Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Agility

What I did last Thursday and Friday

Last week I was able to spend two days at the AOSoCal 2011 event with 70 other Agile enthusiasts who are all practicing, thinking about, coaching, consulting, and working with Agile Software Development.  I had a great time, learned a lot, made a lot of friends, and can’t wait for the next one.

Like I said several times at the event, I felt surrounded by friends the whole time.  These are the sort of people I would hope can attend my funeral to balance out the other folks who will be there to gloat and trash-talk me.  Do people still say “trash-talk”? 

A little about Agile Open, and Open Space

Each Open Space event has a theme that defines the purpose of the gathering.  Our theme for AOSoCal 2011 was People, Principles and Performance.  That’s pretty wide open.  However, unlike many typical conferences, an Open Space event is invented by the people who show up. The sessions are not scheduled until the morning of the event. 

Everyone gathers in a circle, and the participants propose session topics by writing the topic on a piece of paper and announcing it to the gathering.   Typically, the proposer takes responsibility for the session, choosing a time and space to hold the session, and later facilities the session.  One by one the event schedule it built, and once that is done everyone selects the first session they will attend… and then off we go – the Space has been Opened.  Sessions can be added at any time, and some get combined or morph into something completely different.  Overall it is a very dynamic process.

You can learn more about the process at Open Space World, or at the Agile Open site, or the Agile Open California site, and about the AOSoCal event specifically at the AO Southern California site.

So what is it really like?

From my description it might be hard to get a picture of how this all works – but it does work, and rather nicely.  I encourage you to attend an Agile Open event – they are generally very inexpensive and then you could easily experience it for yourself.  All the people I’ve talked to who have attended these events have been very pleased they were able to join in. 

I have been to a variety of Open Space events and the details vary from one another – but overall I get a lot more of what I want from a conference than I ever get at the more traditional conferences.  One thing I have especially enjoyed is that the sessions are engaging, personal, and interactive – I find this keeps me energized throughout the entire two days.  Most sessions keep things lively using facilitated (or non-facilitated) discussions, hands-on activities, or interactive techniques of some sort.  I love that I get to spend a couple of days continuously interacting with fascinating people who are discovering, learning, experimenting, living, and inventing what Agile Software Development is all about.  How is that for a poorly formed sentence?

In addition, there are endless opportunities to just sit and talk, pair program, or take a walk (or whatever) with other attendees.  Overall, a lot of fun.

So, that is what I did last Thursday and Friday

Cheers!