[ajug-members] Re: Questions about AJUG's Open Space event

[Barry Hawkins]

Les,
    Thanks for posting.  I think your last section there does a great
job of pointing out some great reasons for people to attend, as well as
raising (and answering!) questions that others may have.  Given what
you've shared below, I can assure you that you have not been to a
conference like this, though it may seem like you have. 8^)  I hope you
will come and either propose or join some of the topics you mention
below; several people have already told me that they want to convene or
attend talks on those very same items.

Everyone,
    I would also encourage folks who don't already subscribe to the Java
Posse podcast (http://www.javaposse.com) to subscribe and listen
specifically to episodes 106, 109, and 111.  In episode 106, you'll hear
feedback from folks who just attended an Open Space meeting and began
with many of the hesitations like Les expressed in his message.  All of
them came away with those concerns obliterated and their expectations
considerably exceeded.
    The links on the event site lead to some other great material
describing how these types of conferences are run, but I'll try to
provide some more distilled information.  There will be no pre-planned
agenda, only a grid of time slots for the two days and the 4 parallel
meeting rooms.  Those who show up will propose topics, by writing the
topic title and their name on a sticky note, one sticky note per topic.
    All those topics will be placed on a wall, and participants will go
and peruse them, placing tick marks by those they think they'd like to
attend.  Right after that, we'll take the topics and fit them into an
initial configuration in the time slots.  It'll turn out that some
topics may overlap, so often topics will combine.  Also, conveners of
talks can work with each other to shift the scheduled talks around if
need be; this is a good tactic when someone has a talk you want to
attend that conflicts with one you're convening. ;-)
    The talks are _conversations_, not presentations or lectures.  It's
someone introducing a topic they want to talk about, getting input from
the others in the room, and communicating with one another.  And, if you
are at one talk and it's not really jiving with you, then you practice
the Law of Two Feet, which is a key principle of Open Space events.  You
use your two feet and go to another talk and see if that is something
that engages you more and allows you to add to the energy of the
conversation.
    So, that is how it goes in a nutshell.  Open Space meetings are
something that has to be experienced (like lots of things in life).
They have made a profound impact on my personal and professional life,
and I am confident that AJUG members will come away with the same
experience that myself and many others have.  So, sign up now!

http://ajug.eventwax.com/the-practice-of-java-in-atlanta---an-open-space-event

Regards,
Barry

Les Hazlewood wrote:
> Ok, so I started to reply to this thread with a lot of questions.  This
> reply is interesting in that I've already answered myself before
> posting, but I thought I'd post it anyway, in case other people are
> curious about the same thing:
> 
> --- Original reply ---
> 
> Can someone please explain to me the benefit of this event, say, versus
> the time that we spend with each other either before, during, or after
> AJUG meetings?
[...]
> --- End original reply. ---
> 
> So, in thinking about what I wrote, the answer to me is that it would be
> good to attend this as an "industry awareness" event, especially for the
> Java folks out there that are nose-to-the-grindstone in their
> organization and don't have much visibility into the Atlanta community. 
> I initially questioned the event because I (very fortunately) engage in
> these kinds of activities quite regularly.  I realize not everyone has
> this opportunity, and for those that don't or can't do it so much, this
> type of event would be a massive benefit in shaping your career - the
> frameworks you choose, architectural techniques you employ in your
> software, the processes to which you adhere, how you do QA, etc.  These
> things can all be shaped by such an event, which can in turn enrich your
> career, help you enjoy your job more, and generally make you a more
> satisfied engineer.
> 
> To underscore the importantce of such event, I recently was exposed to
> some code during a consulting engagement that almost made me cry when I
> read it.  And I'm not talking about one or two lines - I'm talking over
> 1900 source files - the huge majority of them just crap.  Absolute
> honking pieces of garbage,
> fire-the-person-immediately-if-they-worked-for-me utter crap.  But these
> files/classes were created by so called Java programmers.  Why did they
> think they were doing the right thing and I thought they needed to be
> tarred, feathered, and beaten with a wet fish?  Another example is
> another Atlanta area company I know of that still uses C-based CGI for
> _new_ web based apps.  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD - WHY???? (I know why they
> did it - and it was for horrible reasons - but I won't explain why here
> lest I go off on a raging furious tangent that would make children cry).
> 
> Industry events like these can expose these things out in the open so
> that these engineers don't repeat these mistakes.  If they attended such
> an event, they could be enlightened as to why things were so bad.  Maybe
> they just didn't know.  One person's obvious solution could be another's
> difficult challenge - we all benefit from learning from each other this
> way.
> 
> Anyway, my only comment left would be that I would like to see a tad
> more structure (topics of discussion, break out sessions, etc) at least
> to reduce the amount of tangents that we could go on - we technical
> people are well-known to do that quite often :) - and I'd like to make
> sure people get as much utility as possible instead of tangents that
> benefit a few.  If that was in place, I think there are a lot of
> engineers that could benefit from an event with a good amount of
> visibility into Java trends.  I for one would like to talk about things
> like security, dynamic languages, next-gen frameworks, multi-lingual VM
> support (Smalltalk, JRuby, etc), and more.
> 
> I hope I can make it!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Les 
[...]

-- 
Barry Hawkins
All Things Computed
site: http://www.alltc.com
weblog: http://www.yepthatsme.com

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