellent, JAOO conference where Kent held a keynote speech. That sort of took my blind hatred away. Then at next years JAOO Martin Fowler had a half-day tutorial in the planning game. My world has not been the same since. We now run our home-grown version of it, pair-programming and all. We twist the idea of the customer on site since we're a product company, we use JIRA instead of the orthodox way of the cards and a few other things. Oh yeah, we sit down at our morning meetings too.

The point I'm trying too make is that there in my mind are few people in the world better suited to speak out on developer practices than Kent Beck. He, Martin Fowler and Alistair Cockburn my top three sources of wisdom.

I think Rickard is an alien!!

From what I've read I wouldn't be surprised if he thought you were one too