Last week we had a chance to visit Scan-Agile conference in Helsinki. It was organized by Agile Finland that is a local community that supports agile movement. As it turns out, we already know a lot of people from there, so for us it was also an opportunity to meet with old friends.
This conference is organized for the third time. Last year they skipped due to some local problems and conflicts with similar conferences at the same time. We visited all of them and they always have been different and great.
The Scan-Agile 2011 conference had slightly different organizational crew and different focus group. As they said it themselves, the focus was shifted more on developers and during many talks you could see guys writing code.
During the opening speech we were pleasantly surprised when organizers welcomed Agile Estonia. It was a way cooler than conference sponsors were introduced! Strange feeling to get attention from the whole audience and I even did not have my first cup of coffee yet. :)
One of the highlights for us was Jason Gorman's talk about craftsmanship. At the end he introduced a new concept - refuctoring. Its goal is the opposite of refactoring. It goes as a challenge, when developers change (refuctor) the perfectly written code into something that is hardly readable and easy to change. Not only it is a lot of fun, the idea behind it is that only really skilled professionals can make the code really stink. Refactoring is refuctoring, but with different objective. But the thoughts about craftsmanship call for a separate blog-post.
It was also nice that conference had four tracks. Two tracks for talks and two for workshops. You cannot really get bored there and find something that appeals your interest. Workshops as a separate track is just a wonderful idea. There are many cases when you need to try something yourself and learn by doing it.
Unfortunately, some workshops could not fit everyone who wanted to come. For instance Joseph Pelrine’s talk about self-organization was so popular that people had to listen to it on their feet including myself. That did not make the impression any worse. Very inspirational and deep thoughts there, that cannot fit even one and a half hour time slot.
All in all it was a great conference. Like usually there was a lot of socializing after the event. This is the case when you return from the conference full of new ideas and connected to many wonderful people.
Thanks a lot Scan-Agile and see you next time!
This conference is organized for the third time. Last year they skipped due to some local problems and conflicts with similar conferences at the same time. We visited all of them and they always have been different and great.
The Scan-Agile 2011 conference had slightly different organizational crew and different focus group. As they said it themselves, the focus was shifted more on developers and during many talks you could see guys writing code.
During the opening speech we were pleasantly surprised when organizers welcomed Agile Estonia. It was a way cooler than conference sponsors were introduced! Strange feeling to get attention from the whole audience and I even did not have my first cup of coffee yet. :)
One of the highlights for us was Jason Gorman's talk about craftsmanship. At the end he introduced a new concept - refuctoring. Its goal is the opposite of refactoring. It goes as a challenge, when developers change (refuctor) the perfectly written code into something that is hardly readable and easy to change. Not only it is a lot of fun, the idea behind it is that only really skilled professionals can make the code really stink. Refactoring is refuctoring, but with different objective. But the thoughts about craftsmanship call for a separate blog-post.
It was also nice that conference had four tracks. Two tracks for talks and two for workshops. You cannot really get bored there and find something that appeals your interest. Workshops as a separate track is just a wonderful idea. There are many cases when you need to try something yourself and learn by doing it.
Unfortunately, some workshops could not fit everyone who wanted to come. For instance Joseph Pelrine’s talk about self-organization was so popular that people had to listen to it on their feet including myself. That did not make the impression any worse. Very inspirational and deep thoughts there, that cannot fit even one and a half hour time slot.
All in all it was a great conference. Like usually there was a lot of socializing after the event. This is the case when you return from the conference full of new ideas and connected to many wonderful people.
Thanks a lot Scan-Agile and see you next time!
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