Ahead of my time

If you follow me on twitter, you'll undoubtfully have noticed that I've spent the last couple of days at the GOTO Copenhagen conference.

If you look at my last couple of blogposts, that might surprise you, since they were about going to GOTO Aarhus, not GOTO Copenhagen. Well, that's because I am going to GOTO Aarhus in my capacity as a blogger, while I went to GOTO Copenhagen as a "civilian" (i.e. together with some of my colleagues). Since GOTO Copenhagen and GOTO Aarhus have the same sessions, this means that I probably get to see more of the sessions than anyone else, perhaps excluding the speakers themselves.

Even though I didn't go to GOTO Copenhagen as a blogger, it won't keep me from writing a bit about my impressions from the sessions I attended there - this also allows me to make some suggestions for what people should go to at GOTO Aarhus.

Below is my schedule during GOTO Copenhagen:

Thursday:

• New Linting Rules - Kyle Simpson (Enterprise Architecture)
• From 'Agile Hangover' to 'Antifragile Organisations' - Russell Miles (People & Process)
• Fast Delivery - Adrian Cockcroft (People & Process)
• Deep Dive into the Big Data Landscape - Part I - Eva Andreasson (Enterprise Architecture)
• Lean Enterprise - Part II - Jez Humble (People & Process)

 

Friday

• The Future of C# - Mads Torgersen (Enterprise Architecture)
• What I Learned About Going Fast at eBay and Google - Randy Shoup (People & Process)
• Responding in a timely manner - Microseconds in HFT or milliseconds in web apps, its all the the same design principles - Martin Thompson (Enterprise Architecture)
• A retake on the Agile Manifesto Part I - Katherine Kirk/Prag-Dave Thomas/Jez Humble/Tatiana Badiceanu/Martin Fowler (People & Process)
• A retake on the Agile Manifesto Part II - Katherine Kirk/Prag-Dave Thomas/Jez Humble/Tatiana Badiceanu/Martin Fowler (People & Process)

 

As with most conferences, there is a rating system, where one can indicate what you feel about a given session. At GOTO it is the classic green-yellow-red system. All of the sessions I attended, with one exception, I gave a green - and the one I gave a yellow, I actually think in hind-sight also deserved a green.

 

I should probably add that I give a green based on either of two critierias:

1. Was it interesting/informative/entertaining
2. Did I get new insights out of it

This means that theoretically a speaker can be less than stellar, but able to give me new insights, and then receive a green vote. In reality, however, this happens very rarely, so green votes are usually given to great speakers, who usually are also able to provide me insights.