I had a really great time at the conference. I finally had a chance to meet people I follow on Twitter for the first time, had a chance to meet new people, enjoyed the talks, and fun activities. Did I tell you how much I enjoy single track conferences? In terms of the talks, I really enjoyed the apprenticeship panel, where former apprentices from both 8th Light and Obtiva talked about their experience. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two apprenticeship programs as well as hearing the apprentices' experiences, hardships, and responses to some great questions asked from the audience. I also enjoyed the SCNA speaker panel where the top four voted speakers answered questions generated from the audience via poll. Most of the answers were entertaining and educational. Here's some of them:
"There is more to software craftsmanship than writing code" - Michael Feathers
"Learning the interesting subtle techniques that make my craft better and practicing them in hideous detail" - Uncle Bob Martin
"The world will be better if we just practice the craft and have fun. We need not evangelize. Welcome those who come" - Chad Fowler
"Don't convince others. Convince yourself and behave in accord. Others will wonder what the magic is" - Uncle Bob Martin
"I would much rather work with someone less experienced who knows how to communicate than a genius who does not" - Enrique Comba Riepenhausen
"I will not insult my employer by working 2 in the morning" - Uncle Bob Martin
The Chicago dine around tour was an excellent idea where each attendee had the opportunity to meet other attendees. What perfect network opportunities. I also enjoyed the pre-conference reception on Thursday night as well as the lunches in the Nikko, Japanese style buffet area. In short, SCNA was an excellent conference. Like Chad Fowler said, "if you've never been, highly recommend going next year."
Thanks to Angelique Martin for organizing this awesome conference. I look forward to next year's.
Today, we had the Code Retreat at the 8th Light office, where 20 some people paired up and TDD'd on Conway's Game of Life. If you recall, someone at RailsConf earlier thsi year, ran similar sessions at BohConf and Corey Haines, a couple of months ago, came by the office to give us a couple of sessions. It was great to work on the sessions again. Similar to a kata, I think the Code Retreat is a great to practice TDD, experiment with different ways of tackling a problem, ways in which you normally wouldn't do on a client project, and allow you to pair with another person to experience other people's style - their way of thinking, coding style, abstracton, refactoring techniques. Overall, I really enjoyed the sessions. I'm glad to have tried different languages (e.g., Ruby, JavaScript, Java) and try to attack the problem from the lowest level to the highest level to somewhere in the "middle". I look forward to attending Corey's Code Retreat next time he has one in Chicago.