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Well, the foreplay is over. Tonight at the ALT.NET conference, we had a social meet-and-greet before the concepts of Open Space were explained. In the introductions, I mingled with a lot of smart folks, many whose blogs I’ve seen, and many who just have a passionate interest in software development.

Once we were all seated, we did a quick 7-second introduction around the room. I was surprised (well, not really) to find several folks from Microsoft attending. A couple are here to talk about some of the new frameworks coming out of Microsoft (for the MVC pattern) and others are here to find out what they’re doing wrong and how they can improve themselves.

The event then kicked off with an introduction to Open Spaces, the format being open and defined by the people in the room. A demonstration was given of a Fish Bowl, a concept where the only people in the room talking are those seated in the center. As time goes on, people who want to speak come up and take the one empty chair. At that point, the longest standing person in the fish bowl must return to the audience until a later time. This musical chairs continues until the facilitator (?) starts removing the empty chair, at which point a seated speaker must return to the audience. It was very interesting from a dynamic perspective and stayed fairly well focused on the topic.

The next item involved people writing their ideas onto a post it and placing them on the time slots available. This went on for some time as each convener announced their topic to measure the interest. Once all the topics were announced, each of us selected which items we wanted to discuss. This established a level of interest and really served as a tool to arrange the sessions such that they were available to those that wanted to attend. The events with no interest were tossed aside and certain events were put into larger room where there was a stronger interest (Microsoft MVC demo for instance).

At that point, all the official opening night items were done. Everyone stayed and talked for an hour or more, at which point somebody said quite loudly “let’s go find something to eat!” So a number of us, M. Fowler, D Sellers, many many more, went to a place called Waterloo for burgers and beers. We closed the place down (well, they threw us out at 10:07 PM), after which we came back to the hotel bar for a nightcap. The conversations went on until the bar said they were closing and we had to get out. So the after-hours discussions were plentiful and interesting. I tried to surf around to catch as many things as I could, stopping when a familiar pain or pleasure was overheard.

Tomorrow is a full day and I’m really looking forward to it. A hearty breakfast will certainly help and the hotel has a pretty solid buffet that I’ll be attending for sure. I still need to find a place to get some Monster before the start, hopefully a c-store somewhere has Blue Monster to keep the eyes open.

NOTE: I’m going to avoid saying something like “Day 1 of 3″ because I have no idea if there will be another post until I get back to Tulsa. I’m going to try — really, I am — but no guarantees.

Southwest flights are so easy – no hustle and bustle of the commercial airports like DFW. There is something about the quiet, relaxing atmosphere of Dallas Love Field that makes you comfortable.

I’ve landed in Austin, TX and scored a rental car for the weekend.

My first stop is going to be the Barton Creek Mall. They have a California Pizza Kitchen and I’m going to have lunch there. We don’t have one in Tulsa, so I try to stop and get some good stuff every time there is a CPK nearby. UPDATE: Lunch was great!

UPDATE: I got in touch with Dru Sellers, going downtown to meet up with him to burn some time before this afternoon.

After that, I’ll probably just hang around for a bit and see what there is to see. The conference doesn’t start until 5:00 PM, so showing up before even 4:00 PM seems a bit over-eager. I’ll probably roll by the Apple store mostly because there is something fun about an Apple store in Dell headquarters!

The goal of the opening session tonight is to define the content of the event. In Open Spaces, the format of the event is defined by the attendees. We’ll start throwing discussion topics onto the wall and watch as themes start to evolve from those ideas. Once a set of themes emerges, the agenda will be established.

After the opening session tonight, I’m guessing there are going to be some hungry travelers ready to hit the town and find something for dinner. After that, I’m sure some lively libations will find there way onto the scene. Stay tuned!

I’m getting the last few things together before I take off for Austin in the morning to attend the ALT.NET conference. I tested out the new MacBook Pro with a projector in our conference room today to make sure that I knew how to get it working just in case (not like there won’t be plenty of “Maclovin” this weekend). I could torture you all with a remake of a classic poem:

Twas the night before ALT.NET, when all through the house.
Not a battery was depleted, not even the Bluetooth mouse.
The carry on was packed, with clean socks and underwear.
With hope that Martin Fowler soon would be there.

But that would be too mean. If you are attending the event, see you there! If not, stay tuned for updates throughout the weekend. I’ll try to keep my Flickr photo stream updated as things unfold.

Visit my .Mac Web Gallery

Ever since David Laribee put forth the ALT.NET Manifesto, the blogosphere has been buzzing about the topic. The buzz has intensified even more since the ALT.NET Conference registration opened up and several of the CodeBetter bloggers (Jeffrey Palermo, Raymond Lewallen, Jeremy D. Miller) posted their thoughts on the subject. I even read that Philadelphia is even starting up their own ALT.NET User Group.

At the same time, the ALT.NET name has come under scrutiny. Some comments have suggested that the name is divisive. Scott Bellware is one of the more vocal proponents of the ALT.NET mindset and he chimed in about his thoughts on the name. I think that any discussion about the name is a waste of bits. The movement is the message, not the name. Even Martin Fowler asked the question, “Why is this stuff alternative?”

By attending the ALT.NET conference, I’m digging for real answers to real challenges.

• How do we leverage the advantages of agile development in a large organization with a large existing code base for an established application platform?
• How do you evolve established (read: waterfall) development practices to quickly respond to product change requests?
• How do plug an agile methodology into a system that is deployed and in-use by over 1,000 customers?

I’m not looking for packaged answers. I’m expecting enlightenment that will inspire me to work hard to change our software development practices, enabling our team to become more effective and more responsive to change. Requirements constantly change through the software development process, and as often as “changing requirements” and “unclear requirements” are mentioned as “problems” in post-mortem analysis, anything that will reduce the gag reflex I feel when somebody says “but that’s a change to the requirements” would be great.

I encourage any software developers reading this to keep an eye on the blogs linked above as the events of next weekend unfold. The roster for next weekend is packed with some great minds and the results should be very interesting.