I’m keeping this writeup definitely shorter than my writeup of XP Days Benelux. In Karlsruhe, we presented the Science Scrum talk again, that Joseph and I had submitted together. Slides from the talk are here and a podcast was recorded and should become available on the organizer’s site soon.
It definitely was a challenge to boil what was conceived as a 1-hour talk down to a 30-minute time slot, and while we ran slightly out of time in the end, I think we managed to get the core ideas across. A good idea I picked up from Ralph Miarka to optimize your talk: Draw up a Venn diagram of “What I want to say about the topic” and “The audience’s needs and interests” … and then talk about the intersection. How true!
We received good feedback for the session, and I hope we will have an even better and crisper version at the XP Day in London this coming Monday, December 7 2009.
In contrast to the Benelux conference, this one had many more structured, frontal, sessions and less collaborative and interactive sessions. The presentations were top-notch for the most part, but having been spoiled by the immersive experience at XP Days Benelux, I felt a certain community feeling lacking – until the last day, that is. The last day was entirely devoted to World Café and Open Space.
What else was new? I finally saw some Pecha Kucha first-hand, and I am not fully convinced of the format yet. It is very easy to go for eye-catcher slides without really aligning them with the message. The format also seems to trigger a lot of buzzword-fetishism, at least in the sessions that I saw. Still, it is entertaining, and if I remember well that Pecha Kucha means “pitter-patter, chit-chat” in Japanese, then I suspect that entertainment is its prime purpose. There was also a really interesting session about Kanban and Lean on the OpenSpace that triggered a few thoughts in my head that still need a bit more processing.
