OK so I am a newbie to Agile practices and this “conference” is a great place to become immersed in all that is Agile.
Last night was very interesting. Over 100 people gathered in one room to create this conference. The meeting started a definition of alt.net and Open Spaces. The definition of Open Spaces is:
Whoever shows up is the right group. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it's over, it's over.
A definition of bumblebees vs. butterflies was discussed. Are you a bumblebee or a butterfly? Bumblebees go from one room to another landing and pollinating. Butterflies find a warm spot in the sun and take in their surroundings. You can also take on different roles because of the rule of two feet:
If you feel you aren’t learning or contributing you are encouraged to use the rule of two feet. Get up and move to another place.
So after a briefing on the “rules” 100+ people introduced themselves. Lots of people from lots of places with very diverse goals for this gathering. Scott Hanselman http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ had one of the best intros:
Hi, I’m Scott Hanselman I hope to bring my entire 3 weeks of experience at MSFT to this meeting. My goal is to find out what we do so bad that it started a movement.
Scott and Scott (Guthrie that is: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/) are here to join the conversation. This is a great thing. Of all the people I know from MSFT that listen these two dudes do.
After the intros we learned about the concept of a fishbowl meeting. I tell you what this was one of the coolest concepts I have participated in. Basically 5 or 6 chairs are put in front of the room. One chair is left empty the others are filled with members of the meeting. The topic that started it all was what does alt.net mean to you. And then it begins. The people in the chairs begin the discussing putting for the there points. When someone wants to contribute they take the empty chair, the person that has been in a chair longest gets up. The discussion continues. There is a constant rotation of people sitting, giving a POV or comment, and getting up. I don’t know if I did this justice but a lot of cool ideas were discussed and it was rather fun.
After the completion of the fishbowl the agenda was set. While the fishbowl was going on people were able to take 6*9 post it pads and write down an ideas for things they would like to see or discuss. Immediately after the fishbowl people with session ideas stood up and presented their idea and put that idea on grid with rooms and time slots. I think there were over 50 post its on the board. Not too bad for 100 people.
After the agenda was put on the board people “voted” for the sessions they wanted to see by putting their initials on the post it note. During the “voting process” endless hours of conversations happened. I was definitely a bumblebee. I flew from one small gathering to the next. From looking at a new MVC model being shown by ScottGu , discussions of UI testing with Jeremy Miller, meeting the new editor of MSDN Magazine and countless others. This meeting is off to a great start.
The one thing that drew me to this conference was the people. This is a real community of greate people sharing great ideas. This was not a fabricated community but one that formed like all great communities do: IT JUST HAPPENED.
Now it’s off to Day 2