Agile Open California: Wide Open Spaces

About a year ago I participated in my first Open Space conference in Portland.

The idea of Open Space is that instead of a canned set of speakers and topics, the participants propose their own topics on the first day, and people vote with their feet in terms of which topics sound most compelling.

The Portland conference was the best conference I've ever attended. Imagine, always being engaged in a topic that you're interested in, rather than listening to yet another boring speaker with too many Powerpoint slides.

Open Space is about participation, and that makes it incredibly powerful. The combined intellect, ideas, and passion of a group of people can make for huge opportunities to learn and to share.

So now I'm a volunteer on the organizing committee for Agile Open California, which is coming up on October 22nd and 23rd in San Francisco, CA.

It's coming together quickly, and I'm getting excited about another opportunity to mingle, learn, and share with the Agile software development community.

If you're looking for a stimulating learning opportunity, check out the conference website here

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Is Group Brainstorming Hurting Creativity?

Marc Andressen writes about research that shows that group brainstorming produces fewer and lower quality solutions that "virtual" brainstorming where indviduals generate ideas independently, then put their results together.

One way to look at this is that brainstorming sessions with everyone in the same room trying to "be creative" at the same time might not be the most effective approach.

Applied to software development, the implication is that limiting creativity to "groupthink" can have a negative impact on the outcome. Teams may be more creative through harnessing individual expression.

In my own experience, I find that a healthy dose of conflict (with appropriate respect for others), leads to better solutions than friction-less agreement and watered down consensus.

Put differently, if everyone agrees that your idea is the clear way to go, you might have a problem.

Get your copy of the new book! Agile Thinking: Leading Successful Software Project and Teams