Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Sat, 25 Feb 2006All Fluff, No Stuff: Presentation at ThoughtWorks Away Day After being asked to speak about the apprenticeship patterns half a dozen times over the past 8 months, I'm finally getting comfortable with a specific presentation approach. It's the approach Ade and I used at PLoP 2005, which is basically to minimize monologue and encourage small-group-discussion. As Ade and I have found, by simply handing the group a 1 or 2 page copy of one of the patterns and giving them a few minutes to read, hour-long discussions erupt from a previously silent and introverted group of programmers. And get this, we're not talking about anything technical! (all fluff) In my first couple talks about the patterns last year, I felt compelled to give an overview of nearly every pattern, which resulted in me doing most of the talking (bletch). As the number of patterns grew and I received honest (and helpful) feedback from colleagues like Paul Julius, Obie, and Desi McAdam, I switched to focusing on just one or two of the patterns in any given presentation. A great encouragement to me as a pattern writer has been that by focusing on a single pattern, we invariably end up talking about all of the other patterns that it depends on. These things are interconnected and that is A Good Thing. The "Apprentice to Journeyman" discussion during my "presentation" at the (incredible) ThoughtWorks Away Day last weekend was (imo) great, and, as usual, I came away with a lot of new material. I greatly appreciated the participation of Naresh Jain and Mike Ward. |
