Mar
24

XP Day France, day 2

The night before

At the end of the first day, we had dinner on a boat touring on the Seine. I didn’t see much of the scenery, because we had a lot of animated discussion about Lean, Theory of Constraints, agility, books, dysfunctional organisations…

After that, we went for a (Belgian!) beer, where the conversation turned towards less serious subjects.

Friday morning

Start bright and early, because I have to present two “one minute presentations”: each session organizer explains in less than one minute why people should attend their session. I advertised my Toyota Way session and Johan Peeters’ Agile Security session, because Johan arrived “just in time” for the start of his session.

The Toyota Way session was in the first slot of the morning. Things were going well, I rarely stumbled speaking French and the audience seemed interested. Shortly before the end, we lost power. No more beamer. The audience self-organized to solve the problem: my portable (running on batteries) was put on a chair on the table, which allowed most people to see what’s on screen. Luckily, I used a “Takahashi” style presentation, with large fonts and big images.

After the presentation, I had reserved half an hour for questions and remarks. There were a lot of questions, lots of discussion, so it seems the presentation piqued people’s interest.

CMMi vs Agile

I’m currently attending a “CMMi vs Agile” debate. Hmmmm… there’s that “vs” word again. I feel an “Evaporating Cloud” coming on.