And so the conference starts. Decisions must be made. Do you pick a track which interests you and sit on one room all day (near the coffee and a power output, of course), or better to spread yourself around?
Well, all days are different. Today, there is little which directly affects me as a front end developer, but plenty which interests me as a generalist and wanna-be polymath.
First up, "Why don't we learn" by Russ Miles.
Russ is also the guy who put this track together, so I'm expecting this to be a motivational romp through mind maps, learning techniques and self-hypnosis.
Russ starts strongly, and is clearly an enthusiastic and motivational teacher. His talk is going to be a look at the history of psychology as a metaphor for the personal development as a software engineer entering a life of Agile.
I like this. It seems strong and it's definitely a nice idea.
Unfortunately, he has a pretty unresponsive crowd. I guess it is the first presentation on the first day. We're quiet. Maybe it is us, maybe it is Russ's rather annoying habit of putting up random terms from psychology, pronouncing them badly and jumping round the stage chucking "does anyone know what that means?"
I am suddenly struck with a book idea. It's called "How to win absolutely any argument" and it teaches the reader how to associate any idea with the history of psychology. It's a gem of an idea and my mind starts to wander ...
Back to the presentation. As a primer for Agile, it was perfectly acceptable. As a read through and reinterpretation of the manifesto, sure, we can all use a little reminding from time to time. But it simply didn't do what it said on the tin. And, as Cuprinol will tell you, that's no way to sell paint.
No comments:
Post a Comment