I’m trying to let the events that transpired at the ALT.NET conversations this past week since into my brain. It was a healthy discussion, packed with TDD, BDD, DDD, and MVC.

The format of the event was amazing, and not just because people kept talking when I approached a group (they usually become mute, chuckle, or outright laugh). Open Spaces offers an equal playing field to everyone in attendance — there are no presenters, no PowerPoint presentations packed with propaganda. Anyone can convene a conversation on topics related to the event subject matter. When conversations begin, everyone is encourages to contribute and learn.

The format was empowering and everyone was comfortable talking with others at the event — even those they didn’t know. I spoke with many people I had never met and was pleased to find that I wasn’t the only agile novice present. While I spent a lot of time learning and using tools like Subversion, NAnt, CruiseControl.NET, and NUnit, that barely scratches the surface. Yes, continuous integration has been a huge improvement to our development process, and yes, Subversion is an amazing source control system, but that is a tool-only solution. I like to think of these things as easy-entry or low-hanging-fruit on the ALT.NET path.

The real pain alleviation is TDD and Agile. I was somewhat surprised talking to other attendees working in large enterprises that were completely agile. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking how we could evolve into an agile team and the first step is a big one. I’m sure I’ll take a lot of ideas and knowledge that I learned at the event and use it to help plan agile adoption in our team. In a large enterprise, there are a lot of regulatory issues that can limit how deep agile processes can go but those limitations are disappearing as companies learn to adapt and push the boundaries of rules put in place by legislation to protect investors.

As far as coverage of all the topics, there have been many play-by-play posts on the discussions so I’m not going to go too far into detail on each one I attended. I bounced between several sessions, choosing to catch different parts of each session to gather as much knowledge as possible. A few of the sessions seemed to get off track, particularly the ones that spent more time discussing what ALT.NET is rather than the things ALT.NET does. I’m sure there will be more of the is over the next few weeks as the community refines the message. I’m really interested in how those in attendance will take what they learned and share it with their local communities.

Some seriously fried software developers:

Me and Dru Sellers on Sunday morning. I met Dru before the event on Friday and having only read his blog it was great to put a face and personality with the name. I met so many great people at the event, if only I could give a shout out to each one individually.

I’ve managed to get back to Tulsa on-time thanks to Southwest Airlines. They rock, seriously.

I’m still recovering from the weekend — it was surprising, invigorating, frustrating, annoying, amazing, enlightening, and completely overwhelming. I’m going to let my thoughts simmer for a day or two before I share my views on the experience. There are several posters that covered the play-by-play, I chose not to cover the event from that angle. I met some great people, I had some great conversations, and it was an amazing experience.

I’m sure the organizers are relaxing since this afternoon having completed what had to be an enormous amount of preparation to pull off an event of this scale. The logistics were flawless and the format was beyond explanation. You guys did an incredible job on the crucial inception of ALT.NET as a mindset.

Open Spaces is powerful, surprising, awakening, and enlightening. You can’t explain it, you just have to do it.

More to come, for now, I remain…

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!