Looking back on the first day of GOTO Cph - missing a bit of edge

I am at GOTO Copenhagen these days, and thought I'd post a quick overview on my thoughts on the conference.

First of all, unlike last year, it seems like the venue is too small for the conference. It is hard to get around, and many of the sessions are filled up 10 minutes before they start. It was said that the conference would be at a different venue next year, which I think is a good idea.

The first keynote was by Dr. Sengupta and was about the Mars Curiosity Rover. It was absolutely fantastic, and when there were some technical problems with the sounds in the middle of the talk, she managed that brilliantly as well.

Then there were the sessions.

I mostly went to talks in the tracks "game changing methods and practices" and "fast and continuous delivery".

I am not going to talk about the individual sessions, but I am going to quote a couple of tweets I wrote during the sessions there
.

It is probably due to me being at too many conferences, but I'd love more craziness at process/methods track #gotocph please blow me away!

— Kristjan Wager (@kriswager) October 5, 2015

As it is, the talks fell too safe. Doesn't challenge the audience. We learn, but our minds are not expanded #GOTOcph

— Kristjan Wager (@kriswager) October 5, 2015

There is no doubt that the process/method track gave us new techniques for doing Agile, but in my opinion, it would have been greater if the process/method track would have challenged us, and made us re-evaluate how we do systems development, rather than just provide new tools for doing it the same way.

An example of how this could have been done, would have been to find some organization that did waterfall projects with success, and get them to come an tell us about how they manage. One such organization is probably NASA, since I have a hard time imagining that the software for the systems used for landing the Mars Curiosity Rover was developed in an Agile project.

I think many of us would have loved to have our preconceptions challenged this way.

What I wrote could equally apply to the "fast and continuous delivery" track.