I didn’t find anything compelling at openspace, and so wandered about chatting with people: Scott Ambler, Gregori Melnik, and finally had the chance to meet Norm Kerth. I also finally met Luke Hohmann. The last part of the morning was spent in an openspace session ran by Dave West who is running the Institute for Advancement of Software Arts. Dave’s aggregating a lot of great ideas that have been bandied about for some time now by some very big names. It’s nice to see some real effort behind reinventing computer science education. It’s about time. I think it’s a natural step as the field matures.. the way we teach people has to change as our understanding of what CS is changes.

It was a good morning.

Lunch however, was a blast. I ended up sitting with Ward, comparing backgrounds, and discussing the joys of working close to the metal. Ward filled me in on his latest side projects working with very simple, very cheap micro-controllers arranged in networks and communicating very simply.

The afternoon was spent with more wandering around, chatting and networking. That, to me, is what a this conference is all about.. making new friends, catching up with old ones, finding out what everyone is up to.. what the latest buzz is. The Agile movement is truly a community. It’s nice to see that happening… and it’s nice to be part of it.

So now I’m back in the bar area, blogging and tweaking the pics, and chatting.

Kent Beck just said I was looking more & more like Hagrid… I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not. As Hagrid is my favourite character in the Harry Potter series, I’ll choose to take it as a compliment.

It’s going to be an early night tonight.. tomorrow will be busy… invited talks by Norm Kerth & Josh Kerievsky in the morning, and my workshop with Brian Marick in the afternoon.