Wrapping up the first Open Space Coding Day

I felt that the first Open Space Coding Day on Saturday validated my belief that if you get a group of geeks together who care enough, great things happen.

Some of the attendees have already posted about their experience:

• Jamie Thomson
• Rob Cooper
• Chris O’Dell
• Scott Cowan

People were twittering during the event as well:

• “open space coding”
• #openspacecode

 

The morning sessions that the attendees voted for were:

1. Reusable build scripts
2. Testability: HTML, JavaScript and ASP.NET MVC
3. OpenRasta, including static reflection

The afternoon sessions were:

1. Hands-on secure development with Barry Dorrans
2. Learning F# and the Euler Project
3. Using MEF

The concept for Open Space Coding is “all about doing, not about talking”. So, no PowerPoint slide decks and no speakers. People really seemed to take this emphasis on board and the atmosphere was totally different to other events that I have attended – it felt very ‘studious’ to me. Someone else described it to me as ‘collegiate’.

I took on the role of being ‘host-at-large’ during the day, checking in on the different rooms to see if things were running smoothly. This wasn’t onerous, but it did allow me to pass on effective practices that were being used in one room to other rooms. One takeaway is that next time, we need to have instructions beforehand on setting up access to the repository so that less time is lost wheel-spinning in the first 30 minutes.

The event repository is http://code.google.com/p/openspacecode/

• The repository root for the day
• MEF session code
• MVC testability session code
• F# session code
• Secure development session code
• Reusable build scripts session code

Thank you to EMC Conchango for kindly hosting us for the day – it really makes a difference having a company who is so open to engagement with the community. Thanks also to Michelle Flynn for all her help. Conchango have a Microsoft Surface table, so at lunch there was a chance to play with this cool technology:

Of course, no geek event is complete without the social element and we adjourned to The George on Borough High Street after the event for a well-deserved drink.

I will be posting over the next few days about the feedback from the Retrospective and about other ideas that I would like to take community feedback about.