This past Saturday I attended a day-long conference and open space meeting for agile and eXtreme Programming enthusiasts here in Toronto appropriately called "XP Day Toronto 2007".  The invention of author and XP consultant, JB Rainsberger, the $250/head event is aimed at fostering and growing interest in XP by exposing participants to what XP is about and providing an open forum for the free exchange of ideas on how to "do" XP.

 

In this regard, the theme for this year's conference caught my attention: "What XP Projects Forget".  It suggested that by attending, I'd gain some insights into lesser-known corners of the XP world that I could apply in my own projects.  As part of a "North American" tour, I was also expecting to see a good number of attendees.

 

In the end, I was a little disappointed on both counts.

 

Now, I don't want to leave the impression that I think the event an unworthy venture - quite the contrary.  I think that events like this are vital to strengthening the community and providing a venue where agile newbies and old hands can cross-check their assumptions and learn about the latest innovations and thinking in the space.  In this regard, I think XP Day Toronto 2007 admirably attempted to achieve all of this, but fell short in a few places when it came to execution; I'll elaborate on this later on.

 

The format of the event was a synthesis of the traditional (keynote address), the innovative (open space) and the interactive (hands-on labs and lectures).  Participants could decide for themselves how little or how much they wanted to get out of the event, and in this respect there were more than enough choices.

 

Agile Manifesto signatory, Brian Marick, provided a warm-up with his opening address, "Six Years Later: What the Agile Manifesto Left Out".  Marick's delivery reminded me of a really annoyed nerd, and while his message was lost at times, which I believe was that the manifesto didn't define how we should communicate entre nous, it was entertaining nonetheless.

 

 

Afterwards, the event transitioned to the open space where the agenda for the free-form meetings of the day would be developed and scheduled.  If you've never done an open space, they can immediately seem like some liberal, wishy-washy, there's-no-right-or-wrong-answer love-in.  And to a certain extent - they ARE.  However, they can be quite powerful tools for generating ideas and the ones that I participated in were extremely engaging and lively.

 

They begin with an individual writing down a topic on a cue card that they describe to the group then "schedule" on a chart that determines where and when the meeting will take place (one of the four corners of the room).  In this way, at any given time over the course of the day, at least four meetings could be held;  in practice, this whittled down to two to three meetings as the day wore on.  Some meetings didn't generate any interest at all, much to the chagrin of their sponsors.

 

 

Interspersed throughout the day there were several interesting sessions for engaging those new to XP on introducing the key concepts, how to get started and even hands-on labs for writing user stories and working on a simulated XP project.  These were all high-value components, but failed to really engage folks in the way that they should, in my estimation.

 

For example, I attended a lecture entitled "Introduction to XP and the Theory of Constraints". I know the fundamentals of XP, and while alluded to, they weren't even discussed by the presenter (JB Rainsberger) in favour of a drill-down on lean principles of value chain management. If you were new to XP, this session would have been right over your head - and indeed, a recruiter who was sitting beside me who wanted to know more about XP to recruit agile developers, walked out more than a little confused.

 

Similarly, I attended another session on "Getting Started with XP", which was driven by a slide deck, which wouldn't be noteworthy except for the fact that the deck was in fact a multiple-choice "exam" that grilled the audience on their XP knowledge, including code samples for TDD.  My friend the recruiter attended this session as well, and again had to depart half-way through.  I followed shortly after, as I was becoming equally confused by the answers the deck was indicating as right and wrong - some I disagreed with significantly. In short, it was the most bizarre "getting started" session I'd ever encountered.

 

Now, at the outset I mentioned I was disappointed by the conference failing to meet two of my expectations: a) To tell me what XP projects were forgetting, and; b) the number of attendees. Here's what I observed: 

 

I learned zero about what "XP projects were forgetting" - while this was the theme of the event, it wasn't actively reinforced, except in the case of Brian Marick's keynote.  The Open Space, while intended to amplify the theme, failed to do so because, well, open spaces are driven by participants so it becomes an exercise in the herding of cats to try and coerce them into a particular topic.  The sessions and lectures, while high-value prima facie, really had nothing to do with the theme, either, and were starved for attendance by the open spaces.

 

Finally, numbers:  In all, I think about 30-35 people attended the event, not including sponsors.  While a good turnout for say, a user group, it fell far short of the expectations that were generated (at least for me) by the organizer.  Now, it is true that you can't be entirely responsible for low attendance, but at the end of the event, JB Rainsberger admitted that more could have been done marketing-wise to raise the profile for the event, and I'd agree.  While these are early days, if it is to reach a wider audience and gain credibility, especially among business and key decision makers, it has to have more gravitas than an after-school meetup.

 

For my $250 fee, I feel I got about $50 of value; I got some coffee, muffins, sandwiches and fruit, enjoyed some stimulating conversations and met some really interesting and intelligent people (Daniel from Rochester, NY, I'm thinking of you, in particular!), however I did not walk away feeling I gained some insights into "What XP Projects Forget".

 

At the conclusion of the event during the "Circle Closing", Rainsberger mused aloud about extending the conference to two days and briefly polled the remaining attendees for interest.  While a few nodded in the affirmative, others were not so enthusiastic, and I imagine it's because they couldn't fathom why.

 

I'd have to agree.  Given that this is the third year the conference has been running, it should have been able to attract more attendees and have better guidance than deferring to an open space to resonate the theme.

 

So, for having a muddled focus, bizarre tutorials and lectures, an open space that was too open, but great food and facilities, I have to give the event a 3/5:

 

Category	Rating (5-pt scale)
Facilities (CNIB Centre)	4 (difficult to access by transit)
Keynote	3
Tutorials	3 (seemed to miss the mark)
Food	3
Open Space	3 (interesting, but failed to amplify theme)
Lectures	2 (confusing)