Two open space conferences in the same week spells heaven to me.
On Tuesday and Wednesday Charlie Poole, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Patrick Logan and I hosted Agile Open Northwest at the Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon .
We had great support from our sponsors the Agile Alliance, InfoQ, SolutionsIQ, PNSQC, Corillian, Net Objectives, Instantiations, Esther Derby Associates, ExtremePlanner, Innovation Frameworks and Jens Ostergaard. We held it at the same hotel where Esther and I have our “Secrets of Agile Teamwork” workshop twice each year. It’s a fun and funky place that stimulates everyone’s creative thinking flow.
Agile practitioners from the US, Canada, and Europe joined us there. We were developers, managers, testers, customers and consultants. We examined a wide range of topics related to Agile methods and software development. Troy Frever convened a session on Making Retrospectives Fun. (I like that.) Sessions ranged from Legacy Code Testing to Green Eggs and Ham. We recorded the session notes in a wiki. Read them quickly before the spammers find us.
The open space technology format creates a conference that the participants self-organize. It complements our interest in Agile self-organizing teams and just makes sense. We’ll do this again. Plan to join us next year.
A day later, in a big, old warehouse turned creative space in Portland, the wiki community is hosting Recent Changes Camp, a free un-conference which is of, by, and for folks who want to "build communities worth having" both online and off. This especially includes the Open Technology & Open Culture movements. At this conference, I’ve sat in on discussions of everything from Digital Justice to Living Room Democracy. Yesterday, people practiced throwing bamboo swords, discussed patterns of wiki adoption, and Data Addressing & Sharing with XDI (whatever that means), among many other topics.
Such an abundance of rich discussion.
If you’ve missed these conferences, you can attend next year. Or, if you just can’t wait for your next open space, check into attending Rococo Camp coming up in May in Montreal.
And remember the Law: if you can’t learn or contribute where you sit, get on your two feet and have them take you to someplace where you can.