Thoughts on the Software Craftsmanship 2010

I have reached my hotel after the days events at Software Craftsmanship 2010 at Bletchley Park and got a chance to write up my thoughts. I had planned to Tweet during the day, but just never got round to it, too busy.

So how was the event? I have to say I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as last year’s event. That is not to say this was not a good event, but this years seemed to focus on hands on programming tasks. This is great but I always feel that I could have been doing this at home, or in a dojo session in the office (not that I do this  oftan enough). Last year the sessions were more Randori Kata format and the group discussion this engendered I found very useful. I think conferences like this are probably at their best when they open your mind to new technique and ideas; yes coding kata can do this, but I feel that a conference needs to focus on the meta level of ‘why do this kata’ and how to ‘best run a kata’ and leave the actual kata sessions to usergroups meetings.

Maybe there should be more sessions on the discussion on how to best evangelise software craftsmanship. Today‘s event was full of people who have already decided a craftsmanship approach is the answer for them and our industry, the big question is how to bring more people with us, especially the group who don’t attend conferences, user group or even try to keep up with current trends. I suppose it is down to all of us who do attend such groups to spread the word, so why not get down to your local group and help improve our industry, if you are in Yorkshire why not try Agile Yorkshire next week? If you can’t make why not try setting up a lunchtime coding dojo – there are loads of ideas out there on the web.